Did I do birth ‘wrong’?

[The3rdWatermelon]

My baby is 11 months old and I’m still beating myself up at least once a day about her birth. I have a diagnosis of PND and am on the waiting list for a birth debrief. I’m getting better, but this one thought is just hanging on.

I feel like I did the birth wrong.

I was having contractions on and off for two days before I was told to come into hospital. When I got there I waited several hours and was then moved into the delivery room. I had another 8 hours of increasing contractions before they told me I’d be given the drip to get things moving as I’d been stuck at 5cm dilated. They broke my waters for me. The gas and air did nothing for me, I hadn’t slept properly for 3 days and I was exhausted so I asked for the epidural. I’d been on my back most of the time in the delivery room. I desperately didn’t want to labour on my back but every time I got into a different position the room started spinning, and getting on my hands and knees made me immediately start vomiting. I managed to stand for a while before they brought in the epidural but it made no difference and I was so tired I started disassociating.

After I got to 10cm with the help of the drip I pushed for 90 minutes with absolutely no results. I was taken to theatre to prepare for a c section, but moving on the trolley seemed to shift something and baby started to move down. I ended up giving birth with forceps on the operating table. Shoulder dystocia, placenta had to be manually removed, post parting haemorrhage, blah blah blah. Left me with retained tissue that didn’t clear itself for another 9 months. I then got double mastitis twice in the first month and had to stop breastfeeding.

All in all I still feel like I failed at every step. I keep thinking if I’d just tried harder, gritted my teeth to get in a better position, put more effort into pushing, tried harder with breastfeeding… I don’t know, maybe id be a better mum somehow? I’ve just been reading the thread about how hospitals are portrayed on TV, and the posts about how women are always shown giving birth on their backs even though they don’t ‘naturally’ do that.

I had IVF to get pregnant and I feel very much like the entirety of conception, pregnancy and birth was done TO me.

I guess I’m just looking for some reassurance that if I’d somehow managed to “try harder” it wouldn’t have changed anything?

It's not your fault.

You were massively let down by neglectful care.

I second that.

You were badly let down by whoever was in charge of your care.

Every birth is different. You didn't do anything wrong, you just had a cascade of intervention in hospital. I had a very similar experience to yours first time. It makes it much harder to recover when you have a traumatic experience. Breastfeeding is really hard (much harder than it's made out to be) and often there is not much expert support. Once you've had the debrief might it be useful to have counselling to work out how you move forward?

It is not your fault. It will take time to heal both physically and mentally but don't blame yourself for anything

I third that. You were let down. You did NOTHING wrong. I'm expecting baby #3 and consultant apologised to me for my poor care on a previous delivery #2. Please don't feel a failure. I had a similar scenario to you on my first birth and that team were incredible and couldn't believe how I kept going for 3 days. They praised me so much. I'm so sad the team didn't support you in the way they should have.

I can understand this feeling completely. I used to go through every step and think 'if I'd just done this at that point'

It wasn't your fault - labour is something that happens to you and you have no control over the way that your body responds. Sending hugs x

I don't believe that we can ever be in control of birth i am afraid so there is no way you did anything wrong. What do you think could have have been done differently?
The description of your labour really sounds like your baby was malpositioned - so little is known about what determines a baby's position it is very difficult to change.
Your feelings are really real. Can you chat to your HV? There are lots of online resources offering support.

Birth isn't about how much effort we put in or how hard we try. There are too many physiological factors at play I am afraid.

You had an immensely traumatic experience. So sorry.

You did very well together baby here under those circumstances! You should feel proud of yourself.

I hope you can heal mentally and physically as quickly as possible.

You are your baby's favourite person in the world, and good enough 💛

No. You did nothing wrong. You must have the strength of a warrior to have endured that labour for so long and still pushed for 90 minutes.

I'm pretty tough (broken a few bones etc etc) and I reckon I would have been wanting a section DAYS before you were offered one.

Set yourself free from this - however you need to, counselling, birth debrief, whatever. But know that you did enough, you did everything you needed to, your baby is here with you now and you are their whole world. You did well.

