BIRTH TRAUMA SUPPORT THREAD.

[VictorianSqualor]

As has come up on a number of threads, many of us seem to have suffered from birth trauma.

It's all well and good knowing facts and figures, which of course, can ease our fears slightly, but with every birth having a chance of going severely wrong, adding that to birth trauma issues is going to convince us that we could be in whatever small percentage of people do suffer from our fears.

This thread is to help us come to terms with what happened during our previous births that left us with these emotional scars and to support each other through the journeys that we will go through in both our minds and possible future/current pregnancies.

There have been previous threads on which people have oupoured their experiences but acknowledgement and discussion is more than each of us telling our own experiences, so I ask that not only do we tell our own stories but we acknowledge other's and help them to discuss their past too.

Giving birth should be a calm, and beautiful thing, not one full of fear and panic.

Has this thread died?

I hope not LaTrucha.
Sorry I haven't time to comment on others' stories individually, my DD2 is home any minute. But I have read them and feel a mix of shock at how women are treated in childbirth and relief that I am not alone in my feelings.

Briefly, my DD1 was born by ELCS for breech. She was taken away half an hour after birth to SCBU and I couldn't see her again for 48 hours. They thought she had rhesus disease and nearly transfused her (in the end it turned out to be a false alarm).

My DD2 was born a year ago by EMCS after a failed VBAC attempt. This time DD was fine but the CS was botched and my bladder nearly cut in half. I was put under GA on the table to be repaired and missed the first night of DD's life.

I feel so upset about the fact that I have not been able to cuddle my babies immediately after their birth. I will not have any more (we were both so shocked by DD2's birth that DH had the snip 3 months later). I spend stupid amounts of time thinking what I could have done to achieve my VBAC and beating myself up for not being able to deliver naturally. I'm glad I experienced labour but in some ways trying and failing at VBAC was a worse outcome for me than going straight to CS would have been.

VS- I remember you from the VBAC thread. Interested to see you are contemplating ttc again, you are braver than me! Do you think the birth of DS2 excorcised some of your fears?

I have been lurking on this thread but since thread seems to be dying down, here is my two euro centimes.

Sorry I couldn't find the strength to relive & write it down on this thread.

I know after the birth of my baby 12 months ago that there is NO WAY I could ever contemplate a VB......I still find that people give me strange looks/reactions when I say this even though they know what I went through i.e. failed forceps, ventouse, episitomy, v. bad tear near hysterectomy, blookd transfusion, and placenta taken out in theatre :{
To me a CS would be 'EASY' given the way my sister ha described her two!!!!!!!!!

I hope this doesn't die as I think this could be very useful especially as we're thinking of trying for our second around the end of the year.
Even the thought of getting pregnant scares the Sh1t out of me cos I know there will be a birth at the end of it.
If I could have a CS without the hospital stay I would.

I've just seen this thread. MY DD is 14 weeks old now and I STILL cry when I read about CS's. I planned for a natrual birth - I was prepared mind, body and soul. I had done hypnobirthing and had practiced everyday for months. I didn't want drugs and I was looking forward to meeting my baby as natrually as possible. My waters broke at 1am Saturday morning, went in to the hospital to get checked, and then went home. Went back at 5am on Sunday morning as my contractions were 5 minutes apart. I was so excited - couldn't wait to give birth to my baby. Many, many hours later, I had hardly dialted at all, was exhausted and starting to lose focus. Midwife suggested an epidural, I refused. Worked through the pain with the techniques I had learnt in hypnobirthing. But by 6pm I was finished. I was so exhausted and the pain was really starting to take hold and the contractions were every 3 minutes but still I was only about 5cm dialated. I gave in. The 1st of many failures. I had the epidural. (I am already in floods of tears now just writing that). I admit I did feel instant pain relief and I managed to rest a little. And it seemed to speed tings up a little. By 5am Monday morning I was 10cm +1 and pushing. I only pushed for about 1/2 hour as it turned out I was too small and the baby's head was too big and facing backwards. So they then decided to try forceps and ventouse - both of which failed. So ended up having an emergency c-section. And then after that they had to pull my uterus out because it was behaving like an open wound, wasn't contracting back and and wouldn't stop bleeding. They squeezed it to help, and then put a baloon in to help contract my uterus and then put my uterus back in. Balloon came out a few days later - along with more blood.

I never got to see my baby being born and it KILLS me. I never had those 1st special bonding moments with her, never got to see her attached to her umbilical cord, never got to put her 1st nappy on, never got to do any of the 1sts. I couldn't even breast feed her. And it is silly things like I wanted her to have the Vit K orally not as an injection - couldn't even have that. I am grateful I got a happy, healthy and beautiful baby - don't get me wrong, but I feel I failed as a woman I really do. I start proper councelling next week.

