Traumatic birth for baby and I

[DreamOn86]

Hi all. I wonder if anyone had went through the same experience.
4 months ago, i was being induced and after 2 days the labor started and within an hour i gabe birth.
baby was oxygen compromised .. her cord gases were borderline ( not very clear because they couldn’t determine if its for sure coming from the artery)
And all that because the midwife caring for me didnt think it was urgent to take me herself to the delivery suite. She kept me in the antenatal ward , waiting for someone to come and take me while i was screaming and begging for help:. Apparently that’s not urgent enough.
it hurts just talking about it.
4 months later, im mentally consumed and still not able to get over what happened. Im scared everyday that she s going to be unwell or have a seizure. I cry everyday many times.
the doctors think she s going to be fine but for some reason i don’t trust that. She was born and scored 8 at 1 min for Apgar score. Then 9 at 5 min.
im still following up with the hospital trying to know more about these cord gases but im so depressed and cannot keep positive.
3 years ago we had a late pregnancy termination because of malformation and to see this happening now.. its making me so ill.
i did everything right in my pregnancy. Did all things by the book and more!

anyone here went through a similar experience? And how did u manage?

Could you ask for a meeting with the maternity unit and ask for a breakdown of the birth and why they decided to make the decisions they did?
I'd also look into trauma therapy.

I don't have any other advice but just wanted to send a handhold xx

That sounds awful, I'm not surprised you're struggling to move on. Have you heard of the Birth Trauma Network? They're a voluntary group that helps women in your situation. Please do reach out to them - birth trauma is very real and you need support.

You could also talk to your GP or health visitor, who should be able to help you get the answers you need from the hospital. They will probably want to assess you for postnatal depression, which is a good idea.

Best of luck.

of course im depressed and anxious after what happened but what im going through is much more than this. Its a worry that she won’t be okay. Even though she s not showing any signs but who knows!
No trauma therapy will fix that, no medication either. I don’t know how to carry such a burden.

8 and 9 are very good scores.

Those are normal Apgar scores.

True, but they said that Apgar doesn’t predict long term health. Its the gases. Umbilical cord gases ate not routine tests. They did them in my case because she was very distressed and her heart deceleration lasted for sometIme and for another 20 min , they couldnt get numbers from the heart monitor

True, but doesn’t allow drs to
give long term prognosis for the baby

Hi OP, I’m sorry you’ve gone through this.

If you’re in England, google “maternal mental health service” and see if there is one in your area you can be referred to by your GP.

The ongoing worry you have about your DD’s health could definitely be helped by trauma therapy.

I'm sorry you didn't get the care you needed at the right time xx

I think it would help if someone could go through your notes and explain what the cord gas results mean for your baby. What they can be useful for is to see if it was the labour that caused baby to become stressed, or whether baby was struggling due to something in the pregnancy like pre-eclampsia.

Sometimes when babies are born quickly they do come out a bit shocked and need help with breathing initially. Also if you had any opiates (pethidine) that can sometimes mean baby needs a little help too.

I would contact the hospital and ask for a debrief to go through it all.

I'm sorry you're going through this. Birth PTSD is real.

My baby's apgar scores were 1 and we were told to say goodbye to her whilst she was transferred to another hospital in case she didn't make it, and also that if she did make it, they would need to assess the quality of life she would have after the treatment at a L3 NICU. She's now 22 months and thriving with no lasting neurological impacts from her birth (only physical scars). She has one more consultant check at 2 where I'm certain she will be signed off.

I was very worried about the long term health of my baby, but as they grow they show you how well they're doing, which I hope is the same for your baby. And no matter what doctors say, you get to know them and their capabilities, all whilst growing into being a parent yourself.

It's impossible not to be consumed with it, the worry as a parent anyway is off the scale anyway, but when you feel so helpless in the unknown it's unbearable, but from someone who painfully navigated the first year whilst trying to get through my own trauma of it, I can promise you time is the best healer. Don't be afraid to ask for help and trust your gut instincts. One thing I found very helpful was what a nicu nurse said to me 'what is happening right now, look around you and take that in because you can't control the future'. And when I feel worried about the unknown I look at her in that very moment (playing, sleeping, eating, watching TV etc) and I focus on that.

