Traumatised by bad birth experience

[Beckyv88]

I’m 5 days pp from my first pregnancy/birth. I had a traumatic 35 hour labour ending in an emergency c section and my baby being rushed away to neo natal care. Obviously at this stage I know it’s normal to cry and be upset, but I’m scared I’ll never get over it. Does it get better? Would you suggest any kind of therapy to move past it?

5 days is awfully soon. Are you both back at home yet? I had a similar experience with my first, very long labour, failed forceps, emcs and nicu stay for him. It took me a while to come to terms with everything, my guilt, my feelings of failure and motherhood in general. He's 4 now with an almost 1 year old baby sister and it barely crosses my mind anymore but at 5 days pp, I couldn't stop dwelling on it.

I found going over my notes helped a bit but I would recommend a bit of time before doing that. I have had psychotherapy since dc1 was born but that primarily for something else but the psychologist said that they were seeing more and more women after traumatic births so therapy would definitely be an option if you felt like you wanted to pursue that.

The Birth Trauma Association and in particular their closed facebook page helped me tremendously because I didn't know anyone in RL who struggled with their experiences the way I was doing and finding out I wasn't alone really helped.

I'm sorry that you didn't have a nice experience during your first birth. Look up Louise Pentland on YouTube she's done a few videos covering this topic as she suffered with PTSD after her first born, she sought therapy when she became pregnant with her second. Hope you feel better soon

Speak to your GP who will refer you to someone. Make sure you are referred

The birth trauma association are a great place to start to understand why what you’re feeling is very real. My eldest was physically fine, it was me damaged, and it took about 2 years to come to terms with it. I still can’t talk about the birth a decade later.
See if you can get a senior midwife to go through your birth notes with you, that did help with me. My HV referred me.