PROCESSING THE TRAUMA OF BIRTH AND BECOMING A MUM.

On December 4th 2020, at 4:45AM my whole world changed forever. After 9 months of what can only be described as crippling anxiety (more on that in another post), an 8lb bundle of pure joy bounded out of my belly and into the world and I became a mum.

I fell pregnant right at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Which meant I had 9 full months at home to romanticise and plan what my birth would be like.

I prepared for labour studiously, devouring every positive birth book I could find. I would be fearless. I would be bold. I would carry the weight of the millions of women who came before me and birth my child ‘naturally’ (again, more on that later), in water, and without making a sound. I would breathe through the pain. I would not become the pain.

I created birth plans, attended antenatal classes, and made my husband learn what a Rebozo was.

I hired a TENS machine, meditated to find my safe place, and was so sure that when the time came, I would labour like a lioness. Midwives across Denmark would talk about me and how calm and collected I was.

I would be a model student in how to have a positive birth.

Safe to say, my birth did not go to plan.

My dreams of an unmedicated water birth quickly gave way to two weeks of pre-labour, an epidural (which didn’t work), an induction (which didn’t work), being stuck on a bed for constant monitoring, intrusive examinations by women who told me that ‘I was very tense’, and eventually, an emergency C-section.

By the time my tenacious little boy made his grand entrance into the world I had completely lost sight of the birth I’d hoped for. People were shoving things into me left, right and centre and I just didn’t even care any more.

Another monitoring wire? Bang it on. One more internal check? Head on in. A catheter? Be my guest.

My body was no longer my own and I was in so much pain that I just couldn’t think any more.

It took 2 weeks and 15 hours of labour (no, I’m not exaggerating, it really was that long) for my little boy to be born.

When he was eventually born, he was whisked away before I could even see him. After all that, my baby was taken from me (for good reason), before I could even process that he had come from me.

Let me tell you, there is nothing more traumatising that taking a baby away from a mother right after birth. Sometimes it has to be done, but the psychological impact of it has stayed with me since. I still can’t be away from my baby for too long without feeling anxious. It’s beyond me. It’s physiological.

And so, without diving too much into the specific details, it’s safe to say that I found my whole birth experience fairly traumatic. 6 months on, and I’m still not able to think about it without crying.

“But ok, the birth wasn’t ideal… but at least your baby was born safely, right?”

I can’t tell you how many people tried to comfort me by saying this.

As if I didn’t matter. As if the fact I’d been in extreme pain (both mentally and physically) for over a fortnight was inconsequential. As if that wouldn’t have some kind of lasting impact on me after birth.

And I get it. Of course the most important thing is that my baby was born safely. That not being the case doesn’t even bear thinking about.

But my experience also mattered. The fact that I’d suffered mattered. My fear and pain and heartache and trauma mattered.

I found myself post birth surging with all the normal hormones of a new mum, recovering from major surgery, unable to walk or lift my baby, and worst of all, felling like no-one was really acknowledging that I’d been thought something hard.

It wasn’t the start to motherhood I’d hoped for, and it left me feeling broken.

The myth of the natural birth

I just want to take a brief pause here to talk about why I think I struggled so much with how my birth turned out.

As I mentioned before, I’d spent a lot of time preparing for what was called a positive, natural birth.

That means an unmedicated birth without interventions. It means connecting with our natural instincts to do what my body was designed to do.

Not being able to birth my baby in the way I’d read about made me feel like half a woman. If I couldn’t do the most natural of things, then what did that say about me?

What a crock of sh*t, eh?

As if childbirth isn’t still one of the world’s leading causes of maternal deaths. As if any birth can be somehow unnatural. As if telling women to resist pain relief during labour is anything other that cruel and misogynistic. Let’s do all medical processes unmedicated if pain relief is so bad.

And so, at the heart of it, this is where I take most objection to my whole birth experience.

I went into that labour ward with my head filled of unrealistic and toxic expectations. I fought for 15 hours to birth a baby whose head was stuck because I didn’t want to have an “unnatural” birth. I didn’t want to admit I couldn’t do it.

As per the dogma of the positive birth movement, I didn’t allow myself to read any negative birth experiences. You’re not supposed to fill your head with negative thoughts about birth, which makes sense on paper. But when most births don’t go to plan, all that does is send the majority of women into the labour ward unprepared.

I wish I’d have read more stories like mine so that I wouldn’t have tried so hard to cling on to hopes of a different birth. I wish I’d known this type of birth is not just normal, but so common. And that actually the birth I’d envisaged is the rarity.

Births that go off-piste can still be positive if you enter that room with the right expectations.

So my message to any woman about to birth is this: Take the epidural if you need it. Make the decisions that are right for your body and baby and remember that any way you birth your baby is natural.

Moving forwards as a mum

I’m now six months on from this life-changing experience. My beautiful, gregarious, healthy, happy little boy is lying next to me as I type this, half sleeping-half chatting away in his dreams. I have to pinch myself sometimes to believe my luck.

Even though the birth was anything but what I’d hoped for, as I sit here on the other side of it all I feel so proud of myself and my son that we did it. We got through it together, even though it was really tough.

Even though he came out of my belly rather than my bits, he’s still hitting every milestone and doing all the things he should be. He’s not in any way affected by or aware of his entrance into the world (at least, not that I know of!).

So now I need to let go of my sadness and disappointment and move forwards, too. Being a mum is hard enough without carrying that sh*t around with you.

Cause really, birth is just the start of it all. All the unrealistic expectations you’re thrust into as a mum, that is. All the baby moons and baby bliss, the sheer wonder of it all.

Cause, while it is wondrous and there’s nothing about having my baby that I would change for a nanosecond, it’s also the single hardest thing I have ever EVER done.

There have been moments that I’ve been broken by this journey, and I’ll write about that candidly cause I think it’s important that you know it’s hard. Rewarding, illuminating, magical, but so unbelievably hard.

But you know what that doesn’t make me? A bad person. Or worse, a bad mum.

Yes, that’s right: louder for the people at the back of the room!

Being vulnerable and finding it hard is completely normal. Incidentally, so is experiencing post natal depression, though I really do hope that never happens to you. I’ll be sharing my experiences of just that cause I can tell you, there’s no lonelier place in the world than feeling depressed and like a bad mum because of it.

So to anyone who needs to hear it: you’re doing an amazing job. In spite of how hard you find it, you’re doing an absolutely amazing job. It’s no mean feat to continue giving selflessly even when you feel you’ve nothing to give.

So, here’s my little safe space. A corner of the internet to be frank and honest about the grizzly bits. The grey bits. The jagged edges. It’s not all like that of course (far from it!), but they exist. So let’s honour them.

No matter who you are, how you’re finding it or where you’re at right now, I’m sending you a hug, mama. God knows we all need one every now and then.

Dani xxx