Firstly, I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, it is about childbirth but couldn't think where it really fit in.
DS is now 15 months old, and DH and I have started talking about maybe having another baby. He is very keen, but I would be very keen to just be pregnant and then have a six month old!
I've been doing a lot of thinking about why the first 6 months of DS's life were so awful, and there's the obvious things of I went into premature labour at 33 weeks, hung on contracting every 5-10 minutes for a week before delivering him at 34 weeks;on the day of the birth, docs refused to believe I was in active labour, saying I had a UTI, until I screamed at one and they found I was 8cm dilated; for the first 6 months DS cried constantly - he would only sleep for the odd half-hour a couple of times a day, and the rest of the time he would cry.
Anyway, a lot of the things I found awful I think I may be able to cope with again if it weren't for one thing - even when I got the opportunity to sleep (usually when someone else had DS) I couldn't. Every time I closed my eyes I would just run over and relive the whole hospital stay, and especially the birth, again and again. This lasted a good few months, and as such, I got zero sleep, and started dreading even trying to. Even now the whole thing will ocassionally creep up on me and make me think about it until I'm blubbing all over again.
I remember reading that it was normal to think about the birth afterwards, so I always assumed this was just a normal thing to go through, but talking to a friend has suggested that maybe it's not.
So my question - was it "normal" to be like this? In other words, can I expect this level of reliving the birth every time I close my eyes if I did have another child?