When Your Labor Experience Leaves You Angry (and Other Birth Trauma Stories)
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A friend somehow stumbled on Jack’s birth story a week or so ago and remarked how births are surprisingly traumatic for a lot of mothers, and how we should discuss it here — particularly how to deal when your labor experience leaves you angry. I agree — as I noted in that (extraordinarily long) post, Jack and I both came out fine in the end, but not without a few harrowing first days for me, in large part due to the feeling that the hospital kind of forgot about me. We couldn’t get a doctor to stay in the room for his birth, and then they stuck us in an isolated room and didn’t visit us for hours afterwards. I nearly passed out the first time I tried to go to the bathroom by myself because I didn’t know I was supposed to ring for the nurse; no one even mentioned that I should try to feed the baby every 90 minutes to establish a supply. Heck, I didn’t even speak to my up-to-that-point beloved OB/GYN — or anyone from her office — after the initial phone call of “Yup, sounds like labor, come to the hospital!”
I was angry at the whole labor experience for a very, very long time. I questioned myself — how could I have done it better? Had I been too complacent, too lazy — expecting that the hospital would treat a first-time mother and her child with kid gloves? And my doctor — I really had loved her and thought of her as a good friend. The fact that I didn’t see her or anyone from her office for the entire three days I was at the hospital — even after I called to complain about it the morning of my last day there — felt like a complete and total betrayal. One of the nurses even told me that my doctor had been in the hospital — on my floor — after I had delivered, and that she wondered why the doctor hadn’t come in to see me. The nurse’s words stung me deeply. Even this I look back on with cynicism, and think, well of COURSE your doctor doesn’t care about you on a personal level — you’re just a number to her; she has hundreds of patients.
The only thing that helped me recover from my birth experience trauma with Jack, honestly, was Harry’s birth, which went much better. I still haven’t finished writing that post, but briefly: my water broke at 5 AM, we were at the hospital by 8 AM, and he was born around 2:05 PM. I had switched hospitals (and doctors) for the birth, and saw not one but two doctors from my OB practice within 24 hours after birth; the hospital also had a lactation consultant making personal visits to each new mother, as well as breastfeeding classes at the hospital each day. They even had a sign up in the hallway telling mothers how many laps around the hallways counted as a quarter of a mile. It was 1000% better — and even then there were parts of it that stank, like when my nurse went on break in the middle of the night and a random, bitchy, judgy nurse insisted on inserting herself into the situation. Or when I decided to stay a second night at the hospital (on advice from another friend who’d just had her second), and I wished all night long that I could just sleep on the floor next to the baby because the high, wide hospital bed and baby incubator were way too much for me as I recovered.
My expectations were much lower this time around, but Harry’s birth helped me see that my lousy experience with Jack’s birth was largely due to external factors I couldn’t have controlled, along with the fact that, hey, it’s labor and delivery and a newborn, not a walk in the park.
Ladies, did your birth experiences leave you with some trauma, or — like me — self doubt? Have you discussed it in therapy? What helped you get over it? If you had more children after your first, how did you get the courage to go through the experience again — and how did you prepare?
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My first birth was extremely traumatic. I was working with a highly reputable birth center under the care of midwives. My water broke, unexpectedly, at just short of 24 weeks. Phone consultations with the midwives weren’t very helpful. I didn’t know my water had broken, and from what I was telling them they assumed I’d had an accident and told me to go home and rest. That was Wednesday afternoon, and they finally scheduled to see me on Friday morning. I was rushed by ambulance to a hospital and delivered by emergency c-section Friday afternoon. I was under the care of OBs I didn’t know, in a hospital I didn’t know. I was sick, my baby was in the NICU, and I was totally lost. The care my little received in the NICU was extremely good, but I felt like the nurses and doctors sort of avoided me – although I did see them on rounds. My LO didn’t survive, which added to the trauma of emergency birth and my own illness.