It's a helpful technique.

Wishing you the best x

Hi OP

my DS was born not breathing due to the time it took them to get him out after opening me up (elective CS due to previous cephalopelvic disproportion in a previous pregnancy). I still have very clear memories of it all but he’s 11 now and completely fine - never showed any deficit ever.

the birth sounds very traumatic. Please don’t dismiss the idea of some counselling or therapy.

Did the debrief and wasn't really helpful for me as basically the dr was trying to prove for me and for herself that they acted right and they really didnt. The decelations happened because the labor was so quick but i still waited fir 35 minutes for someone to come and take me!!
And by the time they moved ne and hoocked to heart monitor again, baby was already distressed .
we went through the cord gases also but its complicated bcz of the confusion between ben and artery.
thankfully she didn’t need help breathing
was her cord gases arent good. They show a compromise. Apparently its not clear to what level because of the reaults not being very conclusive abt where they came from.
its hard to explain. I had to spend hours trying to understand how this works. But the conclusion is that she was in a lot of distress that could have been all avoided

Labour and birth is a hypoxic event, babies are designed to adapt and cope with it (to a degree) during labour. Babies that are born in good condition and are able to adapt to life out of the womb (breathing spontaneously, maintaining their temperature etc) are babies that have not been affected by long term hypoxia. So the fact that your baby was born with good apgars and had no issues in the neonatal period show that they coped well with the ‘normal’ stress of birth.

Cord gases are usually taken as routine for any births that have been difficult or if there have been concerns. They are a tool and used as part of the bigger picture if baby had required any extra care. Also used for medico-legal cases. They aren’t diagnostic. The condition of your baby when born is far more telling than a cord gas result. A borderline gas may sound scary but is reflective of the stress of birth for the baby. Whilst there were issues recording the heart rate for a prolonged time a baby with absent or very low heart for 20 minutes wouldn’t have borderline gases so it suggests it was more of an issue with maintaining good contact with the CTG/Doppler than a genuine prolonged deceleration.

I would consider contacting your hospital for a debrief to go over your experience with their debrief team, they will be able to go over things with you and hopefully help you ease some of your worries.

Thank you for sharing your experience. Im sorry for what you had to go through and yes as patents, its hard anyway. And when such an event happens.. its just awful!! When i had the debrief i couldnt even ask all my questions because it was too painful for me to open the subject and ask the questions that might trigger more sadness and regrets in me. I feel sometimes that my heart is going to stop from the sadness and bitterness i feel while i need to take care of her at the same time.
this world is scary anyway and very cruel on all of us and just the thought that she might be unwell because some stupid decisions .. i cant get myself to accept and move on. Its so hard. Im stuck in the past repeating what happened in my head.. their voices my screams .. knowing that she s already unwell inside me omg Its so hard.

your story is full of hope and gives me courage . Im really happy that she s 22 months old now and she s doing well.

your doing an amazing job and noone knows how hard it is to carry on in this situation unless they have been through it. You are her angel.

thanks for sharing xxx

This is exactly how I felt and to an extent still do. It is the most lonely I've ever felt in my whole life, because even those who witnessed the situation can't understand the ongoing sadness and anger, or feeling of how unfair it was. We ended up in a 1 year investigation into our birth because of the critical failings we both suffered. The findings from our investigation meant the Trust had to change their practices in several ways, one of it was 'mothers voice' and empowering midwives to stick up for labouring mothers against consultants more, including training on the actual rules of what women are entitled to (I asked for c section multiple times over my 4 day induction due to gut feeling baby was unwell and I couldn't cope). As well as many other things.

Whilst I'm so pleased this should help other women, I feel so sad it was me and my daughter who had to go through it all to make these changes.

