Memory Loss after pain relief?

[SarryB]

I'll try to keep this short...

I gave birth to my first child 6 weeks ago. 14 hours labour, 10 minutes of pushing. Started off in the pool for about 3 hours, but got out for the last hour as I was starting to really struggle with pain. My LO was back to back, and my thigh bones were so sore.

In the last hour, I started begging for more pain relief as the G&A wasn't cutting it any more. At one point, I actually thought my pelvis was going to snap in half. Eventually I received morphine, and about 20 minutes later, LO was born!

After speaking about the labour to my mum and a couple of mates, I realised that there is a huge gap in my memory. I had the baby on a Sunday at 4pm, was home by 8.30pm. The only thing I remember about that evening is ringing my mate to tell her I'd had the baby. I remember NOTHING of the nest day and a half. The first thing I vaguely remember is my horrid GP coming on the Tuesday to check the baby over.

Is it normal after birth to forget a whole day? Is it something to do with the morphine I had?

You can have some memory loss after morphine but it is very short-lived. Everyone is a bit different, but it is quite short acting and hence the side effects don't last that long. You may well not be able to remember much the few hours following, say from when you had it, around 3.30ish til about 8.30ish or bedtime, but I'd be surprised if that accounted for the memory loss for the next day and a half.
I'm sorry that has happened to you though; it must be very disorientating for you I hope someone comes along shortly that can offer you a better explanation.

Thank you for the reply.

Is it common to have memory loss after a traumatic birth?

I had a very straight forward birth and no pain relief and there are parts I have no memory of (e.g how did we get from the taxi up to the Birth Centre on the 8th floor?????).

Forgot to add, you can get a copy of your birth notes and they will usually help to fill in the bits that are hazy.

I'll have to look into my birth notes - but it's not the birth that I can't remember, it's 24-48 hours after we arrived home.

I lost my memory for about 24-48 hours after the birth, to the extent I didn't even realise that I had... I thought I had been discharged from the hospital after hours and only realised the memory loss when I became pregnant again.
I had an epidural and an eventful, if not traumatic, birth - he was back to back and born by Kielland's forceps and I was in a lot of pain after the event but not during due to epi.

2.6 years down the line I have been on a massive journey with this, and have had to accept that I was very anxious about the birth and that I reacted to things suddenly changing/being rushed to theatre by sort of blocking it out. In my case, I believe it was caused by anxiety primarily. I had undiagnosed perinatal OCD which persisted until my ds was about 16 weeks and has recurred in my current pregnancy.

It's a tricky thing because I think in terms of anxiety and memory etc, it's really normal to feel overwhelmed, stressed and overcome in this transition period. 98% of new mums have scary thoughts like "what if he dies in his sleep?" or "what if I drop him?" or "what if I stand on his head accidentally?" or even ones where they fear they will do something purposefully like smother their baby when they are crying so there's a line between things being normal and not normal that's hard to differentiate. Basically, if you are feeling significantly distressed by your thoughts or feelings, whatever they may be, it's good to talk it through with someone to make sure it's not something that could easily be treated.

This is not necessarily anything to do with your memory loss, it may be the pain and exhaustion has sort of blurred it but I wanted you to be aware that it is a possibility as it was certainly something I really didn't consider and so I suffered unnecessarily and for too long when it was really easily dealt with.

The first day or so after the birth of both my children are pretty much blank.
I just know things that happened from DP telling me.

I has visitors, spoke on the phone and messaged people that I have absolutely no recollection of.

Maybe get your partner to talk you through the days you are missing.

I think its a quite common thing to happen, all the adrenaline of birth etc then probably a bit of shock thrown in there a well.

After talking through the actual birth with my mum, she did point out that it seemed very traumatic - what with LO being back to back and the immense pain. I remember being very angry that no one was helping me (of course they were, but it didn't feel like it at the time).

OH isn't very good when I ask - he just says that we slept a lot, and stayed in our PJ's all day.