"Birth was supposed to be amazing, exhilarating and wondrous - not for me."

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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.

[Out2pasture]

women are no longer told stories of how other women suffered how children were born damaged. frequently enough on mn comments a mil or mother might make about a traumatic experience is brushed off as unreasonable and erroneous. as a young girl I was told that Canadian cemeteries were "littered" with the bodies of women who died in childbirth. did it make my own experience better or worse who knows, I was simply grateful to bring a healthy newborn home.

[1moreRep]

i think it's worth noting that the nhs is at breaking point, so this is going to happen more and more.

i have "easy" fast labour but the maternity ward closed just after i arrived 6 years ago as they didn't have enough staff. i had to persuade them i have fast labours as they didn't believe me initially (3cm displayed so i don't blame them) then 30 mins later i delivered. if i would have left like they wanted me to my next hospital was an hour away

[1moreRep]

i have never been the to a maternity ward where the staff are lazy they are all working their arses off st breaking point with too much responsibility split between too few people. We can thank the tory voters for that

[2014newme]

People expecting birth to be joyous and all the other claptrap are naive and likely to be disappointed. People need to manage their own expectations better.
I had a difficult birth with lots of complications, emergency section, premature twins, I had to have a further operation and was in hospital for a month. It was traumatic and hard. However as I had no high expectations of some wondrous birth experience it was easier to deal with than it was for the op.
Maternity services need to improve drastically. But women need to get real as well.

[CoteDAzur]

Um... OP slept through an emergency Cesarean so didn't witness her baby exit her body. Was that the "birth trauma", then?

There must be a back story to this, from before the CS. Otherwise, it's hard not to feel this as an insult to those of us who have suffered birth trauma, some with grave and lifelong consequences (@theancientmarinader ).

[PumbletonWakeshaft]

I was admitted after my waters broke. I will never forget the maternity ward - it was awful with short-tempered staff who had no empathy at all - dark, full of screams and me rolling around in my own fluids and vomiting green bile. It was like hell.

I was induced 24 hours after my waters breaking, with Syntocinon as I was not dilating. I also had an epidural as I was so bloody exhausted and couldn't keep food down. However this all slowed things down even more, and 12 hours later I went in for EMCS. Unfortunately the topped up epidural was unsuccessful, they made 17 attempts at a spinal, and I ended up having a general anaesthetic. I lost a lot of blood - I was told DS was resuscitated at birth. Also, his cord had not been clamped properly and he had a significant post-birth blood loss, which my heroic paramedic DH dealt with amazingly.

What I still struggle with now, 18 months on, is how the NHS ante-natal classes I went to focused only on the "perfect birth" - ie vaginal, with instant skin-to-skin contact and did not even mention c-sections, complications and anything going awry, so I was really not prepared for what followed with me. I was in total shock at having a c-section, I don't think I still have really accepted it, but I do not think I would feel this way if my expectations from these classes hadn't been so far removed from the actual outcome.

My DH was the first person to see DS, I could not hold him for hours afterwards (GA did really odd things to me and I had panic attacks when I woke up). The "counselling" service offered by the hospital, was nothing of the sort and did not help with the emotional side of this at all, just read through my notes and told me 'their version'. I still struggle with the idea that I didn't give him the best start and somehow failed at birth. Even now, as I am TTC dc2, I will try and avoid the 'failure' of a c-section again as this is now the way I see it - rational thoughts aside - as this was the message I took from the ante-natal classes.

Funnily enough, when I spoke to other mums afterwards, most of them had traumatic birth stories too. There is a conspiracy of silence about this during pregnancy as people don't want to upset a mum-to-be, but personally I would rather have been prepared.

[Iliketeaagain]

You put this very eloquently OP.

I've recently been diagnosed with ptsd from birth trauma - 7 years after the birth. The flashbacks and nightmares restarted when I found out I was pregnant again.

Looking back, I had all the signs / symptoms after birth but because the HV only screened for PND, no health professional responded when I told them I had been having flashbacks and nightmares.

It has had long-standing consequences - I haven't had a smear test since before my DC was born and I stopped all my oral meds as I could not cope with going into the GP surgery, any medical intervention caused me to have nightmares for several days minimum.

It may be that HCPs are now more aware of it - my MW referred me for urgent CBT in the hope that I would be treated before this baby is born.

