To wish my friend would give it a rest about her birth experience?

[Heatherbell1978]

One of my friends gave birth 6 years ago to her DD. By all accounts it was fairly traumatic; induction, 2 day labour then emergency CS. I think she was taken by surprise by the experience and it shook her up. Her DD was difficult and she went back to work quite early from mat leave. She's a high flyer and quite a perfectionist so things just didn't work out quite as prefect. She won't have any more kids now.

I was very sympathetic at the time although didn't have my own experience to call upon. She used to talk about it all the time and get quite drunk and angry while doing so.

Wind on a few years and I've had DS and DD. Neither birth was 'easy'; DS was back to back and I had a post partum heamorrage after DD which meant a rush into surgery. But both were quick, gas and air only and water births so very lucky in that respect.

I don't see said friend very often but when I do she still talks about the birth. She brought it up while on my birthday night out at the weekend in a very animated way going on about how people who don't have epidurals are stupid for trying to do it naturally and just how horrific it all is. I kept quiet as I just couldn't be bothered saying that actually my experience wasn't but it was a clear dig at me.

Could she still be suffering with some kind of post traumatic stress or something?!

@Ennirem mine was the same induced on Wednesday had an emergency section on the Friday.

I'm mostly fine now but still have some triggers - especially that 12 hours of labour pampers ad that was on tv over Christmas! And call the midwife and one born every minute!

The OP has already said that she now understands the lady may be suffering from PTSD. And there is nothing to say she doesn't think people with PTSD should have help and sympathy.

But there is a grey area, isn't there, where a person with quite genuine problems may be doing harm to another person who is also struggling? From that pov I think Kerala does deserve a hearing. She was obviously in a bad place at the time, and the other person, also in a bad place, was making things worse for her.

Sadly, life isn't so neatly arranged that only one person will be suffering at any given time.

Somebody who goes around aggressively denigrating the birth experience of others (as the OP has said her friend keeps doing) is very likely to end up sooner or later hurting somebody who is even more vulnerable than she is. PTDS is horrible, but it doesn't mean you can't gently pull somebody choices that weren't right for her.