Mommhasaheadache - I really feel for you, that sounds horrid. I went through an ECS too as you might have read. Don't feel like a failure you gave life to beautiful and healthy little girl and that's the best you could ever have done for her regardless of how she came into the world.

I know it seems like the end of the world but it could have been so much worse for you. 14 weeks isn't long at all so give it some time and if you ever need to talk then yo can always come onto MN they have helped me through so much. Goodluck with your counselling I hope it helps you.

Sorry victoriansqualor only just seen your post.

Not studying Midwifery, I am training to be a mental health nurse with my main interest in womens mental health, especially Perinatal.

BE So sorry sweetheart, you seemed more upbeat on your other threads so I was hoping for a better experience for you this time. We're here when you're ready to talk.

mslucy Glad they are taking you seriously, it was definitely what made the difference for me with DS2.

pendulum yes, it definitely helped, though I'm still not a fan of CSs and know I'll go through all the same fear and worry again, even with a good experience this time. I don't feel complete yet though, both DP&I want another baby so 'm going to have to put up with birth however it happens!

cote I'd say this being the only subject you can't talk about without tears is a certain sign of some sort of trauma. I don't want to label our feelings and fears as 'birth Trauma' per se, but think it is pretty much a given that if we are still suffering long after the birth is over that something other than our bodies were left scarred. FWIW, I get really emotional over this & DD's dyspraxia but can talk about all manner of childhood abuse stony-faced which I think is what helped DP realise how big it was to me.

mommyhasaheadache I'm pretty disappointed with myself that we are 'friends' (well, I think of you as one after what we've gone through together!) and I didn't realise you felt this way. I'm sorry. You didn't fail at all, My goodness, you're the glue that keeps you and your family together, on about half an hours sleep a week!!! You're great.

Not one of us on here made these things happen, we were let down in the way we were treated and some us were just damn unlucky (DD& placental abruption for me-unlucky, forced to have CS with DS1-let down)

tiredemma We could do with a lot more recognition in the mental health field, especially without it being all dumped into PND

I really hope this thread doesn't die, we could really do with the support, too many people don't understand and sometimes I feel much better just to have someone say 'I hear you'.

VS- I have been 'sourcing' research articles etc for my dissertation and have to say that I was shocked at how big an issue it is.

I certainly hope that this thread stays 'active'.

Mommhasaheadache I could have written your last paragraph I didn't get to see my daughter naked till she was nearly a week old, it sounds daft but when it's your baby it's little things like that become important. Her cord had fallen off before I'd even seen it! I still don't feel like she's mine and I'm terrified of history repeating itself, the biggest reason is I want my baby to be mine without me looking over my shoulder for her "real" mum to come and get her.

TBM - Thats scary. That's how I feel.
DD doesn't feel like mine. She feels like a child I'm babysitting for or something.

That was why I couldn't carry on BFing - it felt wrong and it still feels wrong sometimes to change her bum.

mommyhasaheadache - I'm so sorry to hear your experiences. I had also prepared like you with hypnobirthing, optimal foetal positioning, perineal massage - anything that I could think of so that I would have a natural delivery! But everything took too long and DD was so badly positioned that she didn't descend at all. I ended up with a ventouse delivery, which was not a good option. I "should" have had a CS, from my wishes and also from the point of view that DD was so high up - I've found out since that she wasn't a good candidate for ventouse after all.

I felt such a huge sense of failure, and I think that a huge chunk of that was down to the hypnobirthing literature and general natural birthing mythology. I know that the breathing techniques and natural active labour allowed me to continue for longer than I would have been able to without them. But (and it's a very big but), all the stuff I read about hypnobirthing was very much focussed on the "fact" that if you remain calm and in control that you will get through the delivery unassisted. And that is a complete lie for some women, like me. I was so exhausted from the length of the labour, and the fact that DD was OP (so that I couldn't even rest between contractions) that there was no way that I could have carried on using the hypnobirthing techniques. I just didn't have the strength left. It didn't help that I had had 3 days with no sleep due to early labour (contractions every 5 to 25 minutes apart but erratic) and that as soon as I hit active labour I was vomitting constantly and couldn't even keep water down.

I get so angry with the whole hypnobirthing thing now, even though I know that it's a useful technique. I feel that it places all the onus on the woman, which is completely unrealistic if you have a very long labour or badly positioned baby, or things aren't "normal" for whatever reason. I've posted on other threads that I feel that it's a "heads I win, tails you lose" situation, as if a woman uses hypnobirthing and has a natural birth, hypnobirthing gets all the credit, whereas if things go wrong, it's all the woman's fault for "not doing it properly".