This is nearly exactly my story except I had the c section. I felt like I'd failed for a very long time. Especially when people say labour isn't that hard ('periods are worse' - feck off), and how hypno birthing helped them (I.e if I'd only just tried harder, trained and used the right techniques I'd have been ok). In summary, I have much older children and I've finally come to terms with the fact that you don't get much of a say in how your birth goes. When it comes to the fundamental issues, it's your body and the baby that decides. People with easy births aren't stronger or tougher or tried harder, they were luckier. Please try to find a way to come to terms with this. No one gets a say on whether you failed or not based on how easy or complicated your birth was. Your kids 100% don't care and that's what counts.

Your debrief should help. I learnt so many new things about what happened from my debrief as the hospital is usually rubbish about telling women what actually happened while we’re still in hospital.

No such thing as doing birth wrongly! I never even went into labour naturally, and my induction and breaking of waters also did nothing! Ended up with EMCS. So your body did a much better job than mine :) Please don’t beat yourself up xx

You didn't do anything wrong. On a forum such as this, you will find hundreds of birth stories. They can be similar or worlds apart. That's labour for you. No two are the same. You didn't do anything wrong. Hopefully, your debrief will help you.

I felt robbed with my own experience. Huge PTSD. Begged for a hysterectomy for years after so that there'd never be another chance id have to give birth. They never gave me one as i was 'too young and might change my mind'. I always wanted 3 or 4 children but i only have 1. I had a friend who had 4 kids in 4 years and i wondered why i was so fucked up from mine and how others could possibly want another after a labour. But theirs obviously werent anything like mine. 11 years later and if i became pregnant now i wouldnt be able to have the baby due to my past labour. I just couldnt do it again. Everything that couldve went wrong, went wrong then nearly died from retained placenta 8 weeks after birth as noone listened to me. I had a surgery and they said they dont know how i didnt die from sepsis as it was a large amount left behind. Traumatic to say the least.

A lot of the birth part of this sounds exactly like my birth. It was awful and I cried for 10 months whenever I thought about it because I felt so guilty. I kept telling myself "I gave up" "I didn't even try" (I did and you did).

The birth afterthoughts service I did at 10 months was amazing. They told me that my baby was in brow presentation (I pushed for 2 hours with no progress) and she wouldn't have come out safely by herself. They didn't notice her malpresentation until the forceps were in. I only found out 10 months later during this afterthoughts sessions.

Don't expect any sort of emotional discussion during this session. That's not what it's about. It's about what happened medically. Whatever they say, know it wasn't your fault.

I no longer blame myself. Don't blame yourself either. Just look what you made, so wonderful.

I felt exactly the same with mine, that I was a total failure as a mother and a woman - traumatised by ivf, hated pregnancy, severe pe, surprise elcs and unable to bf. Beat myself up for months, until I started ads after finally acknowledging my pnd.

You didn’t do birth ‘wrong’. You did brilliantly, you went through ivf, made an entire brand new human being, gave birth despite (I imagine!) being utterly exhausted and have loved and raised your baby to date. You’re a bloody superhero! I know vaginal birth with no painkillers seems to be held as the gold standard of childbirth, but really if we’re lucky enough to hobble out of there with everyone alive that’s all that matters. You’ve done great, you’re doing great, and I really hope in time you are able to make peace with the birth you had.

One strange thing in the medical literature that has a huge impact on your labour and birth is the size of your hip bones - women with wider hip bones have way, way, way easier births.

All that is to say, there's a LOT in birth that is out of your control. Your pelvis size, the baby's size, positioning... EVERYTHING.

It's nothing to do with you, or how hard you tried, at all.

I'm even a bit shocked by posters saying "you were failed". There might not have been anything else that could have been done - it could literally have been your bone size. You can't change that. Please forget the guilt.

I was reading your post and ‘failure’ is the last thing I’d associate with what you went through. I think you’re an absolute warrior for surviving all of that.

I had a very traumatic birth and had similar feelings to you. I felt very, very down and inadequate for probably a year afterwards. The passage of time has helped me a lot (though I still have a little cry in private on his birthday, it’s an anniversary of joy in that my child was born but also lots of traumatic memories) and I really hope that it’s the same for you, and you will look back and feel in awe of yourself for getting through an incredibly difficult birth and postpartum period.

