My Childbirth Experience Triggered PND and PTSD

What seems like just yesterday I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. He was a gorgeous baby, perfect in every way, my husband and I had wanted to start a family as soon as we’d been married but had waited 5 years, so we were so excited to be finally pregnant and could not wait to meet our baby. This should have been the best time of our lives, the realisation of our dream to have a child of our own was happening, but it was the beginning of a nightmare instead.

Now, 10 years later I have a diagnosis of PTSD, but at the time I was unprepared for how this was going to affect me, and my first steps into parenthood.

The labor I’d hoped and planned for was a natural, drug free delivery with just my midwife and husband for support. As a young woman who had experienced a lot of trauma in the past and was incredibly shy about my body, I knew my limits and that this gentle and private approach was going to be an important part of the journey into parenthood for me. We had meticulously prepared and written a detailed birth plan, and discussed the specifics with our midwives who were happy to assist us to have the birth I was hoping for.

However, as most best laid plans go, especially birth plans, it was not to be. 46 hours of labour, revolving door of midwives and doctors as their shifts started and finished, being moved from a birthing suite to a stark and frighteningly clinical delivery room, an unwanted epidural that scared me deeply, obstetric support, and then a frantic rush to theatre.

There I found myself surrounded by a room filled with doctors, nurses, and other medical and surgical staff, I was terrified and felt powerless. In the time it took to get the spinal block working my baby had moved and surgery was no longer an option. What followed left me so physically and emotionally beaten up that I can still hear the Doctor yelling instructions at my midwife and others when I close my eyes, and still remember the gasp of horror when the physio visited me a couple of days later.

I really want to say here though that this experience wasn’t the doctors, or the nurses, or the other medical staff’s fault, they were amazing, kind, lovely people who were doing the best they could to get us both through the delivery safe and sound. They also were not aware that I was a trauma victim, I doubt their treatment could have been different even if they had been, emergencies are rarely focused on protecting a person’s dignity, but on preserving life. But the loss of power and autonomy triggered me badly and catapulted me into the depths of darkness which I spent the years following this trying to drag myself out of.

When my beautiful, safe, healthy baby was placed to my breast, instead of a surge of love, I felt overwhelmed with horror and sickness. I could barely handle the touch of his tiny hand against my skin. I wanted to rewind back the months and stop it all from ever eventuating.

In hindsight I know I was in shock. I remember that I couldn’t stop shaking, and even though I’d not ended up
having a c-section, I spent what seemed like forever in recovery; with warm blankets being put over me and being checked by kindly nurses, my head was spinning and I couldn’t breathe properly. That time became a blur, but I remember my darling husband sitting at my side, holding our baby, looking shocked and relieved.

We struggled through, my darling little boy cried all the time, he probably had a headache from his eventful journey into the world. I struggled with healing, my milk supply, and breast feeding was just another horror to add to my quickly declining mental health.

Aren’t all mum’s meant to love the bond of feeding and nurturing their newborn child? What was wrong with me?

Every time I tried to feed our son I wanted to be ill from the feelings of revulsion it brought up inside me. This in turn spiked deep feelings of shame and guilt. I constantly questioned and berated myself. Aren’t all mum’s meant to love the bond of feeding and nurturing their newborn child? What was wrong with me? After all my dream was to have a baby, why was I not blissfully happy?

My dear husband was left to hold us all together. And he tried, he tried so incredibly hard, to do everything and be everything to the both of us. He changed nappies, liaised with the nurses and the doctors, took notes from the physiotherapist, and the lactation consultants, and spent hours each night walking up and down the halls rocking our infant son so that I could sleep. Almost 11 years on, he leaves the room when a birth scene comes on the TV, that time in our lives traumatised him too as he watched in horror powerless to help.

We checked out of hospital on day 5, much to the surprise and disapproval of our lovely midwives. I had hoped to feel better when we went home but instead it just got worse and worse.

Once my husband had to return back to work, things truly fell apart. When he left for work each day I would cry and question how i could get through the next few hours without him. When our tiny son went for a nap, I would sit alone on the kitchen floor, or the bottom of the shower with a knife to my wrist and cry and pray, and cry and pray some more. I prayed for the courage to hold on, because having experienced the pain of losing someone you love to suicide, I knew that as desperate as I was to leave this all behind, the pain would only just be starting for my
husband, for my son, for the rest of my family.

I also prayed for death, for my to close my eyes and just cease to exist.

One day I heard a story on the news about another mum who lived nearby who had succumbed to her battle with PND and taken her life. It was a tragic story, but I felt envious, of all the things to feel! I envied her because she didn’t have to keep struggling through each day anymore, she was safe and gone. Her pain was over.

I slowly cut myself off from family and friends. I was so exhausted that I didn’t have the energy or desire to be with people, but mostly because catching up for coffee meant I would need to leave the house, and the car was just another tool which I would possibly use to end my pain. I imagined driving into a tree or rock wall every time I got into the car alone.

Through all this, all these dark and desperate thoughts and weeks, not once was my child in danger of anything except a mother who was living in some kind of nightmarish haze. He was fed, I had needed to stop breast feeding as I could not move past the revulsion, but instead expressed all his food for 6 whole months. He was cared for, I read books, and sang him songs, danced with him, took him for walks, and took him to playgroup. It was the moment he went into his cot that I could let myself feel all the pain, let myself wallow in its darkness. People who are
depressed are not automatically selfish or bad parents who neglect their babies.

Others I knew were experiencing depression too, women I’d met over the previous months. They reached out and told others they weren’t coping, they got support, family and friends rallied around them, some went to hospital for short stays to help them get rest and cope with their illness, to recover for themselves and their families.

No one noticed me falling apart. I’d managed so carefully to hide my illness from everyone, even my husband, my family, our friends. People kept complimenting me on being so well put together! Friends and strangers told me that I was a great mum, so relaxed and had everything figured out. Inside my brain was a voice that screamed “Seriously? Can’t you figure out anything, why can’t you see. I need you to help me!”.

I was desperate for someone to ask me if I was okay, really ask, force me to tell them the truth, but all I could bring myself to do was force a bright smile and thank them, terrified that they would see through the illusion.

It was 6 months on before I finally admitted that I could not cope and let down my guard enough to tell my husband that I was not “just tired”, and he took me to our doctor.

My postnatal depression was the supersized version of the underlying depression and trauma I’d been carrying around for years

It took a long time to get over the worst of the depression, and the mental scars from that time will last forever. My postnatal depression was the supersized version of the underlying depression and trauma I’d been carrying around for years, and that still remains. But I am thankful that I get to live to tell the story, my children still have their mother.

Please ask those you love if they are okay, really ask them, look in their eyes and ask them. That way they will know you really mean it, you may need to ask multiple times, but thankfully these words don’t cost by the letter.

Sometimes those who seem to be doing great are just the best at putting on a mask

Ask someone who seems fine…
Ask someone who looks “put together”…
Ask someone who appears they have everything going for them…

Sometimes those who seem to be doing great are just the best at putting on a mask, scared to show the cracks or feeling unworthy of the help they so desperately need. That was the case for me, I know it has been the same for others.

If you are struggling through the fog of depression, remember each of us has something to give to this world, each of us is valuable, that includes YOU. You can get through this, you can start to heal from PTSD, and PND, it takes time and courage but if I can do this, you could do it too!

Please don’t wait for someone to ask. Reach out.