to feel horribly jealous of my friend's perfect birth?

[coveredinsnot]

Ok, this might be a complete over reaction, but it was a strong enough reaction to stop me eating my lunch and get out for a bracing walk... Anything that stops me eating is usually serious

My friend had her baby yesterday, a water birth at hospital with only gas and air. While I am honestly, truly over the moon for her, I can't help but feel horribly, heartachingly, disgustingly jealous. I had longed for such a birth throughout my pregnancy, but ended up with a very traumatic experience in which neither my midwife nor partner really spoke to me for the majority of my labour, baby was posterior so labour was very painful and slow, I couldn't have an epidural and ended up having an emergency caesarean after over 20 hours of hard labour. After baby was born I didn't hold him for over 2 hours. It was horrible. I was drugged up for days afterwards and can't remember much about those early special days. I feel angry about my experience, but I'm even more angry that it's interfering with my ability to just feel complete happiness that a good friend hasn't had to go through such a trauma.

Is there something wrong with me, am I a cruel hearted bitch, or is this normal?

The jealousy that goes with Birth Trauma isn't to do with being jealous of a perfect birth compared to one's own bad birth. Birth Trauma has nothing to do with a perfect birth and someone can, by their own admission have the "perfect birth" and something completely separate from the birth can leave them feeling traumatised. Telling someone not to feel something when it's part of a condition they're suffering from is a none starter, they can't control those feelings.

tree, your last statement is right. It's nothing to do with any of those things. It's a mental health condition that can't be predicted. What one person finds traumatic another person won't. I don't think that there is one answer because it's so unique to an individual - the results are very similar which is why it's a condition that can be diagnosed, but the cause isn't.

Most people wouldn't even notice the comment I posted before (MW: "Get your knickers off the doctor's coming to examine you") but for one woman that was traumatic. Everything else in her birth was perfect, yet she ended up suffering from Birth Trauma.

I totally agree! My trauma was due to the fact that my aby was taken out of me and i was feeling the knife cutting into me, and was put to sleep before i even knew if she was alive! PTSD is when you fear for the life of someone you love or for your own life, when your put in a situation that risks life. and the same for birth trauma something might happen to you that you choose to happen but it can affect you afterwards and you cant understand or explain why as it could be your own choice that put you there. There is no logic to it and its hard to even understand afterwards.

It may have something to do with control, however it is not solely to do with being out of control of a situation, it is just something that personally you find hard to deal with and make sense of in your head!!!

Sorry for the ramble!!!! But it is still very misunderstood, i know i was diagnosed with PND after dd when infact i was suffering with PTSD and although some people group them together they are very different disorders which are treated in different ways!

Tinsel - further to what you said, then I think there are 2 real seperate states of minds on this thread.

1st - mine, where I'm pissed about needing intervention, others are furious at the services they felt were pants, others disspointed birth wasn't as planned and another 1000 things that everyone has one of at least. They are 'taken to heart' to a greater or lesser degree, presumambly dependant on our personalities, support networks, previous experiences and so on. There is a scale of reactions and feelings at work here.

2nd - yours, you can describe your condition better than me but it appears a life altering state of mind that arrives with a bang. It seems to have triggers and causes but then, as you have said, can focus around less 'acute' or 'serious' events.

This is very interesting! I am lucky and happy to be untraumatised by birthing, although I have a few things over the birth that make me want to run, run, run for the hills when I remember them. Clearly I need to be respectfull of a huge complex mental health condition and never refer to myself as 'traumatised' when I am not. Pissed, gutted, annoyed, scared - but not traumatised.

Hope I haven't killed thread! I do get cerebral.

For me the worst thing was reliving the birth over and over in my mind, and this was my mind trying to make sense out of what had happened to me and my baby.....and i still dont know to this day, there are many blanks that maybe i blocked out or from when i was asleep, but i feel a constant need to talk about it and try to find out more about the day my dd was brought into this world!! I too suffered afterwards with disturbing thoughts that any minute something would happen to her, someone would hurt her or something would happen to her if i was not around her, so i was so sick with worry and anxiety most of the time, i couldnt sleep or eat and i was severly ill needeing a blood transfusion too. If i could have just turned those feelings off and 'snaped out of it' then trust me i would have!!!!

Some days i felt better than others and some things that people said did help and others didnt, but ultimatly it was a long, slow road to where i am now.
and yes i check that i have my keys in my hand before i can shut the door too and check that the windows are closed cooker turned off etc...but i have to touch not just look and i can do this a few times before i am happy with it!

PTSD has changed me forever....now i can look and grow from it, but there was a time when i thought id never have another happy moment in my life....those days were the hardest!
Anyone who suffers like this is bound to have some thoughts and feelings towards others havinmg children...its natural and normal and is only your bodys was of dealing and making sense of what happened to yourself during your birth. It doesnt mean you can't be happy for others, just sad that you couldnt have had that too!

