My son was ripped from my body in a blur of panic and white hot fear. He didn't cry, I'm told. His lip was cut in the hurry to bring him into the world; a common occurrence, I'm told. He was resuscitated, life forced into his lungs before his screams filled the room, I'm told. And while my baby boy was making his grand arrival into the world, I was sleeping. Finally rid of the pain, fear and terror. Finally resting, blissfully unaware that I was a mother once more. Finally quiet, and alone once more.
It wasn't the entrance into the world that I had envisaged for my second born. Birth was supposed to be joyous. Birth was supposed to be happy. Birth was supposed to be amazing, exhilarating and wondrous! Not for me. I was sleeping as he was born. I was sleeping, and I didn’t want to wake up.
The hours after my son was born spiral around in my mind like fragmented pieces of someone else's story. The baby they handed to me was wrapped in a scratchy blue blanket and his skin was scrubbed and pink. He had a name and he was waiting for his first feed. He was waiting for me, but he surely wasn't my baby. I felt nothing. Blank. Empty. Hollow. I felt nothing. And yet, he was my son. He really was. And I was to care for him, whether I liked it or not, and so I switched on to auto pilot and I made myself be his mother.
Those hours on the postnatal ward were mixed. My son's first night was filled with screams (his) and sobs (mine) and yet I saw nobody but a poor, very lovely, student midwife. She helped me to prop the cot up to stop my baby's strangled chokes but she couldn't stay with me and so I spent those hours in between her visits convinced that he was going to die after all. Waiting for the inevitable. On the second night, I wobbled down to the hall for a shower and the relief I felt at leaving him behind was immense.
The first shower after a c-section is always awkward at best, and horrific at worst. Strangely, the cannula in my hand was the focus of my intense frustration and anger, and as the hot water jets struck it like needles I allowed the sobs to take over my body. I don't think I've ever felt more alone than I did right then. I wanted to stay locked in that bathroom but I knew that the pain radiating from every pore of my body would eventually force me back onto the ward.
I don't remember speaking to many people. I had visitors, but they were there for the baby and not for me. I didn't want anyone to see me and I couldn't understand why they were trooping in with cards and presents and smiles and hugs. I couldn't understand why they were all celebrating.
The second night on the ward was spent in a haze of pain and tears. This baby wasn't the same as his sister; this one cried a lot and seemed to be in pain. A little ball of red hot anger. The midwives had little time for me, and I was told that every baby had a bad night - this was my turn.
And as the sun began to rise on day three, my two-day-old son and I were discharged from the hospital - much to my surprise. I was nowhere near ready to leave. I was utterly terrified at the thought of having to go home with this baby. I was petrified of being alone with him. I was shaking at the idea of being a real mum to him. Despite the noise, the heat and the bloody sheets, I wanted to stay in the hospital with life suspended for a little while longer. I didn't want to accept that this was it now. This was life. I wanted to escape for longer. Or, failing that, I wanted to leave without my baby.
I actually contemplated walking out of there alone. And I wasn't sure anyone would stop me.
In the end, we were sent home that evening. We stepped out of the hospital and into the cold of December, forced to return to our lives and jumble everything together for a new normal. I was discharged with no pain relief, after being told that there was nothing I could take if I wanted to breastfeed my baby. I didn't want to breastfeed my baby! I'd done it because they told me to, held him to my breast because they said he was hungry. I was going through all the motions but I felt nothing at all.
At home, I stood before the mirror in my bedroom and wept. Who was that woman? A tattoo of bruises snaking from her neck to her knees. Two angry scars slashed across her belly. Weak, broken, battered. I want to hold her and tell her that she's going to be ok, eventually. I want to rage and scream and cry for her. I want to go back and change it all.
But I cannot change anything now. Mistakes were made and I am starting to make peace with that. I am learning that the way I reacted to my son's birth and the early days of his life wasn't abnormal after all. I am accepting of the fact that I was not well. I was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, and I was in need of help. Help that I did not get. And I'm not alone.
Every year, up to 20,000 women go through a traumatic birth experience.* There is so much shame and guilt associated with birth trauma and too often women feel they are weak or abnormal for expressing their feelings. This has to stop! Health care providers need to be able to recognise when a woman is in need of support following her birth experience, and more needs to be done to give women the opportunity to speak out. I also believe that more needs to be done in the postnatal period.
The early days with your baby are so vitally important for bonding and establishing links between mother and child. After a traumatic birth it can be hard for women to feel a connection to their baby; it can be harder still to come to terms with being a mother when a baby is born under general anaesthetic. I know now that my reaction was not uncommon. What I needed back then was someone who understood. Someone who was able to spend some time listening to me, explaining what had happened and why. A birth reflections service is all well and good but some women are not able to ask for it. Health care providers need to recognise this and know when to offer additional support.
My son is almost eight years old. Six months ago I was given the official PTSD diagnosis. I've been through CBT therapy to try and find new ways to deal with the trauma of his birth and the early days of his life. Eight years is too long to wait. New mums need immediate support and help. New mums need compassion, kindness and respect. New mums need to know they are believed, they will be listened to and ultimately, they will be supported.
