To ask for your not perfect birth stories...

[TwittleBee]

Hi there,

So recently found out I am expecting DC#2 and I am already terrified of labour. But after having a real good cry and talk about it with DH last night on drive to a fireworks display I realised I am not scared of the trauma but scared to fail again. I sobbed because I am scared to fail this DC during labour and birth like I feel I did with DS.

DH tried explaining to me I haven't failed but it didn't really help. He said I need to hear more people's stories of their not perfect births to realise it is normal what I went through etc.

I've woken up this morning and wondering now if perhaps he is right. During pregnancy with DS all I was exposed to were good birth stories and NCT and ante-natal and hypnobirth classes all told me to dismiss negative birth stories. But I feel like that might be what is contributing to my feeling of failure, I feel like I should be dismissed because I had a negative experience.

I suffered with PND and PTSD from my last labour. Please share with me your experiences to help normalise them for me.

I had an awful first birth and PTSD which developed into PNP. for you. It’s terrifying. I won’t go into detail about what happened but I was left with severe physical injuries and my son is almost blind due to the forceps fuck up.

I went to a different hospital - I couldn’t even drive past the other one without vomiting, let alone go knows what it.

My consultant really helped me. For me, I needed to know that at the first sign of trouble or at my first request, a c section would be done. He constantly reassured me. Pregnancy #2 was fraught due to a weak cervix caused by injuries from birth 1. I ended up being induced early. I was told only horror stories but I had a really positive one. The process took 6 hours, pessary, they broke my waters and she was born after just a few pushes. They were on the ball with pain relief, I had gas and air and pethidine (I was denied even basic gas and air during my first 36 hour labour.) My consultant checked on me regularly throughout.

DC3 - normal pregnancy. Labour started with contractions at 11pm, my waters broke at 1am and she was born at 1:40am.

DC4 - normal pregnancy. My waters broke with no contractions before at 4:40am and she was born at 4:45am I did go into shock after that one. I delivered her myself (stood up!) in a side room on the maternity ward (was in for high blood pressure.)

I’ll admit the PTSD has never really left me and I do find myself occasionally triggered by things.

I hope this one goes smoothly for you.

*let alone go inside it

I wanted a calm, relaxing, natural water birth, with music playing and labour for a few hours, no tears etc.

What actually happened was DD was 12 days late so was induced. Induction left me in labour for 36 hours (with contractions every 3 minutes for 30 of those hours!) and I made it to 1cm. DD started to get into distress so I was taken for an emergency C Section, after which I lost 2.5 litres of blood and the emergency crash team arrived.

I don't feel a failure because at the end of the day DD arrived safely and I'm fine. I would do it all again in a heartbeat! (currently trying for DC2)

With DC1, I planned a home birth. The day before his due date, I woke up at 3am with mild contractions, which continued all morning. We actually went out for lunch (we had just a blissful day) and when we got home, my husband insisted we call the midwife.
Midwives duly arrived and I laboured without incident until the pushing stage. Unfortunately, this then continued without incident for 3 hours, by which time the midwives were getting anxious about the baby, especially as they couldn’t see why he wasn’t coming out. (Spoiler: his head circumference is in the 99th centile).
So, ambulance, blue lights, hospital. Ventouse. No good. Out come the forceps. Lovely doctor asks politely if it’s ok to do an episiotomy. ‘Feel free,’ says I. So she scissors me open, sticks in the forceps and pulls out my gorgeous baby.
I barely noticed the stitching up, as I gazed at my vision of loveliness (dark red face, fuzzy ginger hair, giant cone head from the ventouse and forceps).
It was a million miles from my plan of how it would go, but it was still a joy.

OP I felt so much pressure from the brief antenatal classes I did, the NCT leader seemed to imply that I would be chatting about my perfect labour at dinner parties in years to come. It doesn’t really matter HOW you have a baby as long as you are both healthy in the end. I had a horrible imperfect birth but staggered out of that hospital with my daughter. That’s a victory! You made a person OP. Thats incredible! Please ignore the propaganda that that isn’t enough. I think the combination of trauma and the sense you have failed if you haven’t met a particular criteria must be responsible for so much post natal depression.

I had planned a home birth for DC2 after a fairly traumatic time with DC1. Two weeks before his due date I started haemorrhaging with no warning, was blue lighted into hospital and had an emergency c-section under general anaesthetic. It all happened so fast (delivery was 75 minutes after the haemorrhaging started) I felt super traumatised, plus lost so much blood (turned out to be placental abruption) we were both in ITU for the first day. But we both made it, which is the main thing.