That's a good description tree, one and two can be the same thing too. I'm trying to find a parallel that people will relate to - we all have a drop in blood sugar can happen to anyone? We all know that feeling but it's far more in our control than it is for a diabetic. It's a bit clumsy, but it's the best I can think of.

Most people who fall into the 1st statement will just be having feelings relating to the birth. Their anger, disappointment etc will be aimed at that. People who fall in the 2nd statement will have a lot of other symptoms that aren't related to the birth. It can be anything that sets it off and oneyummymummy explains that well too.

A good website and The Birth Trauma Association

Thanks Tinsel - I'm not in the UK this time, and have a private obstetrician.. I chose to do this, which is far more common here and you do get an awful lot of the money back from the government.

I have told them about my previous experience, and he is seeing me, scanning me every two weeks in an attempt to give me lots of easy, non eventful trips to the hospital with happy outcomes (and it's about 15 quid a visit for me so not like in the UK where it would be 10 times that I guess)...he doesn't actually react much when I describe my state of mind, but I'm tackling that next visit :-)

I also found myself a therapist. I was actually already having prenatal therapy before DS was born, for other child/mc related traumas so I was very positive by the time I got to the birth that I had everything sussed! But, it's not a shield, and I was just incredibly lucky that she was in place when this event occurred.

The problem is that this has all been compounded by being in another country, away from what I know, having just lost a parent etc etc... but I'm trying to do everything I can to help myself.

Of course in these situations what we actually want is someone else to look after us, and just make it all go away. It's bloody hard going because you always feel as if you're alone in it. If it wasn't for my DS, I wouldn't last the day tbh. Which is why this thread is wonderful.

Sorry for the hijack!!

So true Jackaroo Mothers get the hardest job always looking after/worrying about others all the time, baby, husband, house, bills etc... sometimes its nice to say to someone else take all my worries away and look after everything for an hour, just what you need! Someone else to take control of the situation.......

Fortunately my going out routine is just I have to have my hand on the keys (doesn't help that the odd occasion I haven't I have left them behind!) I have a Yale type lock so don't need my key to leave, I do spend most of my day making lists - I'm going out my head at the moment because I can't find the Christmas catalogues with Christmas lists in! There're other things I do too. Most of my OCD traits predate the PTSD, the death obsessions are new.

Death obs for me where always underlying before, not quite obsessions but i did 'worry' a lot. Since the birth they are mainly to do with my family, not me! I think its because i was so ill after the birth i heavly relied on them and even tho from when my dd was 2weeks shes been with me all the time (apart from odd nights out) I think that i worry how i'll cope without certain people around me and then end up picturing myself without them ect....... I wiind myself up, but can't stop myself from doing it no matter how upset i get!!

Tinsel I thank you for making that point, and so clearly too.

And cory, I do feel jealous, at least it feels rather like jealousy, perhaps it isn't. I feel like: 'I wanted that, why does she have it and not me?' That's jealousy, isn't it?! Hmmm... Perhaps there's a more accurate word for it that I'm just not aware of. Anyway, I think from reading all of these posts, it's clear that birth trauma is complicated - it's not just jealousy, it's not just bad memories, it's not just having your expectations dashed, it's far far more than any of those individual things, and it's messy.

I think also it's important to remember how someone's own history is so relevant in setting the stage for trauma. It's normal to feel anxious about birth and labour, it's normal for it to be painful, but not everyone ends up traumatised, in fact, some women go through far worse than I went through and are able to process their experiences and get on with their lives. Others, for whatever reason, can't let it go so easily, and I think that includes me. There are plenty of things that happened in my past that sensitized me to feeling particularly vulnerable whilst in labour, so the things that happened during my labour affected me on many, many different levels. Trauma is about not being able to integrate memories of an event coherently and weave those memories into the memory web that makes up your own personal history. I guess right now I don't fully understand why my labour was so utterly bleak, frightening and lonely, and I am working hard to understand it.

Yikes just posted the above message without reading this entire page!! Whoops. Must catch up!

"Trauma is about not being able to integrate memories of an event coherently and weave those memories into the memory web that makes up your own personal history"

Ecellent explination, i find it soo hard to explain things to do with this sometimes, but this is so true. The reason behind the trauma and flashbacks is because the memories get 'caught and stuck' in your SHORT term memory, and cannot go to your long term memory, making you re=live them time after time! Like remembering where you left your keys that morning as apposed to on the 5 dec 2007. if that makes sense.

Sorry my spelling is terrible!

coveredinsnot - Am so sad for you for your last sentance. Don't worry 'bout reading my rambling dissertations!!

