Birth afterthoughts. Dd will be 8 months on Friday and I'm in tears remembering her birth

[MamaMaiasaura]

Ok her north story was :- Jessica Emily Humphreys was born at 11.12pm on 22nd October 2011 a healthy 9lb3oz. She's beautiful :)

I woke around 2am on 22nd with strong ctx and they kept going every 5 - 10 min. They came closer together till they were 3-5. Went in hospital and was disappointed at only 2cm dilated posterior cervix with length. Returned home at 11.30am. Pains came all day and increased intensity and frequency. Managed to help get my ds2 to bed and sister and bil arrived. Back in hosp around 8. In lots of pain and needing g&a. Checked and still same cervix. In tears as pain so intense. Told couldn't have g&a till in labour and I wasn't. Told could have temazepan or pethidine. I didn't want either as stay in system. Had to go to another ward. This was all around 8.30. In huge pain and accepted pethidine at 9ish. Did nothing except make me feel sick. Had no idea how I could carry on and was very scared. We were left on our own. Midwife checked me at 10.45 as I was quite loud. I was already 9cm and on all fours on bed. Wheeled round to delivery still no pain relief and they couldn't work g&a. I was begging for epidural! No time obviously. Finally got g&a at 11.03, at same time I was fully dilated and urge to bear down (so primal and powerful) and it eased pain to do so. Waters went on first push and I thought that was it! Lol but needed to deliver baby. Within 9 minutes Jessica delivered and then placenta 5 min later. I was kneeling/all fours for whole lot. All on a little g&a for pushing. Had small 2nd degree tear no stitches. Left hospital within 2 hours of delivery. I didn't want dd and I left there as felt so unsupported. So never had a proper rest iykwim as at home ds2 still cosleeps so had both little ones. (typing this squashed between them).

I cry when I recall how scared and totally unsupported I felt. I was in so much pain I couldn't argue or push for someone else to check me. Consultant wanted me monitored throughout and I wasn't. The mw judged me to be making a fuss I think. I wasn't dramatic tho and I wasn't screaming my head off either. I think they just didn't like me and that they didn't believe me. This was baby number 3. Probably our last too.

1st birth was awful, 48 hour the emerg ca. After had pph and needed syntocin etx to contract womb to stop bleed. Womb started contracting strongly with no pain relief as epidural was removed. Mw told my ex I was lying and not in pain. I ended up with PND.

Ds2 - another OP baby but managed vbac. 8 hoots but very supported by mw. Ds2 needed resuscitation at birth. No PND

Sorry this is so long. I just needed to get t put. I hate feeling so :-( and it really has affected how I bonded with dd. I also find it hard with dd name. I can't think of another name I'd definitely want to call her, and I wonder if it's all linked. Sorry :(

Poor you, sounds like you had a rough time with all your births. Does your hospital offer any post natal support at all? I was given a number to ring if I wanted to make an appointment to discuss the birth with a midwife. So if l got home and wondered about anything that had happened, or why certain decisions were made I could ask. Don't know if that's available to you or if you think it would help? It sounds like you need answers as it is still affecting you 8 months on. Maybe go to your GP as a first contact?

i dont suppose your hospital is in berkshire? you poor thing.
have you called PALS to give feedback?

Thank you for sharing your story Mama. It sounds as though you experienced very difficult births. Have you spoken to anyone in RL about your feelings? From my own experience, I have found that this can really help.

I experienced a very traumatic birth 18 months ago (won't go into it now, but have posted about it here before). I found the Birth Trauma Association to be very helpful to me, so you may want to contact them. You may also find it helpful to have a debrief with the consultant and/or midwives about your birth. You can arrange this by contacting your health visitor, who will either be able to set it up for you, or point you in the right direction to do this. You can also contact PALS at your hospital who will support you through any complaint you might want to make to the hospital.

Please do not feel you are alone in this. Many women are left with feelings similar to those who have described, and it is devastating to go through a difficult birth and have subsequent concerns and fears that you are not as well bonded as you "should" be with your child.

From my own experience I can say that 8 months is not a long time - it took me a long time to feel properly bonded to my DS, and it is only now at 18 months that I feel able to start going through the complaint system at the hospital.

Do you think you might be experiencing PND again? Is it worth going to see your GP to talk about this at all?

Un-mumsnetty hugs to you. I hope you get through this, and keep posting if it helps.

Thank you firstly for reading my post (my spelling and grammar are shocking). I apple to consultant when dd was 6 weeks as had appointment anyway he wasn't happy I that I wasn't monitored and that another mother had similar but with sad outcome at that point I was (and still am of course) grateful to have my baby and her being ok, despite cord round neck and oxygen resuss needed. I also contacted the afterthoughts service who called me back (was the midwife who delivered ds2 and was on the ward I was shunted to with dd, and it was her who said they needed to check me. She said their service is to help me understand what happened but that as it sounds like I am making a complaint I'd have to contact the ward manager. With small baby and ds2 just dx with asd and preteen who's having problems, I just haven't got my head there to do so.

I don't think PND as eating normal, mostly sleeping ok (just when doing dream feed ad night feeds Amy mind wanders back there).