Sorry, I have really rambled on here, but I just wanted you to know that you didn't fail in any sense of the word. You must have had incredible strength to be able to cope with labour for such a long time. I hope that you are able to realise that soon and start to heal from your horrible experience.

I have a pic of DD on my profile when she was a few days old, and it's always the picture I remember of her, but I looked at her baby book the other day and fuck it was hard.
I saw the first picture ever taken of her, the picture they showed me in HDU and she still doesn't look like my baby to me, nearly 8 years later.
I might scan it and put it up later.
My relationship with her is gettign better, but I feel it more now I know that I feel the same way about both the boys, but not about her. I used to think it was just DS, now I know it's not.

LuckySalem apparently it's a common feeling, my mental health nurse/ nurse therapist even asked me if she was mine! He's so used to people feeling like that when they've had a bad start.

I kept breastfeeding because it is something only her mother can do for her, so every time I feed her I think "only her mum can do this for her, I am her mum" it gives me a little bit of reality.

DP said that - ofcourse your her mum. If you weren't her mum you wouldn't be able to feed her. But it didn't help as my reply was "how do I know they didn't switch her after they took her out?" - I know madness.

I didn't even think I was going to have a baby, so it wasn't even that they switched her. I wasn't having a baby, then I was in labour, they tried to stop it and then put me to sleep. I woke up feeling like I had any other morning! The great joke at our expense... You can't have a baby but you can look after this one instead but the mother might want to come back for it, so just keep an eye out.

People tell me all the time "of course she's yours" but if you haven't been there you can't understand the feeling.

I am so so pleased that I have found this thread. It is wonderful to know that I am not alone and I have huge admiration for you all. In fact I am in tears reading your posts.

My DS is nearly 6 months old and I was beginning to feel like there was something wrong with me for still crying every time I think of him being born. He is such a lovely happy little boy and I feel so sad that he didn't have the normal birth I wanted for him.

He had such terrible problems with breastfeeding due to an very long forceps delivery and a squashed head and I felt like such a failure that I couldn't even do that for him.

Jst posting so I can stay on thread. GLad to see it's moved on. Will respond when I have a minute.

Momysgot - 14 weeks seems like a very short time to me. I'm gald you're getting counselling, though. At 14 weeks I was still in physical pain, let alone mental, from my cs and from the sounds of yours you might be too. Both are improving over time (although when I become pregnant again I'll have to deal with things properly).

I was totally prepared for birth, as far as I knew. I had done hypno-birthing, ante-natal etc. This preparation ust doesn't seem to me to have anything to do with the experience of birth as I now know it and saw it in hospital. It's a total shock, isn't it?

Concerning your comments about feelign a failure, at the risk of sounding facile I had a very tranquil moment recently about my own feelings of failure. I'd gone proper adult swimming on my own for the first time since the birth 7.5 months ago. It was great to feel on my own for once. Swimming up and down, it cane to me that, rather than failing, I had risk major and painful surgery, with considerable risk to myself (due to the circumstances I was in) to save my child's life. This didn't feel like a failure.

I am terrified now of a natural birth, but this feeling I had in the swimming pool is actually making me consider it again with a bit less fear.

Anyway, I hope the counselling helps you. I'd love to know how you get on.

Has anybody on this thread read that thread on wonderful births that was around recently? I'm not sure if it will encourage or make me feel awful. Any thoughts?

Posting again so I can keep up with the thread too...

Hi Ladies been looking through this thread and realised I'm not alone in still feeling upset. I had a bad experience which even now make me want to cry each time labour and birth is mentioned.

Do you think almost a year after my son was born its too late to make a complaint. I was hoping that by putting it all in writing about how I feel and the lack of care it might help me get over it. I was also thinking of requesting my notes so i could look over the events and help me understand.

Also is bleeding normal in labour? How can I find sort like that out on.

I did talk things over with a community midwife when she visited me and she asked me to make a complaint. She was appalled at my story and as she was the one who transfered me to main hospital, Its only now that feel able and strong enough to make a complaint.

Any ideas/opnions?

x

Hi Ladies been looking through this thread and realised I'm not alone in still feeling upset. I had a bad experience which even now make me want to cry each time labour and birth is mentioned.

Do you think almost a year after my son was born its too late to make a complaint. I was hoping that by putting it all in writing about how I feel and the lack of care it might help me get over it. I was also thinking of requesting my notes so i could look over the events and help me understand.

Also is bleeding normal in labour? How can I find sort like that out on.

I did talk things over with a community midwife when she visited me and she asked me to make a complaint. She was appalled at my story and as she was the one who transfered me to main hospital, Its only now that feel able and strong enough to make a complaint.

Any ideas/opnions?

x