And for all of us, tinsel and oneyummymummy too of course. To have fears of death. Jesus. I did after car accidents at 2 months delivered, bizarre workings of mind meant these were managed by me by playing car stereo really loud. CBT is brill and worked but am fully expecting to go raving like a loony tune following labour in about 6 weeks!! Oooo er!

Caught and stuck - exactly. And then for me - spiralling. One short flash of memeory and then wheeeeee away away into strange cold spikey places.

What I hate is that the spiral isn't here now, even though I'm thinking about birthing and car accidents - it's in unrelated places like que's and when doing the washing or something. Still don't think I was fully PTSD though, I just had to be taught to break a cycle of thoughts. By CBT for me.

"Trauma is about not being able to integrate memories of an event coherently and weave those memories into the memory web that makes up your own personal history"

That's brilliant! oneyummymummy has made a good response to it that I can't improve on. I think it may be the reason that sufferers often need to keep going over the birth to try and work it into the long term memory.

About the jealousy, it's difficult. Yes you probably are feeling jealousy but it's different. I think it goes back to the above quote, but I'm can't find the words to describe it. I think when people think of jealousy they look at it as an emotion that's separate from everything else and that's not what's happening, it's happening because you haven't filed those memories into your long term memory and it becomes the bruise that's poked when someone talks about their birth.

Getting too quick on the reply button:

"I think also it's important to remember how someone's own history is so relevant in setting the stage for trauma."

That's true, I'm sure many people could cope with my birth experience but I think that losing another premature baby shortly after birth and the similarities between the two births had a big impact. I went into theatre crying my eyes out thinking "this is it, I've lost her as well". Then Tink was older than her sister was when she died before I saw her, so you can probably imagine I'm watching the time down thinking "if they don't let me see her soon she could die before I do". Everything had been last minute the first time too. I had been taken from a delivery room to (what I didn't realise was) the bereavement suite when I was quite close to the end, whereas with Tink I was taken from a very similar room at the end and into theatre.

Who the hell could cope with that experience? Truly truly awful. Bless you

Hi

I dont think your evil or selfish, but from what you have said the birth of your child has maybe brought out some deeper issues that you felt may have been resolved, but actually weren't.

I went to see a councillor after my mum died and actually it wasn't the death of my mum that we spoke about but other stuss that had happened when i was a child which was strange at the time. I didn;t really think that the councillor wasd listening to me as I wanted to talk about my mum whereas I felt she pushed me to talk about other things. You know what she was right and thinking back it was me that guided everything.

Go in with an open mind and talk, thats one thing I have learnt talk to people and know that your normal for feeling the way you do.

Oh and by the way everyone in my NCT had delightful births all drug free, I went for everything going got 3rd degree tears and cried lots. But thats just the way it was supposed to me for me, I think it could have been a lot worse - it could have been drug free!!!

chin up
x

Like I say though, it's the addition of my first baby that made it worse. I went into labour at 31 weeks, it was missed at the hospital then when I went back I was well into the swing of things. They tried to stop the contractions but it didn't work. Tink was breech and after an hour of drugs her feet were descending so they had to take me for a crash section. I had to have a GA as I have a bad back, take Heparin in pregnancy and we were in a rush(!) The staff were brilliant, they explained everything to me, I was never left alone, I had constant feedback from the NNU before I could get there...

I think it's something a lot of people could deal with and if it was my first or first bad outcome then maybe I would have written it off as a means to an end.

just getting off the birth trauma topic a second - do you think some people just lie about their dream deliveries? like the many times I've been tempted to say 'yes I had a bit of gas and air adnd just put up with it'. I haven't - but am I the only one who's thought of it?

Actually I know of one person who did - Kate Winslett the actress. Said she had a normal delivery 1st time but actually had a section. She later said it was because she felt ashamed.

I had a very straight forward birth with DC2 at same time that a friend had a traumatic birth with her DC1. Even now, 11 years on, she brings it up time after time telling anyone who will listen. Again and again. Please take actions to make sure you don't do this to your friend.Please try to find some sort of counselling, don't bottle up (understandable) resentment towards your friend. There is nothing wrong with you, you are not a cruel hearted bitch, and your reaction sounds perfectly normal. But you do have to deal with it.

Well done for being so open with your post by the way, very brave of you.

I'm sure people do lie, it's a competitive sport and the only thing we have to compare is what we tell each other! Another example is the statue of Britney giving birth on all fours - she had a section.

My labours were, honestly, easy. First time I had a couple of paracetamol in the morning, she was born 11:30pm then I had G&A for the last hour, but it took me awhile to get the hang of using it. Second time I had paracetamol and codeine the night before (thinking PGP pain) then had nothing until I had the GA.

I have easy pregnancies (no MS, no major cravings etc) and easy labours but I just can't get the gestation or the position of the baby right - although 8 weeks of contractions have kept this one head down. If I had my pregnancy and labours at 40 weeks I would be very happy.

How many weeks are you now Tinsel?