I promise, in time it does become easier to think about and cope with. 4 months is soooooo early!!! It wasn't until around 11 months that I started to feel better.

All I will say is, not everyone deserves to know your story and people will disappoint you in their support. But you need to put yourself and your daughter first and protect your feelings, even if that means not talking about it with certain people

Op from what you describe about feeling stuck and it repeating over and over. I would suggest you look at Rewind therapy. What it does is it teaches you how to not keep the loop going. How to get through the Rewind loop (hence the name) it doesn't dismiss the trauma or the impact just teaches you how to not be stuck there.

Once you are out of that loop you may decide some other form of counselling could help. Some do others do not.

I had a traumatic birth with my son 21 years ago. The anger and betrayal I felt still sits with me now. Like you I found the debrief was focused on them ensuring they were kept squeaky clean. I needed them to acknowledge faults had occurred and they would look to ensure this didn't happen again. I also needed them to acknowledge the birth was traumatic for me. My son was a 4 apgar score and stopped breathing when he was a few minutes old. Was rushed to another room and thankfully sucktioned and sorted, but it was scary and traumatic. At 21 He is a almost 6 feet tall rugby player who is amazing and doing well at uni.

When I read posts like yours I can still recall the anger and betrayal. It never fully leaves you. It no longer consumes me. A lot of counselling and support and kindness from friends who got it has helped with this.

I was induced with my daughter and needed forceps intervention due to shoulder dystocia. When she was finally born I didn't hear her cry. It was silence. They didn't bring her to me and she was taken swiftly away to NICU. At the time, I was told she was 'shocked' due to the quick birth and they were just taken her to NICU as a precaution. Fine.

Seven hours later, I was taken up to see her (after finally sleeping for a little bit as had been in the induction process for 2.5 days) and was told she had seizures during the night. This eventually led to a diagnosis of bacterial meningitis, with a MRI showing she had brain infarcts (death) in part of her brain from the seizures.

The worst part, which I have never forgotten, is the doctor asking me "did I feel unwell at all in the lead up to my induction"

It's the what ifs that get you. What if I was unwell and dismissed it? Was it my fault? If I was more vigilant, would this have been caught and I would have been on anti-biotics which could have prevented all this?

Thankfully, despite everything my DD is an absolutely gem. If you put her in a line of other kids her age, you wouldn't choose her as the one to have suffered through everything at birth.

In my experience, the 'what if' voice never goes away. It just fades with time to the point it doesn't consume you. It is very early days for you OP, and honestly I would recommend trying a counsellor. I wish I had as the first year with my DD might not have been so bad with me beating myself up for not advocating for her and dwelling on how she might be affected in the future.

This is exactly how i feel.. so lonely inside and noone gets it. Even my husband he really want me to move on for the sake of the 3 of us and he seem more capable to do it and im stuck blaming myself for every single thing i did during labor.
i blame myself a lot but if i was surrounded by good people who prioritise the health of me and baby and what i was asking for over the guidelines they stick to.. we would have been in a good place now.
the reasons of why they didnt take me straight away are ridiculous and they should feel shame.. but they dont! In the debrief they defended everything they did, and in a nice way putting the blame on me because i didnt let the midwife examine me to see how dialated i am. And i was 10 cm and the contractions went from nothing to full blown that i couldnt sit still for her to examine me while begging her to do something !! She was saying i called them to come and there is noone!! They r finding u someone!! I was screaming over and over please do something!! I knew later that she could have taken me herself and helped me give birth.. It’s extremely painful to go from 3 cm to 10 within an hour, i was out of my mind .. no breaks between contractions .. she decided not to rush me and help me give birth bcz of some logistics and stupid guidelines!! How is this acceptable!
And i blame myself for not letting her but i was truly unwell and she should have knows …
i feel so hurt and let down!
the guilt i feel makes everything much worse in a way i feel its my mistake ..

and of course not everyone deserve to knkw the story. Most people don’t care honestly and the one who does, feel that i ve already taken my time and that i should have gotten over it by now xxx

