Feelings!

[Plouise1]

Hi everyone,

This is the first time I’ve posted on something like this so I’m feeling a bit nervous....

My daughter was born at 34 weeks, we spent 2 weeks on Nicu then was re admitted for another. I thought I had dealt with the feelings etc that arose from this until now. My best friend has just had a baby (very healthy and well) but it’s really thrown me and I’m struggling to get myself together. I’m annoyed at myself for feeling upset as my daughter is 10 months and doing amazingly well. It’s brought up so many feelings for me though to the point that I don’t know if I can actually face going into hospital to visit my friend. I feel awful about this and really don’t want to feel this way. And totally understand that’s it’s about my friend right now and not me! It’s like his birth has taken me straight back to that time and I just can’t seem to get myself together! I just wondered if anyone else had experienced similar feelings as it’s making me feel very isolated as my family/friends just don’t seem to get it.
I really hope it’s not just me!
Louise
X

I understand how you feel; two people close to me have recently had babies full term and healthy and I felt a lot of sadness and some jealousy that I hadn’t and hadn’t had the experiences they had. It was hard to compare our experiences as mine were so different and when they were waiting for their babies to arrive etc I felt very odd about it .
I did find myself forgetting that it’s tough on every new Mum because my experiences were so traumatic so I did try to remind myself of that.
I strongly feel that premature birth evokes a lot of feelings of loss (of having a full term pregnancy/newborn visitors/general post birth experience) and it’s helathy to acknowledge that.

I can totally relate! I had a 29 weeker in April last year and, while he is fine now, we had a very rough start and spent 8 weeks in hospital during which time he needed unique brain surgery and it wasn't clear he would survive. This was after a very hard pregnancy during which I suffered sevear HG and was very unwell.
Anyway, my friend has just had a healthy full-time baby. She had a few small bleeds during her pregnancy and this really damaged her mental health as she became really anxious for the rest of the pregnancy. Her baby has a touch of jaundice and she suffered a bleed after the birth.
She's just been telling me how she feels like 'everything that could go wrong has gone wrong' and I'm finding it very hard to hear. All the things she's been through were things i went through too but they were so minor in the scheme of things that they barely made the radar! I would never say any of this to her but I do feel jealous, angry and resentful that my pregnancy and birth was so traumatic in comparison but I have to just be supportive. She cut herself off from me and rarely spoke to me throughout her pregnancy because she was worried about her own pregnancy, which I can totally understand, but she became pregnant a month after my son was born so has missed the hardest year of my life completely and now I'm finding it hard to put myself in her shoes and try to understand that what she's going through is very hard for her.
When you've had a prem baby and been around other prem babies and parents you have your eyes opened to all the things that can go wrong that it's hard to understand how having a full-term, healthy baby can be hard too.