It's interesting that PP are saying that part of the issue is the unrealistic expectations of women. Going through my records as part of CBT demonstrated that mainly poor care and poor continuity of care (I was "cared" for by 19 or 20 different Midwifes during induction and saw 5 different doctors just during the induction) was the main factor for me - plus not being listened too and the feeling that much was done without my consent, including excessive internal examinations, even when I refused. When I was refused further interventions because I had had enough, I was told my baby might die (yet they refused me a c-section until day 6).

Experiencing birth trauma is a lonely place to be - you feel like you've failed at what is sold to pregnant women as "the most natural thing in the world". When you try to talk about it, you are told that you should be glad that you are both physically healthy.

To those who think that birth trauma is a result of a woman's unrealistic expectations - I'm glad that you have never had PTSD as a result of having your children, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

[Fabsmum]

Thank you for this.

I'm an NCT antenatal teacher and in the first session of every course I ask the question "What do you need for a birth to be ok, other than mum and baby getting through alive?" And that leads us to the issue of birth trauma.

It's very, very hard to talk about the possibility of birth trauma with pregnant women who are facing giving birth in a system where some aren't going to get one to one care, or be be cared for by midwives who are being pushed beyond their limits by understaffing, and overwork and who occasionally don't have the emotional or organisational resources to provide the sort of intense support that a woman having a challenging birth needs. Birth is hard enough as it is, without chucking in four day inductions, chaotic hospitals, being left alone through 3/4 of your labour because there is no space on the labour ward and you've been left waiting or wandering around the hospital in strong labour, after talking to a harassed midwife who is struggling to really hear what you're saying.

Something else which I'm really struggling with at the moment - I'm seeing rapidly increasing numbers of women having extremely difficult births- lots and lots of inductions, emergency c/s, forceps births. It's not unusual for me to have a group where all six mothers have been induced, where there'll be 3 emergency caesareans, one normal birth, a third degree tear, two forceps deliveries, a couple of PPH's, and two or three cases of tongue tie which sometimes go undiagnosed and untreated leading to horrible breastfeeding.

I've been teaching classes for 10 years and the number of complicated births has gone through the roof, though my understanding is that the big increase in intervention in birth over this time hasn't had any impact on the stillbirth rate, so I don't feel it's making babies any safer, and it's certainly not making women any healthier or safer.

I read this week's headlines about the failings of the normal birth agenda and I'm thinking 'what normal birth'? Nobody seems to get close to one these days. What I'm seeing in the area where I teach is a massive increase in defensive obstetrics. This particularly worries me because it's combined with understaffing and very busy hospitals, so women who are having many, many procedures during birth are sometimes being left in a very vulnerable state afterwards without appropriate support and care with postnatal recovery and breastfeeding. I'm now seeing mums who are experiencing PTSD from their postnatal care. I can't explain how awful some of the stories are that I hear. Each time I go to a reunion I have to brace myself for what I'm going to hear.

It's very, very distressing.

I feel so sorry for mums at the moment.

I also feel bloody sorry for midwives, who I suspect are also sometimes traumatised by what they are witnessing and by their inability to care for women in the way they know might help her best, because they are under so much pressure and having to practice defensively. Midwives are heroes, and I'm scared that what's currently going on - the understaffing of maternity units, the witch hunts and blame apportioning which is going on in the press at the moment, is going to drive them away from the profession. Then what will we do? Things are bad enough as they are.

[Fabsmum]

Would also add that I also see mums who've had what looks on paper like a straightforward birth, experiencing PTSD. They're often slower to recognise it for what it is afterwards.

Someone said to me at the weekend, "I thought I was a strong person, but what's happened to me has made me think that I'm not'. Which made me want to cry. I told her that she is strong, but some things are just too hard for anyone to bear.

[2014newme]

Tbh I could claim birth trauma but with twins who has the time for it!

[Iliketeaagain]

2014newme - it's exactly that type of attitude which is completely unhelpful for women who have experienced traumatic birth.

I didn't "have time" for PTSD either, but the flashbacks come to you in the middle of whatever you are doing.. changing a nappy and baby cries in a certain way, flashback to the crying in hospital when you asked for help and didn't get it. Take your baby for 6 week check, the interaction with medical professional means you flashback to the hospital. Have to take your dc to A&E 4 years later because they fall and break their arm - flashbacks and nightmares return because you are back at the hospital.