Needless to say, I had significant anxiety during my second pregnancy. I split my OB care between doctors in my small town and a high risk perinatologist out of town. The care I received from my perinatologist was excellent. He was direct and forthright, and never minced words. He was also very caring. We chose to deliver with him out of town because of the respect I had for him. The surgical team was prepared to work with me, they knew my medical history and were very understanding of my emotional state. He stopped in to visit me every day, although other patients of his said he rarely did post-natal care – his midwife colleague usually did all his post-natal care. We were at a new hospital, and I was so well cared for. My early-term kiddo didn’t want to latch and lactation consultants were very involved. We had a picture with us of our first child, and all the nurses asked about him. There is something very healing about having a positive birth experience after such trauma, and while any subsequent pregnancies will be nerve-wracking, I have the greatest confidence in my new doctor and the care his staff and the hospital provided.
I feel lucky to have had a very positive first birth experience. There was drama, of course: I went into labor 3.5 weeks early, my husband was across the country for work and there was snow on the roads. (I was in the southeast, so not an area that deals with snow well.) The OB on call was convinced that I was being dramatic and told me to stay home. (Spoiler alert: I was not being dramatic.) MIL was my coach during pushing and she cut the cord. It was not what I would have chosen, but I felt and still feel good about it. Even so, it took me a while to come to terms with the fact that my husband missed the birth. With my second, I planned more. I hired a doula earlier and made contingency plans. I had a birth plan. I wanted to go unmedicated, but didn’t do any real preparation beyond reading a lot of Ina May Gaskins. Contractions started around 4 pm the day before her due date and immediately knew they were serious. I was trying to time them and they were one minute apart already. We were at the hospital by 5:30 and she was born by 7. There was meconium in her fluid, so it was good that she came out fast. The nurses delivered her and the OB ran in about 15 minutes later. I was proud to have done it without pain meds, but shell-shocked. It took me a while to process the experience and bond with her. I feel like I’m finally OK with it a year later. No therapy, but I do think about it a lot and talk to many other women. It’s been particularly helpful to talk with other women who have had precipitous (3 hrs or less) births.
I won’t go into all the details, but, yes, I would say my birth/post-partum experience was somewhat traumatic. I spent a total of 10 days in the hospital, and it was really tough. One thing that bugged me about it was everyone saying, “Well at least the baby is healthy, that’s the most important thing.” Yes, the baby was healthy, but I wasn’t healthy, and I spent the better part of the first 2 weeks of my baby’s life sitting in the doctor’s office, the ER, and the hospital with no one knowing what to do with me, and it was incredibly difficult and demoralizing in addition to all the physical pain I was in. Yes, it would have been much worse in ways that I’m sure I can’t even fathom if something had been wrong with my baby, but it still just really sucked for me and my husband at the time. I know people were trying to cheer me up by saying that, but it would have been nice to have been validated too.
Have I gotten over it? Yes, I would say that I have in that I don’t dwell on it or feel actively upset about it now, 16 months later. In fact, at this distance, I actually have fond memories of how my friends rallied around me and my family during that time, and it makes me treasure and appreciate them even more than I already did. I have not had any other babies, but if I were to get pregnant again, I would seriously consider an elective c-section rather than a VBAC because I wouldn’t want to risk going through the same complications. If I had another very large or poorly positioned baby, I would almost certainly schedule a c-section.
One additional consideration is that I think my husband was pretty traumatized by our experience as well. I don’t really hear that issue addressed very often.
A topic very much on my mind as I approach the year anniversary of my traumatic birth (and the birthday of my wonderful children!). For me I had both the medical trauma (severe hemorrhaging post-partum that necessitated an ICU stay and being on a ventilator, plus a very painful procedure to remove a blot clot) and the neglect that Kat describes, which is endemic to NYC hospitals. I delivered at St Lukes Roosevelt which is particularly bad, but I don’t think it’s much better in other local hospitals (see – http://pix11.com/2015/04/27/the-harsh-realities-of-giving-birth-in-an-overcrowded-nyc-hospital/). For me, the weak link was the understaffed nurses, the first of whom was particularly horrific and ignored my serious symptoms until I got critical and another night left all the babies in the nursery behind the nursing station with no security. I could write a novel about my experience, but what has been most helpful is finding a community of others whom have been through it on facebook and pelvic floor PT for the physical issues. I am not planning on having any other children but would never do so in NYC again unless I needed a rare specialist.
