Struggling with Difficult Birth (long)

[PurpleThistles]

I gave birth to DC5 four days ago. It was not exactly a 'bad' birth per se, there is plenty to be glad of but I am struggling to understand what exactly happened.

DC 1,2,3 and 4 were all spontaneous, text book labours. DC4, i went into labour, pottered about at home, got to the hospital and was fully dilated, he arrived 30 mins later with no pain relief.

I guess i expected to have another text book labour and havent really got over the shock and confusion that it wasnt.

In brief, although this was my fifth labour, I am nine years older than I was after dc4. This time round, at 36 weeks, i was diagnosed with polyhydramnios. After a decel of my baby's heartbeat at 39 weeks, they decided it would be best to induce me 3 days after my due date.

When i went in, i was already contracting enough for my waters to bulge so they broke my waters straight away. There was floods and floods of it. The midwife said it was the most waters she had ever seen. My contractions began to intensify and i began using gas and air. Four hours later I was almost fully dilated and this is where things began to go wrong.

I began to get terrible pain after each contraction. It was all in and across my back. Baby's heart immediately began to drop really low with each contraction and the room began to fill with people. The pain of the contractions and inbetween them had me at this point practically lifting off the bed and screaming. It was beyond agony. Suddenly, everyone was shouting at me to push, telling me to stop making noise and push. I WAS pushing though, as hard as i could. Ive never had a problem pushing out my babies but something was different this time. I could feel where his head was but i just couldnt push him past a certain point and his heart rate was still dropping and everyone was still shouting at me. I was terrified and beyond agony.

The registrar decided i needed help to deliver so she used ventouse. They had taken the gas and air off me previously so there was no pain relief. As she pulled his head past the point he was stuck at and out, she saw the cord was wrapped around his neck twice and so tight it had bruised him. She had to cut it then and there with his body still inside me. Noone told me what was happening, just kept shouting at me even more frantically to push harder. On the next push his body wouldnt come and i can see from my notes, he was stuck with his shoulders. The registrar used the ventouse to change his position and he was born.

He was immediately whisked away, four people were stood around him and he didnt make a sound. My DH has told me baby was completely shellshocked, he was totally rigid and his first apgar score was 6.

I was by this point totally beside myself with panic and worry. Eventually one of the midwives came over and said he was okay and shortly afterward I finally got to hold him. The registrar and midwife apologised to me for shouting at me, but at that point I now knew why they had been and I told them I was glad they did and so grateful they got my baby out safely.

So that was the birth and considering my baby is alive, healthy and i didnt meed stitches etc, it could have been so different so i feel very lucky and blessed.

But i also feel like a failure. This was my DH first (and last) baby and I was such a mess, screaming, arching off the bed, begging him to help me whilst his baby was in distress and half strangled with the cord. I feel like after 4dc, and a previous labour with no pain relief, that everyone must have thought i was a total drama queen. I feel ashamed of myself and keep questioning whether i could have done better and then feel awful because if i could have done better, then i put our baby's life at risk by not doing so. I dont understand why this labour was so different from my others, why i couldnt cope with the pain. I feel i need to know if it was my fault that he got into such distress and i need to understand what exactly happened. I am also really sad that my last labour is one where i feel ashamed of myself and embarressed with myself. I also feel i cant really talk about it because ultimately, it could have been much worse and baby is here and safe, so i feel people think i am making a mountain out of a mole hill.

How do you get over a birth that leaves you feeling like this? Is it just time? Is it just hormones and in a few days I will feel better about it and myself?

Im so sorry that this happened to you. Its totally normal to feel this way after a traumatic birth. It may help to ask the hospital for a debrief. This is your legal right after birth but you need to request it. A midwife will go through your notes with you and explain what happened which will give you a chance to ask any question or see it anything could have been different. Please remember that this is not your fault. You have been through a trauma and were reliant on the professionals around you. You may wish to speak to PALs at the hospital about a complaint if you feel that you were spoken to poorly. Please also look at birth trauma support in your local area. I found traditional therapies useless (I was mostly offered CBT) but found birth trauma counselling really helpful.

