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Birth Trauma Two Years On…..

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Two years ago today I was in ( very ) slow labour with our second daughter. I had already been in hospital for 3 days and I was more than a bit emotional, exhausted and anxious.

The following day at 8.30pm Chloe arrived. Perfect in every way. Considering all of the problems that we encountered during the pregnancy it actually felt like a bit of a miracle that she had arrived, not too early ( in fact ..late! ) and healthy.

 

Baby following birth trauma

Unfortunately the birth was incredibly traumatic. I can’t go over it again and you can read a little about it here but it was a dark period of time in my life, of course when Chloe arrived I was overwhelmed with joy that she was ok. She fed immediately, we bonded straight away and she was of course worth every bit of the torture I felt I had endured.

 

Chloe The difference between our first daughters birth and Chloe’s birth was that after Izzy arrived although birth had been difficult and long I knew I could do it again. After Chloe arrived I knew it would be impossible to ever do it again.

I assumed these feelings would pass and that the memories of the birth would fade along with my afterpains – why does nobody warn you of how bad the afterpains are after your second?!?

They didn’t. In fact they got worse. I was weepy all the time…I blamed my milk coming in, the baby blues and eventually the tiredness of having a baby and a toddler. The nightmares from the birth I put down to my unsettled sleep pattern as I woke to feed Chloe throughout the night.  The flashbacks and black thoughts were masked by the happiness and love I felt for our beautiful girls. Life should have been perfect.

I started to get counselling as I knew I needed it.

As weeks turned into months I knew that time should be fading my memories and stopping the way I felt but instead I just began to feel lower and lower until when Chloe got to just over 1 year old. I lost my appetite ( most unlike me) I was incredibly depressed and suddenly it was New Years Eve and I felt distraught. I had told myself in the lead up to Christmas  that a new year would bring a fresh start but instead I knew I needed to do something more.

As Chloe was now old enough I knew I could stop breastfeeding although I had wanted to continue much longer and I took medication to help myself. I tried several medicines as my body kept reacting violently to them until eventually my body let me keep one in my system. I also started therapy called EMDR which trains your brain to put traumatic thoughts into the depths of your memory so they are still there but not always on your mind.

It helped. The flashbacks lessened, the sleep paralysis started to become less frequent and my mood began to life. Not every day but at least some of them.

But I still don’t know if it will ever go. I can’t watch labour scenes in films or TV without getting upset. My sister in law had a baby 4 months ago and I was anxious every time she mentioned labour. While she was in labour I felt overwhelmed, checking in with my parents constantly to find how she was. This happened again a few days ago when one of my closest friends was giving birth. I messaged her all day long ( how it must have annoyed her ).

I hope one day this will be less of an issue for me.

Two years on I do feel like I’m getting there. The light is visible at the end of the tunnel. Chloe is two tomorrow and a wonderfully happy and utterly hilarious little girl. Along with her sister, Andrew and my parents and family my days are brightened and I’m supported and loved.

 

Family camp Bestival

It’s really important to know how difficult birth trauma can be and to support friends and family through it. Encourage them to get counselling and medication if needed. If you are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress following birth I can tell you it may not vanish but it really does get better.

 

Birth Trauma – What is it?

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A year ago I had no idea what birth trauma was.

To be honest even a few months ago I had no real idea about what it meant.

I knew I had a traumatic delivery and birth experience with Chloe. But that was it.

I knew how I felt but I didn’t realise that a LOT of other people felt the same way. I didn’t realise I wasn’t the odd one who felt this way. I’ve felt very strange about it all. I have 3 older sisters and a mum who have between them given birth to 16 children – none of them have had dark clouds of anxiety lingering over them and birth flashbacks almost daily. I started to feel it was just me. Maybe I was just weak, a bit useless. A bit of a wimp.

Recently I’ve read lots of articles on birth trauma and it’s a lot more widespread than I thought. I’ve also found that typically birth trauma occurs because of one particular thing which happens during or prior to the birth.

Yes of course birth trauma occurs on a serious level for people who experience stillbirth, health issues with their newborn or themselves which I imagine must be horrific and cannot comprehend how you deal with losing a child or a child having life threatening health issues BUT sometimes birth trauma happens for what others may consider minor reasons. After all birth is on most occasions a painful and possibly scary time so why is my experience any different to anyone else’s? Why was this birth so different to my first child’s birth? They were both hard. Both painful. Both resulted in wonderful and healthy children.

The Birth Trauma Organisation and other websites list the following as causes of birth trauma:

* A bad experience with a care giver or doctor.
* A woman is given an episiotomy without her consent.
* A traumatic or stressful pregnancy
*Not being fully informed of procedures or problems during the birth.
* Feeling out of control during or before the birth.
*Lengthy labour or short and very painful labour
*Induction
*Poor pain relief
*Feelings of loss of control
*High levels of medical intervention
*Traumatic or emergency deliveries, e.g. emergency caesarean section
*Impersonal treatment or problems with the staff attitudes
*Not being listened to
*Lack of information or explanation
*Lack of privacy and dignity
*Fear for baby’s safety
*Stillbirth
*Birth of a damaged baby (a disability resulting from birth trauma)
*Baby’s stay in SCBU/NICU
*Poor postnatal care
*Previous trauma (for example, in childhood, with a previous birth or domestic violence)

Out of the above list of 21 causes I experienced 11.

As you can see there are lots of reasons why it can occur but it can still be incredibly hard to get help or to begin to deal with it.

Doctors don’t seem to take it very seriously and health visitors (mine anyway) barely discussed it with me even though I openly on many occasions told them how I felt.

I had a very stressful pregnancy with a number of problems throughout. I was in hospital most weeks and it was a very scary period of my life. Externally I felt I was dealing with it well at the time but internally I wasn’t at all.

When I arrived in hospital for the last time 4 days prior to the birth I was already a bit of a mess but the beginning of the trauma in my mind was a particularly painful and frightening time with a consultant. She was cold, uncaring and treated me in a harsh way. I won’t go into details as they aren’t pleasant but I was left in a lot of pain and I was so very scared from that point on.

10 months on I think of that moment and I still want to cry. I can feel the pain as clearly as if it happened five minutes ago.

The only thing that has begun to help me is talking about it. With my mum, with Andrew, online friends and with a counsellor. I’ve found websites where people talk about their own experiences which I imagine will help some people but I still find it all a little raw and too hard to read. I can’t watch films with birth scenes and my love of One Born Every Minute has gone forever. There are lots of forms of support for people who have post natal depression and rightly so. I have in fact suffered with this myself this time and I’m grateful for that help but I don’t think there is enough support for women who have birth trauma. The repercussions of it being left untreated/not talked about are huge. Even for myself, someone who has openly discussed it I suffer with anxiety, nightmares and flashbacks.

So what can be done?

Talk about it. Blog about it. Raise awareness. If you have it, go and see someone. Don’t let it fester. If someone you know may be experiencing it, go and chat to them. Tell them there are people who can help. Blogs they can read. Websites which offer support.

Above all treat it as you would if someone had an injury. Because that’s what it is. It’s a trauma. An open wound which untreated will not heal. It’s not a silly thing or something to be embarrassed about. It’s serious and life changing. Admitting you have birth trauma does not mean you regret your child being born or that you love them any less.

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