Any thoughts on physical trauma of c section vs. v birth? I’m pregnant with my second and had a scheduled c section with my first. With first, couldn’t have gone better – had to plan a c section b/c of position of baby, but recovery was much easier than anticipated – walked within hours, narcotics for less than a week, no complications whatsoever.
I have the option of vbac with my current pregnancy, but a friend just required 6 hours of post natural- birth surgery to stitch everything back together – she can still barely sit, 2.5 months later. I know this isn’t typical, but it has me scared.
Also, first baby was 9 1/2 lbs and I’m normally a size 2.
Insights, anyone?
I too am wondering about VBAC versus planned c-section. Do any of you ladies have experience with VBACs? I had an emergency c-section with my first and it was traumatic. I had nightmares about it for months afterwards. I swore I would never go the c-section route again, but my sister-in-law recently terrified me with comments about the risk of VBACs. On the other hand, I tell myself that I should at least try for a vaginal birth because of the benefits to the baby. Thoughts?
Also, I (selfishly) wonder what my stomach will look like after 2 or more c-sections. Can anyone speak to this?
My birth experience was fine (labored at home, only pushed at the hospital), but I had almost exactly the same problem as Kat did about breastfeeding. I thought they would help me more with the schedule, pumping, etc – instead, the nurses treated me as if I was stupid for not knowing everything about nursing. The lactation consultants were fine – except that my kid was never awake to eat, so they never saw his latch. Thank god for the internet, which told me that it was normal for a baby who was a few weeks early to be very sleepy and not eat, and that I should pump every two hours and feed him a bottle so that the longer nipple stimulates his sucking reflex. NO ONE at the hospital told me that. They just said to keep trying to get him to eat from the breast and wouldn’t listen when I said he wouldn’t stay awake to eat. They didn’t tell me about pumping to establish my supply, or to rent or buy a breast pump. In retrospect, it sorted out relatively quickly, but I was so scared, sad, and mad about my baby being hungry and them not helping me that even thinking about it now makes me tear up.
It wasn’t that they ignored me – it was that they wouldn’t stop to listen to me and hear that my situation was out of the normal narrative. That was my first lesson that I know my baby and when something’s wrong.
I’ll write more later, but while my birth wasn’t overly traumatic, I was so grateful to have my mother there as well as my MIL, so at least someone in the room had a clue what was going on when we were left on our own for hours. I never got the doula thing until after that, when I realized that unless you hire a doula or bring your mother you often are left to your own devices and have to ring a nurse for help – and how are you supposed to know what’s “normal”?
For me, what went especially wrong with my was breastfeeding – and a huge part of it was because I am from a family that is of the “you don’t go to the doctor unless you are missing a limb” variety. It took until my son was almost 3 weeks old for me to finally stop saying “oh, it’s ok, we’re fine, everything is normal, the early days are rough for everyone” to say “this isn’t fine, it’s not normal, I’m so exhausted I can’t stop crying and why won’t this baby just gain some weight already, somebody please help me a lot more than what I’m getting now!”
If you are the strong, never really been sick type, who is eager to please, its hard to ask for help and say “no, actually, I’m not fine.” but it’s an important lesson to learn.