Sorry to hear this. Its awful. Its the worst thing ever someone could face!! Seeing a tiny little creature coming out of u unwell.
Im glad he s 11 and doing well. Im still ay the beginning and still very far away from being reassured that she s fine

Im so sorry its such a hard experience also that u went through.
as a parent its hard not to blame yourself. And i just responded by a post now explaining why i also blame myself so much. If i had acted better maybe i would have been able to change things. But this doesn't change the fact that they let me and my baby down so bad!!!
im happy LO is doing good.
please dont blame yourself. You wouldnt have known. People sometimes feel
unwell for different reasons. It wouldn’t be fair to put the blame on urself.. u couldnt have known xx

Sorry to hear that. Must be very traumatic also!!
that's what happened in the debrief. I wasnt trying to judge anyone because as i said before i couldn’t question anything or any decision because of the feat that i would discover that im the one to blame.. so all i wanted is to he reassured that her results are reassuring and what dies her ecg means and her cord gases etc.. but the dr m seemed more focus to try and prove to me that they have done the right thing. At some point i asked her “ are you reassured?” And of course i meant about my LO health, she answered “ yes, im completely reassured that we have done the right thing and acted on time and made all the right decisions”
it hurts so much.. x

Apgar score between 7-10 is absolutely normal. I'm not sure what you are worried about? if it was a first baby midwives don't usually rush the process and most of us scream and shout in labour- i really doubt it has anything to do with your babies cord gasses. it doesn't sound like there is any issue here but I think you need to see doctor to evaluate for PND. I was very scared and anxious about my baby after birth for absolutely no reason at all.

Hi @DreamOn86 , im very sorry to hear about your traumatic experience. My DD had sepsis at birth and spent 2 weeks in NICU. I also feel like there are many unanswered questions from that time and i had very severe PPA and PND because of my experience at seeing her in the NICU. I also felt very lonely because even though there were other tricky births in our NCT group, none of them resulted in NICU stays.

I would consider seeking some specialist therapy. I did not and when i look back now, i feel my anxiety ruined that first year. Of course i will always worry about her, but i wish someone had helped me by giving me tools so that i could tell the difference between normal parental worry and when its not normal / trauma related from that time. I used to just cry whenever any asked about her birth - it was horrible. I couldnt process what had happened and i know my husband was really worried. I wish i had a professional i could have spoken to, to help me unpack all the guilt i felt (her sepsis was caused by GBS which she caught from me during the birth).

DD is now 2 and was discharged from neonatal outpatients just recently so we are hoping her experience had no long term impacts. But it is only really time that has helped me and you are still at the very beginning.

Cord gases were borderline for her having seizures and potentially other neurological issues. Even though her apgar was good, her blood tests shoe compromise. She was blue at birth.. so im not sure how you concluded that u doubt its about cord gases. Anyway, i hope she will be okay and no harm was caused, but doesnt mean that some normal practice is not putting people to danger.
And i know we all scream in labor, but what happened to me was a very rare thing when the cervix dialates from 2-3 to 10 in an extremely short term bcz of how conservative were the contractions.. and that should have been obvious because i wasnt having a break between one contractions and the other.. which caused LO not to be able to recover after the contractions.. so please before jumping to conclusions, maybe consider that you don’t know everything abt the incident.

Op, I mean this with absolute kindness, but you need to move on from this. Your baby sounds fine and as explained earlier on the thread, babies are built to be able to withstand the hypoxia of labour and being born with an APGAR of 9 is brilliant and nothing to worry about.
with regards to labour, midwives have to follow the guidelines to keep their PIN. They may sound silly to some but they are there for safety. If she had other women on the induction lounge then she can’t just leave to take you to labour suite. If you wouldn’t allow her to examine you she wasn’t to know you were in transition.

what would you have wanted differently? If you’d have gone to the labour suite straight away, your birth would probably have been similar anyway?

What would your ideal have been?