With ds1 I made an official complaint as all mw gave me a push encouragement as the mw was awful.

I wish I could go back and assert myself more, I was in too much pain to argue, literally on all fours with ctx and noone thought to check me again

I know the feeling of wanting to go back and change things - I too was left unmonitored for a long time during labour, and I too have a lot of unanswered questions.

An early chat about what happened (as i think you had with the consultant when your DD was 6 weeks old?) is not always that helpful. Quite often your mind is not in the right place to take everything in at that stage, and you can still be left with a lot of questions.

I also think that it can be very hard to do it on your own, as reliving it when you are still very emotionally raw is exceptionally hard (or at least I found it to be). It can be difficult if you feel pushed into a formal complaints procedure, especially if you are still at the stage where you don't know if it is a complaint yet or just wanting to know more about what happened and why. Do you have a DP, or a close friend/family member who could talk to you about what you would like to do, and then support you through the process? And I don't mean just emotional support, I mean practical - finding out who to contact, making initial enquiries for you to set up a debrief/complaint, helping you put together any letters you might want to send, someone who could advocate for you in any meetings.

Thinking back and remembering your birth experience can be so upsetting, especially if you feel it is unresolved in your own mind. For me, I found that by a few months (well, weeks probably) after the birth it felt as though everyone had forgotten about it - except me. It felt very isolating - I don't know if that rings true for you?

You may find a debrief/complaint now that you are through the immediate newborn haze would be more helpful in allowing you to address your questions and your feelings about the birth.

Also, I don't want to suggest you wouldn't recognise PND as I know you have had it before, but my understanding is that it can manifest very differently and so it might be worth you having a chat with a GP anyway - they may be able to put you in touch with a counselling service if you think that might help.

Sorry to go on so much, but so much of what you are saying strikes a chord with me, and I just don't want you to feel that you are the only one.

Thank you gnome. I do know what you mean about it being isolating. Dh is very supportive but I've only told him recently how much it's still bothering me. I'm terrified of being dx with PND as with ds1 it was awful, and I really don't have social thoughts or dark thoughts etc. but I am very shouty and irritable. Laying in bed now with dd and she's so scrummy, I'm that those initial months of utter love and being on a high like with ds2 didn't happen. So thr contrast and knowing how it should be is hard. What happened with you?

I had a pretty rubbish pregnancy (gestational diabetes, SPD meaning i was on crutches for the last few months of my pregnancy), and ended up being induced 2 weeks late. Without going into all the gory details, I was left unmonitored for an extended period of time, had an epidural that took 6 attempts to be put in (back looked like a pincushion), and had a whole range of interventions - breaking of my waters, synto drip, 22 hours of labour, epidural, failed forceps attempt, and finally emergency c section.

When DS was born, it turned out that they had got his position wrong when they applied the forceps and he had deep bleeding gashes in the middle of his forhead and the back of his neck, and spent the first couple of weeks of his life on medication. These gashes have now turned into permanent scars.

When the epidural wore off, it became apparent that i couldn't walk. It turns out that my spinal cord was damaged somehow, which has left me with what is increasingly looking like permanent nerve damage. I have now regained most of my mobility, but have been left with sensation problems (constant pins and needles, cold burning feeling etc). It sucks, to put it bluntly.

I cannot even count the number of times i have just sat and cried and cried. I don't even know if I would have had DS if I had known what would happen, and that is an awful thing to say. I do feel robbed of those inital months as well - I found it very difficult to bond with him, and now I do feel cheated of those early maternal "rush of love feelings".

I also felt quite distanced from my DH - I felt that no-one could really understand what happened to me and how I felt. Because of the mobility problems i had (it was about 5 months before I could safely leave the house with DS) I couldn't really go to baby groups for a long time, which didn't help.We are now finally at the stage where I have submitted a complaint form to PALS. I don't even know if it is a complaint yet, I just feel I have so many questions about what happened, and how it happened. But apparently the complaints process is the only way to address it.

And they say you forget childbirth.......

Sorry gnome I disappeared. Meeting up school and demands of kids.

Your birth experience sounds absolutely horrendous and I am at feeling shit about mine. No wonder you've felt rubbish about it all. I hope the complaints procedure helps you. xx

It's not a competition! I'm really sorry if i have made you feel a bit odd, i genunely didn't mean to. It was a bit of opening the floodgates post from me tbh. Every woman's birth is different, and the way you feel about it is entirely personal. Compared to a lot of women, I've been very lucky, compared to others my experience was shit.

It is really awful to feel so unsupported as you did, and i hope that you do manage to feel better over time. Talking, on here or in rl, can really help and again I would recommend the birth trauma association - on iPad so can't do links but you can google them. You can pm me anytime if you'd like.

You poor thing. I think birth trauma - even if on the face of it the outcome was medically positive - is so under reported. My mother had such an awful time with me that she cried with relief for me when I said I was having a CS, and can barely bring herself to celebrate my birthday. I'm 41, she would give me her last breath, yet my birth still hurts her. And if you read her notes she had a pretty straightforward VB.

I hope you can find some comfort in the birth trauma assoc - and the knowledge that it doesn't have to affect your relationship with your daughter long term, and it's ok to feel this way. Lots of love to you. x x