sex and my cs scar.

[knittakid]

10 weeks ago I had the most traumatic experience of my life (my life has been pretty nice), after planning a hb I had to be induced and ended up having an emcs, which was traumatic in many levels. I've had a de-brief and have begun accepting that the cs was necessary for our survival, but after feeling that my body failed in such a massive way I still cannot allow myself the posibility of sexual pleasure, and the times we've tried as soon as anything touches the scar I freak out and end up in tears. DH so far has been v understanding. How do I move on?

Bikerunsky thanks for posting, I've been thinking about what your friend said, and one of the hardest parts of all this is the feeling of guilt, guilt because I am complaining when everything is alright, guilt because instead of enjoying these first few weeks I've been crying and crying and in a bad mood, and feeling guilt when thinking that everything was a disaster, when it clearly wasn't.
undermyskin I'm so sorry for your loss, and I hope reading posts likemine don't upset you too much, I'm sorry, thanks so much for sharing with me.

confuddled I think she's a supervisor, she was great, spoke to one of the mws that caused part of my trauma and wrote a letter back. I don't know if asking for counseling would be apropriate as the problem is me, not ds or my relationship with him.

hoover that's interesting about bfing, although it isn't exactly the total lack of libido, is more me telling myself that my body doesnt deserve pleasure (if it can't work properly it surely can't play either... gosh those nuns seem to have got through to me after all!!!)

Counselling isn't about who is affected, it's about dealing with the affect. With Birth Trauma the problem isn't usually with the baby or the relationship with the baby, I know for me I was incredibly protective of my baby but was constantly terrified that something horrible was going to happen to her. I did have counselling with a mother and baby nurse, which helped.

I'm just, as in just taken a break, reading an article about Birth Trauma you may find interesting. It's written from a MW for other professionals but I'm finding it helps to put things straight, especially the difference between anger, BT and PND which are often all confused and just put as PND.

Please give yourself time.
I had a horrendous cs experience (if youre a regular you probably read it).
I think me and dh tried sex about 3-4 months after, and even then i was very consious of him on the scar and it was awkward for us both.
I dont think it got anywhere near normal until about 8 months after. Only now almost 2 years on do i feel back to normal.
Please see your GP and get some counselling and maybe medication, i was lucky and got referred to a ptsd clinic fairly quickly but i held off on the meds for over a year which with hindsight was silly.

What you ate feeling is totally norml, self hatred, guilt etc etc, it will pass and you will become you again

I agree with mosschops. It will pass and you will become you again, but you need to 'forgive yourself' first. Yuk, that sounds really American, I mean you just need to accept that what has happened has happened - and it wasn't your fault. How you go on from here though - that IS within your control so if you still feel this way in another few months then you might want to think more about some kind of counselling.

BTW it took us 5 months to have sex after DD was born. And then I think we we both thought "phew' that's over with and were too exhausted to go for it again for a long while. These days for us, it's less often but better when it does happen, but then neither of us have a huge sex drive.

mosschops30 glad you recovered after such a horrific experience! I, like you, don't really want medication, so it's interestng to see that you think that was silly...

betterwhen dh has a rather high sex drive, and although completely understanding, I also know he's desperate! at the moment he's going to have to just sit tight.

confounded am off to read that article, and I know you are right about the counseling thing.

betterwhenthesun I think having my family's predictions come true makes it actually harder, and makes me very scared of ever doing it again. Did you speak about it with your family?