to ask how I talk about my traumatic birth experience?

[HarmonyMiles]

I gave birth to my beautiful baby on Monday. It was a horrible experience that has really affected me psychologically. I'm struggling to get my head round it.

I want to talk about it on mn and get some opinions but as it's quite a specific birth story, not sure how to go about it. The chances of anyone recognising me are quite slim I guess. Would it matter if they did? Probably not,

I just really need to voice what happened and learn to let go of any resentment that I hold towards the hospital staff who well and truly screwed up.

I am a bit of a mess and don't know what to do. I want my birth experience back. I know I can't have it. I'm just all over the place and I know the birth is weighing on me :(

Have you spoken to your HV or midwife? There maybe a service to help you. After going through a traumatic birth and having pnd I wish I dealt with it at the time, it still haunts me now after 9 years. Hope you are able to make piece with the birth

My partner was incredible and it's very common for them to go out for a walk or fresh air. He was also picking me up supplies. When a midwife tells you you have 4 hours you think you have 4 hours.

I had almost the exact same experience as you. Was told to cross my legs and not push as I would be at least 4 hours before anything would start happening. After 20 minutes of this I got on the bed and demanded they examine me. DS was born minutes later. He had an extremely cone shaped head because he had been in the birth canal for so long while I was trying to hold back from pushing.
It is upsetting and my poor little man had to be given paracetamol for the huge bruise he had on his head and was having tremors as he was in shock. I can totally empathise with you. If I were to ever have any more children I think I would ignore the MW and just start pushing. I lost faith in them that day. They made me feel like I was being a hysterical first time mum.

Sorry you had such an awful time of it OP.

Mine was no where near as bad, but still quite traumatic. It’s that terrible feeling of knowing it’s all spiralling out of control and no one will listen to you. To me if felt like trying to shout for help under water. Quite terrifying.

I think what would have helped me afterwards is if I could have just asked the shirty, dismissive midwife why she acted like she did. And for her to say sorry, I should have listened to you. And that she would promise to listen better in future.

Of course I know this would never happen.

Instead I got the usual flannel that didn’t make me feel better and just felt like they were protecting their own

So sorry to hear about your experience. It sounds like you had terrible care and I think you should consider taking it further BUT at a later date. Just now, I think you should try to park it to one side - you can go back to it and pursue it further at any time, but this is not the best time in my opinion as you need to concentrate on your LO and on recovering.

Being left vulnerable and unable to control what was going on must have been awful and your reaction is very natural and completely understandable. However, can you perhaps take a decision now to take back control by concentrating on your LO and on your own recovery for the time being?

Congratulations on your LO. Try to forget about these horrible staff meantime and concentrate on having lots of cuddles with your newborn and your DP. and building up happy memories to offset the bad ones of the birth.

Then, when you are feeling stronger, research your options and pursue things further on your own timescale.

@SinkGirl Im in Dorset and was truly traumatised by the birth of ny second child but it was 7 years ago now. I ended up in ICU. The actual staff at the time were really good but its the after effects. Looking at ptsd definitions now I think that was me - unbelievable hypervigilance for years and I still suffer anxiety. I found their birthday incredibly hard for the first 4 years and would burst into tears at anything to do with birth.

I was supposed to have counselling with a midwife but they took all 3 sessions to read what was going on up to the birth in my notes. But i knew that. It was what went wrong after that I didnt know. She kept telling me about all her other clients and I actually wasnt in the right place to articulate what I wanted. It really was awful.

Anyway its years ago but I wondered in what capacity you wanted stories and if I could help?

Sinkgirl - really, I’ll look into that thank you. Nothing was explained to me and I still don’t know what why I needed forceps, the whole thing was handled badly and I wasn’t allowed gas and air ‘in case my mouth got dry.’

A lot of the trauma I experienced giving birth was from the way I was treated, the way I was spoken to and the things said etc
My experience was also pretty traumatic by default (complications, theatre, forceps and so on) but I think even the most ‘straightforward’ birth can be turned into a horrible traumatic experience if a woman is treated poorly and with no respect
I hope attitudes will shift because it does seem to be a widespread problem
Big hugs there are a lot of different groups and spaces online to speak about traumatic births

You are right to be angry and let down, and to want answers and apologies. It is so annoying being told to cuddle your baby and be thankful when your mind is still stuck on the terrible thing that has just happened to you.

From my experience, two things helped me.

1. I agree with TeddyBee and Nat6999, I told everyone who would keep still long enough my birth story. I did that for about a year and actually it started to get a tiny bit better and I didn't have to tell EVERYONE anymore. After about two years I was hardly ever talking about it. And now after five years I hardly think about it any more. For me talking about it a lot helped.

2. do allow yourself to think about what happened but allocate a time for it. Say, I'm going to think about the letter I'm going to write to the Head of Midwifery about how awful her staff were for half an hour, then I am going to sort out my baby's sock drawer/call a friend/sterilise some bottles, then I'm going to read to the baby etc.

Congratulations on your new baby!

Your story sounds just awful and you have my absolute sympathy.

I also had a terrible 1st birth. I would think relive it all the time and this went on for a bout 2 years - appears to be a common timeframe.

I was told at one point that the constant thinking is your brains way of trying to change to outcome - this realisation helped me a lot. If you don't start feeling better consider counselling. It can be very helpful with traumatic experiences.

Keep talking and maybe you'd like to write out all of the details of your experience, what was said, who was there and how you felt. It might relieve some of the pressure of all of the thinking.



I agree with TeddyBee and Nat6999, I told everyone who would keep still long enough my birth story. I did that for about a year and actually it started to get a tiny bit better and I didn't have to tell EVERYONE anymore. After about two years I was hardly ever talking about it. And now after five years I hardly think about it any more. For me talking about it a lot helped.