Oh, and next time around, I had twins. I was already in hospital with a kidney infection. Just as they were saying ‘Well, at least it’s the right kidney, that’s the easy one to take out,’ my contractions started.
This time I had accepted I would be in hospital, but I was determined I wouldn’t have an ‘over-medicalised’ birth. D’oh!
After much fuss with monitoring and arguing with the doctor (he was actually very professional about it, and when I said ‘that makes me not trust you’, he said he would get a colleague in instead so that I should feel more comfortable,) Thing 1 came out with just a little help from the consultant. Thing 2 was breech, however, and I was very glad the consultant was a small woman with tiny hands, as she basically had to rummage around to get hold of her ankles and yank her out.
Both babies were whisked off to NICU ASAP - as soon as they were gone, the crippling pain in my kidney came back!
We were all three hospitalised for about ten days, but actually most of that time is a really happy memory for me.
I’d still do it again in a heartbeat, if it weren’t for the whole nine months of misery beforehand!

Of the, maybe 30, birth stories I know the intimate details of, I’d say 5 went completely beautifully smoothly. It’s really very unusual and most births have some kind of “against the plan” complication.

My own births, the first was a very smooth labour, only 9ish hours of contractions, I still had loads of energy by the time we got to pushing then nada- she was in a slightly awkward position, ventouse failed, forceps finally got her out a bit battered then I lost 1500mls of blood and spent 24h in recovery having a transfusion.
Second birth was a 5 day failed induction @42+3, absolutely nothing happening. They eventually found me a room on labour ward and within 5 minutes had broken my water, as hey did so the head disengaged, the cord prolapsed and I wheeled through to theatre for a section with a midwife’s hand firmly holding things in place!

So neither went at all smoothly but we were all safe and amazingly well looked after and as such I never felt traumatised by the experiences. Certainly the second time I expected “something” to go wrong but put my trust in the staff and just didn’t set expectations.

Mine was a bit shit, the midwives left me labouring for so long in the bath off the ward that I completely missed that I had had the urge to push (I thought I needed to poo but CBA to get out the bath)
When they eventually bothered to come and examine me I was fully dilated but the bloody contractions had started to slow down.
I wanted a water birth but they didn’t read my notes, by the time we got into the labour suite and ran the pool, and I’d got in my contractions had pretty much gone completely. So I had to get out the pool.
I needed to empty my bladder but couldn’t so had to have a catheter. Then I had to go on the oxytocin drip to restart my contractions but they never really got back up to the same intensity so I had to do the pushing with no real natural impulse. I had a student midwife who was bickering with the main midwife about what to do, baby’s heart rate started to slow down so had to have a monitor attached to his head.
Then he got stuck so doctor came in then went off to get the ventouse. Luckily I pushed him out before she came back.

It was just one thing after another. But DS and I were absolutely fine and healthy at the end of it, so I don’t dwell on it too much.

I’m 37 weeks with no 2 now and feel I have a better understanding of what to expect now. Hopefully won’t miss the urge to push this time, which is what started it all last time!

#1, failure to progress so moved hospitals for induction. Baby ended up forceped out after 28 hours. Only 7lbs, but was brow presentation. Episiotomy and 1l blood loss.

#2, precipitous labour with 9lb11oz baby appearing in under an hour and a half in the back of speeding ambulance. Bad 3rd Deg year, and 2.5l blood loss.

#3, brilliant.

They're all so different! I don't feel like I failed at any point, and nor should you.

Totally normal to feel you've failed but absolutely not accurate!
I'm one of many amongst my friends/family who have had awful births.
Mine is hard to talk about as it was a totally natural water birth. As soon as people hear that, they look all misty eyed and envious, with images of candles and whale music and a calm and serene entry for my ds into the world.
Erm no, it was pants, utterly shit and traumatic. I needed emergency surgery straight after the birth, ds was born struggling to breath and the room at this point was full of alarms, panicked looking midwives and far far from serene and calm!
I too ended up with pnd and was very very poorly. Ds is now 13 and I can honestly say his birth is a distant memory now. Yes, I can still feel utter sadness at the memory of his first few minutes, hours on earth but he is now a big strong teenager and as the years go by, memories fade and when I look at him I no longer feel like a failure, far from it!