I had a generally positive labor and delivery experience, albeit not what I was hoping for (induced, vacuum, episiotomy). Our hospital was great with postpartum as well. But I have to say, every little comment the nurses and doctors make while you’re in labor stays with you, and can make or break the experience for you emotionally. My doctor wasn’t pleased with my reaction to pitocin and kept basically threatening me with a c-section if I didn’t dilate fast enough — I think his goal was to broach the subject so it wasn’t a surprise later on if it was needed, but it sounded like a threat to me and there wasn’t exactly anything I could do to dilate faster, being already on the max dose of pitocin for many hours. One of the nurses (otherwise great) also told the nurse she was handing me off to that I “can get anxious,” which made me think REALLY? What woman who’s been having contractions every two minutes for 15 hours and also has a high fever and is being threatened with a C-section is totally calm? These comments have really stuck with me, even months later.
My birth experience itself was relatively smooth (water broke, had a wanted epidural by choice early so was very comfortable), but I will echo all of the other comments about the nursing staff issues. I am not in NYC (larger city, generally good hospitals) and I was appalled at how poorly the nurses treated me. I was prepared for the post-birth kneading of my belly, but the other manhandling of my boobs and lady parts? Not so much. It was as though everything they did they were annoyed with having to do. And I will never ever consent to a student nurse being part of the experience again. The worst part for me was that right after birth, after the catheter came out and I had used the restroom, the nurse sat me on a bench in the birthing room and then left. For 4 hours. Being new parents, and having been up all night the night before, neither my husband nor I realized that was unusual. Turns out I was forgotten during a shift change. Like completely forgotten. The new shift thought I was already in a post-partum room.
My first birth was very traumatic to me. I went into pre-term labor at 31 weeks and they couldn’t stop it. I was in denial the whole (short) labor that he was going to be born that night. My OB didn’t make it in time, but the room was full of doctors and nurses anticipating my preemie. They whisked him away to the NICU after I just had a quick glimpse. He seemed to be doing well, until he was 10 days old and came down with a serious intestinal problem that needed emergency surgery. Three surgeries, 10 weeks in the NICU, and nearly dying on me three times was a LOT to handle. I was super shell-shocked about the whole experience. (I’m tearing up writing this, actually.) But he is fine! And so dear to me.
Fast forward a few years, and I am ready to it again… and miscarry at 11 weeks, after seeing the heartbeat. So now I am just paranoid about pregnancy. I saw a high risk doctor for my next pregnancy, but was pretty much a basket case the whole time. And my daughter arrived at 35 weeks, just a few days after my son’s birthday. I was in labor for less than 90 minutes and nearly delivered on the side of the road, with my son in the car. My OB didn’t make it to this birth, either! And she went off to the NICU, but only for only a week… They are 7 & 3, and I have perspective now. I do notice that I get melancholy about a week before their birthdays. It gets better with every year, but it still hurts. And I am jealous of women who get to have “normal” births, because that just will never be my story.
My first baby is 12 weeks old, so I feel like I have enough distance to reflect without glossing over bad parts (I feel like your memory does this with time). Compared to a lot of the stories here, my birth went great- natural vaginal birth, no serious medical issues, hospital was good and offered nursing support (Shady Grove in Rockville, MD for DC area folks). I started having contractions around midnight so, like Kat, I went into this on little to no sleep. Got to the hospital around 9:30 am doing good and 8 cm dilated. Yippee, I thought, baby will be out by noon! Not so much. I labored all afternoon barely seeing my midwife because she had like 4 other patients delivering that day (not her fault, but it sucked). My water would not break. At around 3:30-4, I was exhausted and hungry but too nauseous to eat or drink. We sent for the midwife to discuss pain relief options (aka epidural please!!!). She came in, checked me and said I was fully dilated just needed my water to break and it would be time to push. She essentially talked me out of the epidural by saying look, you made it this far, no point in it now. She had me labor in a certain position for a while, then get in the shower for 30 min, then if my water still hadn’t broken she would break it. I did that, my water finally broke in the shower- which was heavenly and gave me the energy I needed to do the deep squat necessary to break that damn water. Then it was time to push and he was born a little after 6pm. He came out with an arm over his head and caused labial tearing necessitating stitches (though minimal pereneal tearing). I lost a lot of blood and needed iv fluids and close monitoring, but ultimately nothing beyond that.