Oh your poor thing. That’s the thing with birth - when it goes well it’s great, powerful, magnificent. And when it goes badly it’s fucking awful. I’ve had two very different deliveries, my first one similar to yours, baby in distress, panicked doctors, baby deteriorating. It took me a long time (and a new baby, not an option for you(m) to get over it. None of this is your fault, but it feels like it is. Honestly, time and talking is what is likely to help - find some sympathetic baby groups, talk to your gp about counselling if needed. Those doctors shouted because they were terrified. But baby is here, you will all be ok. It’s ok to feel awful about your experience though, because it was awful

This sounds like my second babies birth, I felt traumatised and completely overwhelmed. Speak to the midwives found out what happened. In my case it was shoulder dystocia which despite everyone's best efforts, they struggled to manage. It wasn't my fault, nor anyone elses. I now accept that these things happen in the same way that cancer happens and you learn to live with it and as time goes on, the pain for me lessoned.

Talk about what happened and if need be get some counselling x

Not a nice experience. But again, not so unusual to not have a nice experience, either. You were lucky with the first 4, that's all. Loads of people have horrible labours, emergency cs, babies in special care, etc, it doesn't make us failures. It's just childbirth is really hard. Focus on the good part - your baby is ok - and let the rest go.

I think most people expect having three, four and five babies to be like shelling peas so expectations are awry. Some have difficult births several times. I was pleased to have an epidural on both occasions and it took the stress away. I knew I didn’t want to be the screaming woman giving birth and I don’t think it’s good for the baby either, let alone the mum. If number 6 comes along - you know what to do! Take it easy be laid back! You’ll be enjoying your baby in no time. Women should do what they want but thinking they must be perfect sets them up for feeling like failures when they are not.

The arrival of my first was so awful I still can't call it "birth" and he's 4 (long back labour, pushing, failed forceps, emcs, NICU, psychotic break) however he has a sibling so yes, it does get better with time. I think expectations definitely plays a part, I come from a family who give birth like shelling peas so I expected it to work. What I didn't know was the dh's family all have massive heads, all of them including the 36 weeker above the 90th percentile and dc1 just couldn't be pushed or pulled through my pelvis despite being in an optimal position due to his huge head.

I would second a debrief. I found it useful for explaining what actually happened in a factual fashion without the emotion. If you are on facebook, the Birth Trauma Association's private page is also pretty good for talking to women who feel similarly about their births for whatever reason.

Mostly though, you had a baby 4 days ago, be as kind to yourself as you can manage.

Thank you all, i guess i took it for granted that i would have another text book labour, @RedSheep73 you are completely right, I was lucky with each of my previous births and I should be grateful for that.

Everything is just so different with dc5, starting with the labour, its hard not to feel overwhelmed and out of my depth with him.

It takes 6 weeks on average for someone to process a traumatic. Longer if you are not sleeping well which I assume you won’t be with a new born.

I imagine your DH is incredibly proud of you for delivering his baby and going through all that trauma. I had a horrible birth with my first and it’s really bothered me. I’ve been offered birth reflections, which might be a good idea for you. Talk to your health visitor.

Just to say that sounds horribly traumatic. Whilst it is understandable why they were shouting at you, it must still have been a horrendous experience to have people yelling at you when you are at your most vulnerable.

I've only had one baby but it was a traumatic experience for the same reason - cord around neck three times, heartbeat decelerating. Doctors/midwives went into action station mode and all was well in the end but I beat myself up afterwards. I had a debrief, very helpful, and realised that there was nothing I could have done differently. The problems were caused by the cord being around the neck - nothing you could have done differently. Please please don't beat yourself up.