Op, I've deliberately left out the gorier details, nobody needs to read the full horror of what happened to me/him

I was isnduced post-dates, waters broke but we’re thick with meconium so rushed into a drip. Decided to have the epidural offered before contractions started. Laboured fine then pushed for hours and hours, nothing happening so got an episiotomy and dd was delivered by ventouse. It wasn’t what I wanted but I felt ok about it. I’d spent a lot of time when pregnant focusing on what I wanted to do if certain things went wrong, and managed to avoid the two things I really didn’t want (pethidine and forceps).

ah sweetheart, there is no perfect birth. it's a myth. Just like there is no perfect parent, or perfect baby. My daughter was delivered by forceps, it was quite a icky situation, but the end result was a strong-willed baby and now 8-year old. Yes, I was stitched up, had piles the size of melons and so constipated that my first proper poo was an explosion due to all the laxatives I was given (i also had to take iron supplements). So yeah, all in all not a great experience, but what you end up in your arms with afterwards, is more important. Go easy on yourself.

I planned a perfect home birth. Calm, private, natural.
Cue blue lighted to hospital when dd got distressed and stuck.
Cue many wires everywhere when her heartbeat began to dip.
Cue my DH having a full blown panic attack when things went scary.
Cue a room full of people with an incubator as they were worried she was going to inhale meconium.
Cue many many many stitches as she went back to back and compound at birth.
Well, you get the idea!

I planned 2 home births and had 2 inductions. Both were fairly unpleasant tbh.

The trouble with all things related to the early part of having babies is that unless things were bad enough to actually scar you, you tend to forget the details. That's why you hear about calm births where the baby was breathed out painlessly.

E.g. I was at the peaceful home birth of my nephew. My sister remembers it as a pleasant and calm experience and even says she sort of enjoyed it. But I did not have that impression when she was squeezing my hand hard enough to bruise it and swearing like a squaddie. And she was contracting for days beforehand. I'm glad she remembers it like that but...

The NCT vision of a calm birth is extolled for the best of reasons - to make women feel they are more in control, I think - but it is not intended to be prescriptive.

Good luck with your second. May it not be crashingly awful

Facebook group that might be worth looking into.. www.facebook.com/groups/TheBTA/

Thank you for posting your stories, it is helping already just reading through them and realising many people have births not go to plan

Hauskat yeah i agree with you totally on that, I am wondering now if it is actually the failure feeling that caused my PND. I just didn't know how to articulate how i felt until now.

Mookatron true, I guess they do not want to scare women and to show they can be in control. Just a shame that instead it makes me feel like i failed because I lost control. I just keep recalling the hypnobirth tutor saying how those with bad birth expereinces are the ones who went in negative and/or didn't practice their breathing or good birthing positions etc.

Planned a home birth, at 20 weeks was told placenta was completely covering my cervix so would have 2 weekly scans and 90% chance caesarean. At 38 weeks for my pre-op found placenta had moved enough for a vaginal birth. Suddenly back to preparing for a vaginal birth. 40 weeks my waters went, thick meconium, went into hospital for monitoring and baby was having a bradycardia. Thankfully it recovered but I chose to have an epidural as knew I was likely going to end up in theatre and wanted to be awake. Had syntocinon drip, 7 hours later another bradycardia that wasn’t recovering, half a dozen doctors in the room, DD born by episiotomy and forceps literally 5 minutes later.

I’m very fortunate that as I work in this area, it wasn’t too shocking for me (although I had a cry when I could hear her heartbeat so slow on the CTG). I do think that NCT etc often don’t prepare women for the fact that 15-19% will have an instrumental birth and 25-30% a Caesarean section. I understand that they don’t want to scare women beforehand, but it does mean that when things change (and they do, very quickly, in childbirth) women are left feeling very traumatised.

It’s sadly very common that when you are pregnant again, you find yourself reliving a traumatic birth.

Please contact your midwife and ask to be referred to a specialist perinatal mental health midwife and/or a kindly obstetrician (they’ll know which ones are better at communicating sensitively) to discuss how you’re feeling. I’ve never met a woman who has regretted getting support with this. There is also always the option to have a midwife go through your birth notes with you - which might help you feel more at peace with decisions and events.