It's absolutely not related to whether or not you have "time" to claim the trauma. Quite frankly, I don't have time for it either, but deciding I don't have time unfortunately doesn't stop the flashbacks and nightmares I experience, if only it was so much easy as deciding I didn't have time for it - can't believe my psychologist hasn't used that as an evidenced based treatment

[Fabsmum]

2014newme - are you a man by any chance?

[2014newme]

No just someone who had a difficult birth, an additional operation afterwards and a month in hospital, 2 weeks of which was wired to a machine. 3 months further recovery with Daily nurse visits for 2 months.
I had 5 years of if though so perhaps I was so happy to finally have my babies that frankly everything else paled into insignificant. Also I never expected a joyous birth. As long as we all survived it alive it was a positive outcome for me.

[2014newme]

5 years of if.

[Fabsmum]

"Also I never expected a joyous birth. As long as we all survived it alive it was a positive outcome for me"

PTSD is a mental illness which arises from the experience of trauma. Having extremely low expectations of birth doesn't protect people from developing it.

[2014newme]

I know people with real ptsd believe me having a traumatic birth experience doesn't come close.
Put it in the rear view mirror you have a longed for child fgs.

[notangelinajolie]

Birth was supposed to be joyous. Birth was supposed to be happy. Birth was supposed to be amazing, exhilarating and wondrous!

Seriously? Who told you that!??

Are you in one of those happy clappy evangelical religious cults?

[Fabsmum]

2014 - you are either a troll or you're a bit bonkers. There's no place on this thread for that degree of ignorance.

[2014newme]

Exactly, deluded or naive. If you expect that you can only be disappointed in most cases.

[Fabsmum]

"Seriously? Who told you that!??"

My births were amazing, joyous and exhilarating, as well as long, painful and complicated.

Most people people find birth a joyful event, regardless of the pain or the difficulties. Most people don't emerge from it with severe emotional injury.

[Fabsmum]

"disappointed in most cases."

Yes - disappointed. Not emotionally ill and unable to function properly.

[Flowersinyourhair]

I had a crash section for my second child following a cord prolapse. This was an awful experience- massively painful and terrifying for us all and I was told that the team had 2 minutes to get my baby out before brain damage or worse was inevitable. However the team looking after me were amazing. My baby was born, healthy and perfect, while I slept under GA. I didn't see her for the first two hours of her life by which time she'd had a long chat with my dh!
I was asked numerous times afterwards if I was ok, whether I needed to talk it through etc and my answer then was what it is now. I'm fine. My baby is fine (better than fine- she's gorgeous!). The only thing that matters is that. Beautiful births with gentle music playing while babies emerge into the world are, I suspect, vanishingly rare. The only thing that I wanted from my baby's birth was my baby and I have that. Lucky me. There's many many people who can't say that sadly.

[DioneTheDiabolist]

2014, not all trauma results in PTSD. Yours did not, that doesn'the mean it'seems the same for all women.

[Fabsmum]

"There is so much shame and guilt associated with birth trauma"

Some of the responses here illustrate exactly the attitudes which leave traumatised women feeling like this. The idea that all you have to do to prevent PTSD is to have low expectations of birth, and the way to treat it is to keep reminding yourself that at least you and your baby are alive.

Jeeze, sorry OP that you're having to read some of these comments.

I'm getting off this thread because it's making me sad.

[SonicBoomBoom]

2014, some of what you say is insensitive at best. However, I think you do have a point with the expectation thing.

I had awful antenatal anxiety (constant intrusive thoughts multiple times a day of the moment they would tell me my baby had died, I couldn't have anyone talk about the baby, didn't buy a single thing for the baby, didn't want anyone to know I was pregnant because I couldn't believe the baby would make it). The further I got through my pregnancy, the more convinced I became that the baby (and/or I, although I didn't mind me dying) would die during the birth. It was awful being inside my head for those 9 months.

So I'd zero expectations of a straightforward birth. So when it was an induction, precipitous labour completely alone with no pain relief, then a red button emergency at the end (and resuscitated baby and major PPH for me), I genuinely lay there afterwards, with both baby and I alive, thinking it had been a roaring success.

It was in the days later when it started to dawn on me how not-normal it was, and how poor my care (pre-red button) was which had almost caused me to lose my baby.

I think I would be struggling now with it even more than I am, if I'd had any expectations of a normal straightforward birth.