Sorry you are feeling like this OP, and sorry you had a poor experience.
I am a midwife, so just working off what you have said... sounds like baby was malpositioned which causes severe back pain, can be excruciating. Also causes slow progress of labour and birth. Cord being round the neck is a physiological cause of baby’s heart rate dropping like that, around 60% of babies are born with a cord round their neck. It can cause them to be shocked at birth but in that scenario they usually recover very very quickly which it sounds like your little one did. Cutting the cord before baby was out is a extremely rare and not recommended as obviously cuts their blood supply and effectively oxygen. I’ve never seen that in 14yrs... so cant comment on why that was done as that doesn’t affect the decent of baby. Sounds like there may have been a bit of a shoulder dystocia when the shoulder at the top gets stuck behind your pubic bone. There are some manoeuvres to relieve this, but the shouting and panic would have been because they had cut the cord already (this is the reason this is never done anymore). How lots of these things are dealt with depends on what hospital you are at, as not all units have the same level of teaching and practice.

Definitely have a debrief. It will be very helpful to you.
I can’t help you feel better but you must know you are not a failure and you did nothing wrong, and nothing was caused by you. You are amazing, a superstar. Enjoy lots of snuggles with your new baby.

Thank you @mummyme87 your insights make a lot of sense. I was in agony with the contractions but once the contraction began to go away, the pain in my back intensified until it was worse than the contraction pain. I became more frightened of the back pain than the contractions. The midwives kept asking me if i felt pushy, I didnt know what to say, I did but not with contractions, i felt pushy with the back pain.

I think my feelings of inadequacy come from my first labour where i was very young and a midwife said to me if i put as mich effort into pushing as i did yelling the baby would come out sooner. To hear it said to me again, 14 years later, I immediately felt like that scared teenager again and lost all confidence in myself.

I will say, that I am so grateful for the midwives and registrar, im not looking to pick fault or anything like that, i just feel so confused over all the events that happened. Like the registrar said afterwards that if i was to have another baby, it would be by csection. I dont intend on having anymore but I dont understand why i would need a csection if i did.

I will speak to my community midwife and see if i can be debriefed, i think it would really help me make my peace.

I’m sorry you feel this way OP. It does sound like a traumatic experience, and some of your feelings are amplifying that. I don’t mean to sound unkind so please forgive me if some of this can be taken badly - it’s hard to express.

You did nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing. Birth is unpredictable, you took the best medical advice, consented to what they recommended and you did nothing wrong. The flip side of this is that on your textbook births, the fact that these were textbook was sheer good luck and what you did had minimal influence on how easy or difficult the birth was. It’s tempting to believe that we have far more control over birth than we do - you see so much advice about walking in Labour, stay upright, adopt this or that position for birth - which gives the illusion of control and allow you feel you did something right when a straightforward birth occurs. But there is no real evidence of anything promoted on these advice websites, being the “right” thing to do in Labour.

Think about it. What on earth could you have done wrong? How could you get the cord to wrap severely round the baby’s neck? How could you have made the baby slightly malpositioned? There is no way you could have. Please try to see that. Since birth in the developed world has now become so safe, we tend to underestimate how wildly unpredictable it can be.

As for the poster above implying your medical team was wrong to have cut the cord when they did, I would ignore that. A cord so tightly wound that it was bruising your baby’s neck and stopping his descent, is going to be delivering virtually zero oxygen when compressed against the body and when the baby is stuck in a shoulder dystocia. Please discuss in detail with your medical team when in a de-brief but don’t let internet folk make you second guess medical decisions taken in an emergency. Save that for the de-brief.

Finally, worrying about screaming during Labour? And about the impression you gave your husband? I feel so sorry for you reading this bit. Is there a chance you had been the tiniest bit smug about previous deliveries and wanted to impress him by being Super-woman in labour? Please don’t be. Firstly, everyone expects labour to be chaotic and shouty- just see all the posts in here complaining that’s all we ever see when someone gives birth on the TV. You were giving birth, not a performance. You did exactly what you needed to do in response to the situation you found yourself in. Yes it was a hugely stressful, worrying, painful, traumatic situation. So why shouldn’t your response reflect that?

Please be kind to yourself. And seek support for the trauma. Get familiar with the symptoms of postnatal depression and get help if in any doubt.

Best wishes.