DC1 - I wanted a pool and to stay mobile/active. I couldn't have the pool as I was high risk due to bleeding then when I was almost 10cm they kept losing him on the trace because he was back to back and I kept accidentally knocking it off too so they had to break my waters to attach a heart monitor clip to his head and I was in bed from that point on. I ended up pushing for 3.5hrs, they decided to do a ventousse as I was exhausted and passing out in between contractions, I consented and then thought "fuck that" and managed to push him out while they were getting their kit ready. DC born stargazing and had a massive 40cm head so I needed stitches afterwards.

DC2 - I wanted a pool birth again. Had a show and started having contractions on my due date, by next morning the contractions were still going but weren't getting any stronger or closer together so went to the MW to ask for a sweep to help me along. MW realised the baby was breech so off to hospital we went. She couldn't be turned as she had no amniotic fluid and was wrapped in her cord. I went down for an emergency section straight from the scan room as they didn't want my labour to progress any further.

DC3 - I wanted a VBAC. Got to 36 weeks and a scan showed he was breech so I was booked for a section at 39 weeks. I had a scan three days before due to a change in movements and it showed he was head down so I cancelled the section and started prepping for a VBAC once more. 40wks came and went. Got to 41wks and my options were induction or elective section so I opted for the elective section. DC was stuck in my pelvis as he'd wedge himself at an awkward angle and had to be shoved upwards before he could be pulled out so I had a lot of swelling and bruising, bright yellow and purple from the bottom of my ribs right down to the bottoms of my thighs. BP dropped to 70/40 so they had to stop the section while they brought it back up. I was told that my scar was very thin so all future deliveries would need to by section and they would recommend no more than one further pregnancy.

DC4 - was transverse so I was in hospital at 36wks. Had a section which by all accounts was a difficult procedure due to scar tissue and adhesions. Developed sepsis due to retained tissue on day five and baby was jaundiced and had dropped in weight from 8lb 14oz to 7lb 4oz so both back in for a week. They decided the tissue should either reabsorb or pass through on its own and that further surgery was too much of an infection risk for me as I was responding to treatment. I was home for three days and it passed, oh boy did it pass, secondary PPH so back into hospital we went in the middle of the night for a third time. Consultant told me that my scar/womb would be unable to support a further pregnancy without being at very high risk of rupture and/or emergency hysterectomy, haemorrhage, etc. She said they don't say "never" because of patient choice but if it was her choice she would say never to me.

I'd wanted a calm water birth like I'd heard about in nct classes. I got a c section and it was absolutely fantastic. No One is a failure.

Hmm yes, I support the NCT but hynobirthing - well, I think the techniques can be helpful but the ethos is a pile of cultish shite. It's difficult because I'm sure you know that it's bollocks that it's 'the ones who went in negative' who had a bad time but it's v easy to internalize bollocks at a vulnerable time.

Also magicking up positivity is not that easy and you can think of it as a failure of the hypnobirthing course of they haven't managed to instil it in you!

AsMuchUseAsAMarzipanDildo thankfully I have already been referred to the perinatal MH team by my MH Consultant as I suffer from acute anxiety anyway and also because of previous PND etc

Thank you all for sharing, it really is helping

I remember the birth of DS2 as the best I ever had, DH is still traumatised by it. I was booked in to be induced, but my contractions started after the pre-induction sweep. I was in the birthing pool with lavender oil rubbed on to my chest, all lovely so far. First of all, DS2's head got stuck, then his shoulders, he wriggled and gave me a friction burn in a very painful place. They had to get my out of the pool, with DS2's head dangling out, only one midwife was holding me while the other ran off to get someone, DH had to hold my other side. They had to ease DS2's shoulders out gradually.

I just remember getting the pool and the lavender oil! 😂

I was induced on the evening of Christmas day. Pessary inserted 9pm, in labour at 2am but midwives didn't seem to believe me and only offered me paracetamol
Hand over at 8am they realised yes I was in labour so moved me to labour room and gave me gas and air.
Had pethidine and seemed to be going on lovely. At 1pm they broke waters to speed things along. That's when labour stopped altogether. No contractions, nothing.
Waters also had meconium so I had to be laid on bed and monitored.
Pleaded for epidural before they hooked me up to drip. Long wait to get fully dilated and ready to push on 27th December at 1am.
Dd had her head up so was never going to come out naturally. Had forceps and dd was finally born at 3.30am.
Then I lost 1.5 litres of blood. Got taken to room still with bloody epidural in when I went for first wee.
Suffered from post natal depression and feel sad about the whole experience. Thankfully dd was ok through it all but it definitely affected my bonding with her