*Birth Trauma Association
Find out more about Birth Trauma Awareness Week and how Mumsnet is campaigning for Better Postnatal Care.
Guest posts
"Birth was supposed to be amazing, exhilarating and wondrous - not for me."
MumsnetGuestPosts · 14/08/2017 16:50
MaQueen thank god for your mum! I had a lovely first birth - OK it hurt like hell but DD1 appeared within 13 hours of the first contraction with me in the birth centre on a birthing stool and only TENS for relief. Even so I probably had mild and undiagnosed PND afterwards as I too have issues with hormonal sensitivity and progesterone.
DD2 was no doubt what many people would also consider a "lovely natural birth". But 13 years later I am still dealing with the aftermath. I knew to the hour when she was conceived as DH was working abroad. But no one would listen - not even the midwives giving me 1:1 care who had delivered DD1. So when she was 4 weeks overdue moving a hell of a lot less and they were all telling me that they would leave her another 2 weeks as she was only 9lbs I knew something was likely to go wrong and induced myself with castor oil. The five hours I was with the midwives were the worst of my life. I struggled to get labour going and spent my entire time panicking that they would send me home. They wouldn't do anything to help - I was puking and in enormous distress and they were just trying to get me to get into the birthing pool to calm me down. After arguing the toss for 4 hours and 59 minutes they finally agreed to break my waters and there was a baby on the floor seconds later that they failed to catch. I was very lucky as I had a healthy daughter but at 7lbs and way way off the scale for length she was starving and my milk never came in so I had nothing to feed her with, which I have now been told was probably due to the birth trauma. My memories are also of days of fog - not really realizing that this was my baby; not wanting to be with her. Six months later I was finally diagnosed with PND and when she was 11 months old I was admitted to hospital for 6 months due to my MH.
So MaQueen and OP these are for you 
. Please ignore all the judgy comments - many women on this thread would have seen my second birth as normal/enviable - short, no medical intervention, only gas and air - but the effects of not being listened to or believed by midwives who should have known better still haunts me and I still can't always quite believe that I ended up with a healthy teenager.
" telling women they are failures if they have interventions is not acceptable"
Do midwives do this? 
"I think the Royal College of Midwives have now realised their advice about a "normal" birth was incorrect and that every type of birth is normal"
Someone else who's picked up on the fake news story from the Times and Guardian this week. 
toclarify
RCM renamed and refocused their campaign to support and promote normal birth three years ago in recognition that the term 'normal' has values attached to it in our culture which have resulted in some women feeling judged when this term is used in relation to birth. Their new campaign is called 'Better Births' and while it still has the same focus on practices which will help mothers and midwives optimise the likelihood of a physiological birth, is also about good care in pregnancy and postnally as well.
They absolutely HAVE NOT dropped a core tenet of their role which is to protect and support the normal physiology of labour.
Very sorry your experience wasn't what you wanted OP However I agree with a lot of PPs that expectations of birth need to be managed properly. It might not go swimmingly. I planned home birth in a pool (first baby) which I nearly successfully did: full dilation with no pain relief. Then DD got stuck and wouldn't come out. We transferred to hospital, I had a spinal and episiotomy (the side incision into the buttock type not just a perineum snip) and DD was delivered with forceps. I was extremely grateful to the NHS staff who delivered her. By that time I was exhausted, had been in labour a long time and needed help. The surgeon explained DD's head was turned to the side which is why she had become stuck and told me this was not my fault. My hospital stay wasnt pleasant and mistakes were made there and also by people in my personal life, all of which made things harder for me. But whilst I didn't have the birth I planned I'm extremely grateful to have a healthy baby. I think that has to be the ultimate goal. I don't discount birth trauma at all though, it is very real. Our NHS needs more funding.
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A lot of ignorance on here about PTSD which is a medical condition that has been recognised (although given different names) for over a century. I had it myself although it was undiagnosed for over a decade. Thanks to that diagnosis I finally got appropriate counselling and it really has changed my life. The memory is still there but it has massively receded to the point where it is almost a normal memory now.
During my diagnosis and treatment I learned that it isn't even necessarily the most traumatic event you have experienced that can leave you with PTSD (it certainly wasn't the case for me). My psychologist said that he has treated people who had been through war traumas and were fine but had the condition after eg witnessing a nasty accident. So it isn't a case of strength or weakness or whatever but just that sometimes an event will happen that your brain deals with badly and there you are, you've got PTSD.
It also isn't something that can be dealt with by 'just getting on with it' or 'counting yourself lucky' - that actually exacerbates the distress because this event is crying out to be dealt with and ignoring it just makes it worse because every time you do that you are embedding unhealthy and ultimately harmful mechanisms.
Weirdly (it's the nature of the beast innit) I did have a horrible birth experience with one of mine and we were both very ill for some time and I did the nicu thing in all its grimness but that didn't leave me with trauma. But that's just how my memory has processed that information and I'm lucky that's the case. But having experienced PTSD brought on by a different event I have all sympathy for those affected by it through birth experiences and I hope you all eventually find your own ways out of this hellish condition.
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