That sounds horrific, you must be in shock. I've just had dc4 and had an insanely painful and protracted labour compared to previous births, 12, 6, 3 hours then 24 hours back to back agony with all the drugs. I was expecting a sneeze birth too! The pain was something else. I was in tears for the first time in any of my births. This laid back earth mother was suddenly all at sea and I did not cope!! I guess I'm dealing with it by feeling lucky everyone is ok, and feeling slightly more understanding of people who have had hard intervention full births. And feeling so lucky that 1 to 3 were dream births that made me feel on top of the world. Take it gently and feel proud of your achievements and your beautiful family x

It's the induction that makes the pain more intense. I had the same problem of not being able to push, as the pain was so intense and overwhelming. I needed ventouse too, my baby was really big. I felt at times I spoken to inconsiderately and actually two midwifes from the first shift visited me on the ward and said no wonder I was having trouble pushing I take this as a slight apology

But if the cord was stopping your baby being born it wasn't your fault. I really wouldn't think you've embarrassed yourself. If anything the medical team were slightly unprofessional shouting, but it's a high pressure situation and they don't want to loose the baby.

Congratulations and to me your a hero having five children.

Thank you all, lovely replies and I am starting to feel better about the labour. @sycamore54321 yes i do think I was a bit smug about my 4th labour in particular I was 9 years younger than I am now and everyone seemed so impressed with me. After each of my labours before this one i felt so empowered, it was such an amazing feeling and i guess I was looking forward to having that feeling again.

I now realise that my previous labours were sheer luck and not that I was 'good' at childbirth. Also that having that attitude is actually not very nice because it would suggest that I feel people with harder labours are 'bad' at it, which I dont believe at all, but it does imply that.

Ultimately a few more days on, I just feel so lucky that he is here, safe and so grateful to all the ladies that helped him get here. Thats all that matters.

Hope you feel a little better once it all calms down, and I really hope I wasn’t too direct in my response. Birth is so unpredictable and I sometimes worry about the levels of pressure from social media and lifestyle blogs for natural, calm, earth-mother, beautifully-lit birth that women snap back from. For most of history, we’ve known that birth is likely to be hugely painful, beyond our control, etc. I don’t know if it’s progress that we now believe it can be otherwise.

Anyway, hope you are feeling much better and that both you and your baby are doing well. Please do keep alert to your own mental health and ask for help if you think you might need it, or even before.

It will get so, so much better. But you might just have to be really kind to yourself and accept that you might never get that haze of ‘remember the wonderful day x was born’ that I’m sure you had with your other babies.

I was a hypnobirth-trained yoga bunny and my first dc birth was like you described but to be honest considerably worse with repair surgery 6 months later, numerous serious infections lasting months etc. The two things that helped me most was one, a very realistic, kind, older male gp saying to me ‘look, you’ve had about the equivalent of being in a car crash, so it’s going to have a huge effect’, and two, realising that I had created a sort of block in my head about the three days of labour themselves and I don’t really like to reminisce about it in real life, ie on dc birthday, I had to tell my dh that I don’t want to be all ‘on this day...do you remember’...!

Also realistically, we are super lucky to be alive and well with healthy dc, we prob wouldn’t have been in previous times. I had to have full consultant-led care in next birth, where I had a life threatening condition and needed section for lots of reasons. I wanted 4 dc and only have 2 mostly due to horrific pregnancy and births, but they’re here, we’ll and happy, I too am well, so have had to come to terms with it.

It is hard. Be kind to yourself.

Thank you, I had a bit of a meltdown with the midwife two days ago and she has arranged a debrief as well as put me on the waiting list for a dr that deals with childbirth trauma. She managed to get a look at my notes at the hospital and confirmed the shoulder dystocia, i will find out the rest at the debrief.

What a traumatic birth.
I think you were brave and amazing.
Congratulations on your baby boy!

Theres a charity your midwife can refer you to that provides a trained volunteer to go through your notes with you and help you put it all in order. Big hugs to you. You are not a failure, you did it. Be proud.