Seeing mothers with newborns sends me back to terrifying postnatal recovery. - help.

[orangesky1]

I had my child 18 months ago. It was a bad birth, I had to crawl to bathroom for 2 weeks as I couldn’t walk, eventually could get up for short walks after about a month but pain until around 6 months. I’m left with incontinence issues but luckily not too bad.

Every time I see a mother with a newborn out and about, looking physically capable and radiant, it floors me, sends me right back to those feelings I had after the birth. Fear that I would never recover, isolation, fear every time my husband left the house and I was left with baby that I couldn’t properly lift/care for. Needing something from the shop but not physically being able to leave the house. Those first 4-6 weeks were horrendous for me.

If anything it is getting worse. I know this is not a normal reaction. I know I’m lucky to have a healthy child and I have returned to pretty good health albeit limited in the exercise I can do. But it just floors me every time and takes me right back to those awful feelings of despair - I don’t know what to do.

I previously went to the gp who suggested sertraline but I don’t feel that medication is the answer. Can anyone help?

How about therapy? It sounds as though you could benefit from talking to a professional - you had a very traumatic time & though it has been a little while, it's not that long ago and clearly quite raw still.

Whatever happens: you have made it through, you're not still in the past and no one is going to hand you another newborn if that's not what you want. It sounds like it was a real struggle for you, can you give yourself a little credit for making it out alive & getting your baby to the age they are now?