Hi, I don't know anyone here and I don't feel I've really got the right to just launch into a long grump about how horrible I feel. But I haven't got anyone else to talk to, so I'm going to do it anyway! :0
I had a terrible pregnancy with my first baby. I nearly lost him twice and had to have emergency scans...the second time I asked for a scan picture and the ultrasound lady said "I woudn't tempt fate if I were you - go home and pray" I was then in a wheelchair for six months in agony with symphysis pubis dysfunction, then got gestational diabetes and had to inject insulin daily for the first time in my life, then got pre-eclampsia, spent six weeks in hospital, terrified. I found most of the midwives hostile and supercilious. They treated me like a nuisance and constantly implied that I was responsible for my difficult pregnancy because of my weight (I was 14 stone) Eventually the baby was induced 5 weeks early, and I had a 24 hour labour with two unsuccessful epidurals, I was pinioned to the bed and not allowed to move because my blood pressure was 212/120 - when I eventually pushed the baby out I was scolded by the midwife for screaming and "frightening the poor little baby". I still have nightmares about the pain and have since read that women with severe SPD can be expected to find it difficult to give birth vaginally lying on their backs without proper pain relief. I had huge blood loss and 3 major tears, followed by being rushed to theatre with a retained placenta, major post-partum haemorrhage and a blood transfusion. My baby didn't breathe for five minutes (I know many of you have experienced much worse, but I thought he was dead!) and he was in intensive care for a week...when I came round from the general anaesthetic I was lying in a dark room, soaked in blood, and someone handed me a Polaroid of a baby covered in tubes. I thought he had died. the midwives were frankly brutal, they virtually refused to let me see him unless I walked to the neonatal unit - my husband and mother wanted to take me in the wheelchair. I hadn't walked for nearly six months and was coming round from a general anaesthetic as well as a bad birth. I tried to walk and collapsed bleeding and vomiting in the corridor. I can't express how badly treated I felt by most of the health professionals I encountered. It was all so humiliating and cruel, not what I had expected and it broke my heart - I desperately wanted my baby and loved him on sight, but they wrote in my notes that I was a "difficult" patient, that breastfeeding was difficult because I had "funny-shaped nipples" and my baby had a "large overbite", and they implied that I was rejecting my baby because I cried a lot, had developed a huge cold sore the day after the birth and had trouble waking up to his cries in the first night after they let him out of intensive care. I was sleeping at the wrong end of the bed, fully clothed, with the window open to try and stay awake, but was just too tired. I remember the morning after the birth, complaining of pain and being told "don't be so selfish, you've got a baby to think about now". When I did get my baby home we had breastfeeding problems because of the fact that he had been fed through a tube and the neonatal staff had given him a dummy without consulting me. The health visitor's visits consisted entirely of hectoring me about breastfeeding - she seemed so afraid that I might give up that it clouded her judgement on anything else. She barked intrusive questions about lochia and bowel movements at me and just asked me directly whether I thought I was depressed. I said no, just to get rid of her, but it was pretty obvious to amy family and friends that I was overwhelmed. I received no offers of counselling or even a friendly ear to talk about the horror I had been through. I still feel like crying whenever I think about Kerry's birth and its aftermath, and he is three now! Sometimes I get flashbacks...for example to the theatre - I had never seen one before...I remember thrashing about on this steel table with about ten people all wearing plastic aprons covered in my blood - I was begging them to give me an anaesthetic as they were intending to leave me awake. A doctor leaned down and said "Childbirth isn't easy, is it dear" .I probably sound like a total drama queen and so many people have been through worse...but I just feel so horrible whenever I think about it.
When I had my second son (!!yes, I'm an idiot!!)the pregnancy and birth were much better until he got stuck (shoulder dystocia) and I ended up with another haemorrhage and almost bleeding to death...another blood transfusion etc. He was making a rasping noise like a strider in his hospital cot on his second day and I mentioned it to the doctor - they took him to the neonatal unit to investigate it. I felt so awful going back into that dreaded place with my new baby who wasn't supposed to have anything wrong with him. Then his blood sugar started dropping for no reason and I was terrified. The midwife supervising feeding that night said "he'll be in intensive care by morning at this rate" as though I was supposed to do something. They eventually pronounced him fine and I took him home. I managed to breastfeed him for four months and was very proud of myself, because I was looking after my two gorgeous boys and "doing it right" for them, even though I felt like sticking my head in the oven most of the time. However over the course of his first few months he became dangerously underweight and was projectile vomiting and coughing all the time. Visiting midwives and HVs initially said it was because breastfed babies are slimmer and not to worry, but he was patently ill. I eventually took him to the surgery on impulse one evening - I knew something wasn't right and wanted to catch the HV before she left. She looked at him, said "he's underfed" and wouldn't listen to my pleas about his other symtoms. She called upstairs and I was shoved in to see a locum who I had never met before. He interrogated me and accused me of starving the baby. Whe I came dowstairs in tears the HV blanked me.
Anyway to cut a very long story short he turned out to have respiratory synctial virus, contracted in the hospital (!) which had caused temporary milk intolerance. I switched him onto "hungrier baby" formula for a couple of months and then weaned him. He now looks like a little pudding! But during the awful period of being summoned to see paediatricians, having him weighed every two days and having tests for cystic fibrosis and leukaemia, while being treated like Myra Hindley, I watched while a huge haemagioma (big red lumpy strawberry mark) grew on his face, next to his eye. It is about the size of a golf ball now and has stopped growing. I fought to have him seen by a consultant, was fobbed off, carried on fighting and saw four different consultants. I still felt I was being trivialised, and was expected calmly to accept what we were being told about the possibility of his losing the sight in one of his eyes or being permanently disfigured. They discussed injecting steroids into it, or Warfarin. They told us if it unlcerated it would cause him unimaginable pain and he could lose his eye, but that no surgery, laser therapy or other invasive treatment would be considered, and again, I was treated like a cold-hearted cow for suggesting that we subject my poor little baby to any treatment. He's 15 months now, it has stopped growing and we only have appointments with the orthoptist to check his vision is OK. There was a few months where we were at the hospital almost every day for appointments with laser consultants, paediatricians, respiratory specialists, etc...on two buses with a three year old in tow. It's not terrifying any more but I still get old women accusing me of throwing boiling water over him or punching him in the face. I know I sound like a whining cow and I really am grateful for my two beautiful sons...but I just don't seem to be healing from all this, it seems to be banking up and overwhelming me. I hope someone has got the time to read this and give their view on what I should do to get over it.