Birth Trauma

Trauma (noun) ‘a deeply distressing or disturbing experience’

Birth trauma is real. 

Like many women, my birthing experience didn’t go the way I’d imagined. I had done the work to prepare, more than most of the other mums-to-be that I knew. I had invested in a Hypnobirthing course which taught me that women’s bodies are made to birth babies and that birth can be a beautiful and calm experience. Things did not go to plan.

This is my experience with birth trauma.

My pregnancy was okay, not all sunshine and rainbows but not horrendous either. I enjoyed it for the most part. 

The labour…

My birthing experience started with a hind water leak late Tuesday evening, I had called the hospital to notify them I may be in soon, thinking I would progress from there. Overnight and the next morning I had very slight tightenings, but nothing really kicked off. I headed to the hospital about 5pm on a Wednesday arvo. At this point, I had a leak for roughly 24 hours. When a woman has a leak without progression the hospital wants to start with IV antibiotics and induce the labour with oxytocin, as the doctors are worried about infection.

I declined oxytocin on arrival and chose for my water to be broken manually to try get the ball rolling. The lovely midwife I had throughout the night bought me more time than what the doctor wanted to give. I was given 4 hours, after that passed, I asked again for more time. Which they reluctantly gave me. 

8 hours after my arrival, with only slight tightenings, I agreed to oxytocin. This intensified tightenings but I was only 1cm dilated, another 4hrs later. Oxytocin was increased, after the increase, tightenings became unbearable. My body was not ready and it was being forced into labour. I tried the gas (so did Luke) but by the next morning, I opted to have an epidural. This was around 8am. This whole time I was hooked up to a foetal monitor and getting my temperature taken every 15 minutes. No rest, no peace, unable to be in the birthing pool due to the IV drip, I couldn’t even listen to my whole hypnobirthing track uninterrupted. 

The epidural procedure took a few attempts before it was put in correctly - I was getting shooting pains down my right leg with the first two attempts. It hadn’t crossed my mind before but a big needle in your spine WHILE YOU ARE HAVING CONTRACTIONS… why had I not thought of that?!

The epidural was sweet relief, I got some sleep and so did Luke. And it meant they were able to bump up the oxytocin even more. 2cm dilated. 

Around 11am I told the midwife I was feeling some pressure, she assured me I was not ready and I wasn’t going to get checked until 1.30pm. Luke went off to check on the animals, at 1.15pm they checked and said.. ‘oh we weren’t expecting that, we are ready’. I called Luke who was on his way back - he ran from the car park and was there for 1.30pm when we started pushing about 5 minutes later. 

Bit of background info on epidurals - you get a button which releases medication. They have a timer on it so you can only release medication every 15-20 minutes, so you don’t over do it. To start, you smash that button. But then I chose to hold off, I wanted to experience the feeling of tightenings, just not the full extent. Keep this in mind.

So when it came to the pushing, I could feel the contractions coming before the midwives could see on the monitor. Luke, bless him said ‘It’s time to breathe this baby down’ (hypnobirthing reference), but we were way past that! 

So here I was, on my back, legs in stirrups pushing for all I was worth. Not the experience I imagined. Also, not how women bodies are designed to birth.

About 2pm the doctor comes in and says my baby is getting distressed. She said she is going to use forceps, because I have been pushing for an hour and not getting anywhere (in hindsight it was not an hour but I wasn’t aware of the time at this point). She gets everything ready and inserts the forceps. 

Next contraction I push and.. snip.. I felt she had performed an episiotomy. Without consent. The next contraction she pulled (me nearly off the table) as I pushed and we had our beautiful baby boy, Madoc at 2.16pm. Cue tears. I can still remember the look on Luke’s face, he was able to receive Doc and place him on my chest. Any mum will tell you, there is no better feeling. Doc went straight on the boob and started feeding. 

I got a sweet moment with him on my chest but then I started shaking uncontrollably. 

I couldn’t stop. Doc got taken away from me and given to Luke as a team rushed in. I had started haemorrhaging and was going into shock. I got given oxygen and fluids, they were pumping fluid through the IV so quickly it was burning up my arm. On the other arm they were trying to get another cannula in so they could get fluids in quicker, but weren’t having much success. My veins had flattened due to the blood loss and no joke I think they tried about 15 times without success. 

Mind you, while this is going on up top, the doctor was stitching me up down below. I remember saying I can feel it, over and over but she kept saying no you can’t, it’s just pressure you’re feeling. Recall me saying I could feel my contractions?

I was stabilised after about 30 minutes, then I finally got my baby back. 

I hadn’t registered I had a difficult birth until every.. single.. midwife.. that came to saw me said something along the lines of; ‘you had a rough time didn’t you’. I was in hospital for three nights, for both me, who needed an iron infusion and Doc who had jaundice. Then it started to sink in. 

Birth trauma symptoms can include; replaying the birth over and over again, inability to sleep due to memories, triggering flashbacks, irritability, intrusive thoughts, avoidance of the event, guilt, anxiety or detachment. 

I was ticking a few of those symptoms off. I felt guilt and shame to tell my hypnobirthing teacher of how my birth went. I avoided when people asked about the birth. I would replay it over and over. Even months later when Luke and I would go to ‘practise for another baby’ I would end up in tears, memories and emotions flooding back. 

People would say, at least the baby is healthy or at least you were able to birth vaginally etc. which didn’t help. It just made me feel like I was overreacting or somehow my feelings were unjustifiable. 

I didn’t want to believe I was one of the 1 in 3 women that consider their birth to be traumatic, I so badly didn’t want to be one of those women. But I was. It doesn’t change how much I love my son, or whether I want to have another one, or change how good I am of a mother. 

It took me a long time, a lot of reading, self reflection and meditation to move past it. Now I know it doesn’t define me as a mother. I had a traumatic birth and I am okay.  

I was reluctant to share my story, I didn’t want to feed the fear of birth. While you are pregnant you are fed horror story after horror story. The reality is some women have traumatic births and some women have the most magical, positive birthing experiences. I wrote the body of the blog about a year ago mostly for therapeutic reasons. I didn’t plan on sharing but I think it is important to help women feel less alone by sharing these sorts of experiences. 

If you have experience birth trauma and need help working through it, there is support out there. The Australasian Birth Trauma Association is a great place to start;  https://www.birthtrauma.org.au