Found this thread a couple of days ago and have read it partly with a lump in my throat, partly in tears, partly with relief knowing I am not on my own but also partly in desperation willing my crying 6 week old son to calm down while feeling utterly detached from everything. I finally told DP that I think DS's arrival affected me more than I thought and he uttered words akin to those we all seem to dislike "but it was alright in the end and he's healthy" - yes, our son is healthy and here safely and I am physically healed. But my head is still battered by the whole "birth" process and I feel like a failure.
One thing I do want to say which is different to a lot of you is that the vast majority of the health professionals I came across over the course of my pregnancy - and there were a lot, I think I counted up 25 antenatal visits and 3 hospital stays by the end - were nothing but professional and treated me well.
My unplanned but quickly extremely welcome pregnancy got off to a very shaky start with it being a suspected ectopic and numerous TV scans and daily HCG blood tests - I vividly remember laying in a hospital bed in a side room alone being told by 2 doctors that my HCG levels suggested that I had been pregnant but wasn't anymore and basically to get on with it.
I moved at 10/11 weeks which meant different PCT and all the re-registration malarkey that entails. Eventually got a booking appointment at 12+5 and was straight on the high risk list with high bp, BMI of 29, first baby, age 35+ and hence under consultant care (basically lots of blood pressure checks). Had scan & bloods the same week which came back with a 1:63 risk of Downs Syndrome, cue further monitoring with another (utterly brilliant) consultant including a very fraught 24 hours when we had to decide whether or not to have CVS the following day (we didn't and waited for the 20 week anamoly scan). Due to the high downs risk and despite the 20 week scan being OK, we ended up having to have growth scans as the baby was at the bottom of all the centiles for dates and had a terrible time following the 32 week scan and the grwoth had slowed to the point that there was talk of early delivery. At this point, I brought my maternity leave forward cue phenomenal stress at work which to cut a long story short makes it extremely unlikely I will go back there.
I knew all along with all the problems, there was no way I was going to "be allowed" a homebirth or to use the new local midwife led unit so my "birth plan" was to go to hospital as late as possible in order to have minimal intervention as possible, to not be strapped to monitors, to not be immobilised by an epidural and certainly not to have a csection. I just wanted what should be a natural thing to not be medicalised just once, not to be made to feel like I had an illness, just to try and be "normal".
Oh yeah, you know what happens next....my obligingly cephalic all the way through baby decides to turn OP, I end up with stays in hospital with even higher bp, 2 sweeps don't work and I am booked in for an induction at 41+4. DS arrives at 41+6 following two pessaries, controlled ARM (which nearly ended in theatre), syntocin and an epidural strapped to monitors throughout by emergency cs. I didn't give birth to my DS, he was another medical process, I didn't hold him first, I didn't hear him cry, no one told me he was OK nor did I see him until I was ready to leave theatre, I couldn't hold him because of the shakes, someone else cleaned and dressed him first, I couldn't pick him up when he cried because of the op.
My only saving grace is that I've been able to breastfeed - I had a crap pregnancy, I couldn't give him the strength he needed to grow (this was my feeling all the way after the 32 week scan until he arrived weighign a perfectly normal 7lbs 1), I am clearly bloody useless at childbirth but at least I can feed him.
Do I feel better now I've told you this, I don't know.