Birth trauma

[Ontheflipside_]

I don't want to get into the nitty gritty, but I had a completely traumatic birth. 2 years on, I still have physical trauma making it difficult for sex at times and nearly impossible for any kind of medical examination (smear etc). I won't get into what happened to my DD, she is fine now, but we were told 'to say goodbye' to her at one point.

My question is, for those who have been through similar, did you stop at 1 child? My DH has only ever wanted one, but during my pregnancy said he would have 2 if I really wanted. I have always been on the edge of 1 or 2.

The last 2 years have been incredibly difficult after what happened. I am seeing a therapist, referred to a gynaecologist etc, so in terms of the physical and mental trauma, I am doing all I can to deal with it. I just can't help but feel the immense amount of guilt for not giving my child a sibling. Not to mention the financial difficulty of even being able to afford a 2nd child in this economy.

My question is, for those who have chosen to stop at 1 child due to birth trauma, does the guilt of not giving them a sibling eventually fade?

I didn’t want to read and run. Please get in touch with the hospital and do birth reflections as this can be so helpful. Also doing some kind of therapy on it, because you want your decision based on you having healed mentally from what you went through.

And if you are genuinely happy with one then please don’t feel guilty - only children are fine!

we are now having a second but purely for us 😁

I'm sorry you had to suffer.

It is 5 years ago since I had a birth trauma, my child is happy and healthy and for 4.5 of those years I was terrified of the thought of having another child, I had a lot of therapy, and met with my Matenity team who gave me the minute by minute account of my birth.

It is only now (after a pregnancy scare) I have realised that if I was to get pregnant again I'm not terrified. It is also the first birthday I have celebrated with my chold where my blood hasn't run cold at the time of their birth.

I think what I am saying is give yourself time to heal, especially mentally. Your little one is only 2, and so your trauma is recent.

If you decide not to have anymore children there is nothing to feel guilty about, your health is the most important factor at present.

I stopped at one, multiple reasons. Birth trauma featured. Primary reason was age as I was 43. Secondary reason was that I’d only really ever imagined we’d have one. Thirdly, the birth was traumatic and the DH said he was scared by how ill I was and didn’t ever want to risk losing me like that again. Our DC was very early, but the treatment I received was very poor. There was a hospital enquiry into mistakes made across the board that night in Delivery and pages of my notes were mysteriously missing.