I had trouble getting the baby to latch, but the nurses were really helpful and supportive (I hit the call button at 3am for a nurse to help me get him to latch and she came promptly to help, no problem).
Lessons for next time: They’re gonna break my water earlier. That would have saved me hours of labor. Also agree with Kat to nap and go to bed early at the end there. It took me at least a full week-10 days to recover from the sleep deprivation alone. I could barely sleep at all in the hospital because they come interrupt you every 3 hours round the clock for something or another (pushing on uterus, checking blood pressure, tests for baby).
Also I might try an epidural next time… anyone who’s done it both ways and have thoughts on that? The pain was manageable but the combo of exhaustion + nausea + hot flashes/chills was really unbearable at the end there. Then again, if they had broken my water hours earlier, I think it would have been a better experience overall.
I’ll also say, even though nothing especially traumatic happened, I still feel like even a “normal” childbirth (especially without drugs- I don’t know what the epidural experience is) is physically traumatic. I feel mostly recovered now, just have some lingering hemorrhoids which were gone at 5 weeks but returned with a vengeance at 8 weeks and will not leave me the f*** alone. Right after I delivered I said “he’s going to be an only child!” and I meant it at the time, though I’ve already resigned myself to going through it at least once more. Basically I want to do it again, but this time switch places with my husband!
Your hospital experience was much, much different from mine, where nurses checked on me every few hours, checked the baby, and the doctor and lactation consultant came by every day. But I also think, especially for your first time, you really don’t know what to expect, either from your own body, or your baby, or from the medical/hospital standpoint, or how you will feel about things, and having a baby is a really big, difficult thing, but we have sort of been conditioned to think it will be this beautiful, natural experience, and leaving out the part where it’s like being thrown into a pool with your clothes on in a place where you don’t speak the language. And that in a hospital sometimes there are bigger emergencies, and with a fairly normal labor you aren’t a priority, even though it is a really big deal for you obviously. And to feel like you did everything you could to prepare but still look back in frustration that you didn’t know any better.
For my first, it took forever, the laboring was pretty similar to yours, and I kept asking the nurse what we should do (to expedite labor or relieve pain), and she was like, well what do you want to do? And I said, I don’t know, I’ve never done this before, what should I do? It was also really physically traumatizing, and I realized later that I was actually sick with a terrible virus through a lot of it, and that’s part of why I felt so terrible afterwards. Because of my fever they gave me antibiotics, and the baby antibiotics and sent him to the NICU, and I remember the doctor trying to explain why they sent baby to the NICU and I was so exhausted I was telling myself, this is important, you have to listen to him, and it taking sooo much effort to understand the words coming out of his mouth.
I have been angry about my experience giving birth too, but I’ve been struggling with why – I had great nursing and doctor care (a nurse and my doula stayed by my side the entire labor, and my doctor was there for the entire 3+ hours of pushing), the hospital was comfortable, there were LC’s and a few angel nurses who taught me so much about nursing and baby management. I did end up pushing for an hour and a half on a surgical table in the OR with the doctor suggesting that an emergency C section might be imminent, and my kiddo was whisked off to the NICU for an hour while I got stitched up, so there was some sense of fear and crisis to all of it.
I think for me, the biggest trauma was having my soon-to-be-ex husband in the delivery room while I was going through this very intense, intimate, vulnerable experience. It felt like an intrusion or a violation. I still find myself embarrassed around him when I think about it. And while I’d love to experience a healing second birth, I think it’s unlikely given my age and current status as a single working mom.
Cat – I really appreciate these stories and think it’s incredibly valuable to share these experiences. Reading them, though, it’s a bit overwhelming (if I didn’t already have a kid, this thread might be enough to put me off it forever!). Could we do another thread at some point about things that went well or lessons learned or something along those lines? I get that the whole point of this post is to be able to discuss the hard parts, so I hope we can do another one to catch the good parts, too.