What’s happened to you will always be part of your story as a mum but there are many, many chapters of motherhood ahead of you. The birth will always be part of it of course but its Importance and prominence will hopefully start to diminish in time. There are wonderful times ahead

Both my births were very similar to yours at least apart from the ending. Both births i laboured at home for 3days. With intense, incredibly painful contractions which would ramp up and then disappear. With my first I went into hospital twice only to be sent home both times. The third time (on the 3rd day) I insisted on staying in and a young midwife upped my recorded dilation by a cm to ensure I could stay. I was only something like 3cm in all that time. I relied on a tens machine and they gave me gas and air and the pain relief injection. I wanted to walk around and try the birthing pool but the midwives advised that as my labour wasn't progressing the water would only slow things down further and they wouldn't advise it. Things were sloooooow and they started to say if I didn't show more progress they would need to consider interventions. I was labouring so long they were really worried about the level of ketones in my blood. I was disassociating as you say. Thankfully they broke my waters and things did speed up but then the pushing was really quick but then I wanted to stand up of kneel up but they were adamant I was better on my back as it was all happening so fast and they said they could control the speed of the birth more easily. With my second son, I had exactly the same 3 day start to Labour but this time managed to stay at home longer. It was entirely like deja vu for the start. Despite staying at home, still excruciating early labour for 3 days and still when finally admitted to hospital exactly the same minimal dilation. Same rigmarole with pain relief and slow to progress, eventual breaking of waters and then a high speed Labour, but then as with you baby got stuck and ended up with shoulder dystocia. Again I didn't get my water birth and ended up stuck on my back with two manual interventions but at least my midwife was able to deliver baby safely.

i definitely know what you mean about nothing going the way you planned, and I haven't ever found anyone who has seemed to truly accept / belief just how excruciating those 3 days at home were both times. I've had so many times when I hear about waters spontaneously breaking at home or people having no pain during early labour or turning up to find they were already miraculously 10cm dilated 😏 plus having to Chuck away almost all the ideas and hopes I had for birth.

not sure if this helps at all but sending love and hope your birth debrief will prove helpful ❤️💐

Absolutely not!!!

Your body and the hospital staff very much determine everything that happens - and you can't really do anything to control it if the birth doesn't sort of 'take care of itself'.

With a first birth anyway you probably have little to no idea of what to expect and nothing to compare it to.

I'm really sorry that you've been through this.

Birth can be quite traumatic and can leave you with a lot to work through (even when nothing goes 'wrong' as such).

You didn’t fail. Even with all of the wonders of modern medicine I feel that giving birth is still one of the most dangerous and unpredictable things that a woman can do. Sometimes knowing the facts and why one action led to another can bring you some closure and I think hearing that at a debrief will be positive for you but as another poster said, it’s only factual and perhaps won’t help emotionally. I really struggled after the birth of my first and it took a long time to get over for me. People recover at different rates and it’s easy for a random person on a screen to tell you that you didn’t fail and that you’re going to be fine but another thing for you to come to terms with it. Please keep talking, I found writing everything down that I remembered of the labour and birth quite cathartic, I had a massive entry in my notes section on my phone and kept reading it, editing and getting things straight in my head. It was like poking a bruise, very hard and painful to do but one day I could delete everything I’d written and knew I was finally ok with it all.

Sounds to me like you birthed like a fucking champ! I hope you see this for yourself some day.

Like PP's have said, you sound incredibly strong and resilient to have gone through what you did to birth your baby then care for your baby whilst dealing with the after effects.

If you are healthy and your baby is healthy then you WON!!!
Well done!!! I agree with orangewall : it's so dangerous and unpredictable.
You did everything fine. You didn't have an easy time of it at all but you endured and persevered.
If you have a second, you'll (finally) have a debrief with a midwife where you'll learn that you did what you could.

Birth is not easy (otherwise, men would do it ... lazy so'n'sos)

I had almost an identical experience to you, and I understand exactly how you feel. It was 14 months ago for me now. I don't have a PND diagnosis but I suspect I have/had it. How I feel about it all is slowly improving/getting less raw. I think it is easy to think 'I could have tried harder', I think that too, but I also think it is easy to say that in hindsight, now you are rested and not in pain. Every time I think 'I could have tried harder', I remind myself that at the time, I couldn't have 'tried harder', or I would have. There was nothing more I could have done, or I'd have done it. In the moment, when you were in that amount of pain, and so exhausted after days of it, you'd done all you could. It's hard, but I keep reminding myself of that, and being kind to myself over what happened, and stopping beating myself up over it is slowly helping. I hope I'm making sense, I feel like I'm rambling a bit. I hope you get your debrief soon x