Me too. I told a lot of people. A lot.
It does tend to be a bit of a conversation killer though, so try to choose your moments/audience... (I wasn’t very good at this).

It is traumatising to not be treated with respect and kindness when you're in such a vulnerable position, especially when you're entrusting professionals with something so precious.

You're still in early days, and while it won't make what happened any better and your feeling are valid, there's a good chance that your ability to cope with your feelings will improve with time, iyswim.

At least, that's what happened with me. First birth was a painful induction, second ended with me in surgery for a haemorrhage and dc sent to the NICU in another hospital. Both times I was tearful and couldn't stop reliving the births for a few weeks but in time it took up less of my headspace. If it doesn't like that for you, pp have lots of great suggestions to help.

A very similar thing happened to me. Very fast birth, midwife did not believe I was in labour, no pain relief, husband missed birth.

After the advice of kind posters on here I called an organisation called AIMS and spoke to a lovely lady on the phone. Being able to talk to someone outside of the hospital really helped.

I requested my notes and then made an official complaint. I can see why a birth debrief would not help you as my notes were all written in retrospect (basically made up). I did make an official complaint. I felt that I owed it to my baby as the lack of care put his life at risk. He is fine now. The posters who are telling you to be grateful you have a healthy baby can fuck off. You are greatly to have a healthy baby but the people who were meant to be caring for your baby put them at risk. Your baby survived this lack of care because they are strong. My baby is 5 months old now and I now know that he is strong and going to be fine. It took me a while to feel that and in the first few weeks I was hyper vigilant.

I do think making a complaint helped me but I found it very hard. Do talk about it with people in real life too. There are others who have had similar experiences.

Have a look at Birth Better on Facebook and Instagram.

You have a beautiful baby and you did it all by yourself.

I’m so sorry you’ve been through this

I had a similar experience with my first baby and the 2 worst things for me was 1) being in horrible pain and nobody listening or acting like I was over reacting because I couldn’t possibly be so far into labour so suddenly and 2) the awful out of control and powerless feeling of being completely ignored because the midwife “knew better”.

And that’s not even discussing the MW ignoring the faltering heart rate monitor (and me screaming in agony) because she was too busy writing her notes.

I really hope you get some counselling or support because it can be difficult to process when things go so far from your expectations and you feel unsupported and alone.
Congratulations on your new baby

Do sorry you had to go through that and all because of people not doing their jobs properly! I was completely and utterly dismissed with my first so I understand how frightening it is and it affected me for a long time afterwards. I think the worst thing was that I could have had a "good" experience if they had not had such a shitty attitude towards me. I would definitely take this further when you have the energy for it because it really is not good enough but in the meantime accept your feelings and don't feel that you have to apologise for them

*so

This is absolutely awful I hope you have the Midwife's name and take this further. No women should have to go through that when having a baby that midwife seems inexperienced and down right nasty. They should of checked you! 10cm and refusing to give any pain relief she should loose her job, I would take them to court

Congratulations on your baby. I had traumatic births many years ago and they still haunt me. A hospital debrief (as seems to be an option nowadays) would have been very helpful. Do talk about it and don't bottle it up. Also your partnet may need to offload as well as they can find being so powerless and seeing you in pain challenging

Pooleschoolschoice I’ll PM you

Births can be scary , always painful and risky
Even with great staff things can go wrong sadly

My first birth was traumatising because I was scared and in pain

But in this case the birth was standard , but the issue was being completely ignored

I read that’s what had freaked OP . Being ignored when so vulnerable . I had people
There . She was left to it and that’s just

We would serve women better by be honest on how shit it can be rather than mostly talking about ideal births and best case scenarios.

Thank you everyone and to those who have shared their stories 🌷🌷

PP below hit the nail on the head. I was in a labour unit, in labour, and that is pretty standard. The whole thing could've been managed if I was listened to. If I knew I was nearly ready to push, I would likely have been able to tolerate the pain as I knew the end was near. Being told at 10cm dilated with no pain relief that you've got 4/5 hours left, minimum, is terrifying. I gave up and wanted to die in that moment. I actually thought to myself 'death would be better than this'. If they had just listened it could've been a much, much better experience.

@SnuggyBuggy absolutely. I will be the first to admit that I was completely naive about a) how painful it would be, b) how out of control I would feel and c) the fact that I actually have a choice and should have been listened to.

In my case however, I don't think any amount of honesty about the pain would have made up for the fact that I was dismissed and left on my own in a bath pushing a baby out whilst also being told I'm in the 'latent phase of labour'

I’m so sad to read so many traumatic stories here, but not terribly surprised. From my work I can see that things are getting better, that this is being taken more seriously, and I see a real willingness from the vast majority of senior staff to improve things. The problem is that this doesn’t always filter down and that seems to be where most issues I see are still happening,

For those who want to help make things better, I would contact your local CCG, ask to speak to someone who works in maternity provision. Ask if they have a Maternity Voices representative or panel. If so, get their contact details and tell them your experiences (anonymously is fine) so that they can be included in the feedback given. If they don’t have a rep or panel, ask when they’re going to set one up to ensure that patient engagement is informing their maternity service. More CCGs are now getting onboard with this but some need a push. If you’d like to get involved yourself, ask them how to do that. Then bug them about it whenever you get a chance.

I had a psychologically traumatic birth with dc1. But because of that it made me much more assertive with the mw in the run up to dc2s birth. I ended up changing hospitals as part of this. Second time was physically traumatic but I was listened to the whole way through so no trauma. It somehow put the first one to bed if that makes sense.

I really hope you can find a way to get through this and enjoy your baby