My Birth Trauma Story a Decade Later

Here’s the whole truth about our latest addition. We did not wait for Mae in the way that so many wait for a baby. Even though she was born six years after her brother Weston, her timing entering into our world was perfect and unique. She’s a “Jewel” (a direct quote from our midwife Loretta!)

Everything with the timing was special. We never made the choice to have another child—she just happened!!

In the past, we had feelings of peace, that we might have one more baby—someday. So when we found out we were expecting, it just felt right.

Everything to do with her timing and arrival continued to be right for our family. From the time she was conceived until the day she was born was Devine.

As I sit down to write today, I just wanted to acknowledge Mae’s first birthday!

Happy Birthday baby Mae!

The First Year

I’ll tell you about Mae! (At least what I know about her. She’s blossoming!!) She has this connection to people. She wants to read what’s going on inside of them and feel all their feels.

Mae cares who is around. She loves that her brother sleeps in the same room as she does. Her purest soul loves food! Any food, but she adores a good soup like Indian Lentils with Potatoes. Mae likes to sing and repeats tunes. She’s pure. We often refer to her as our doll!

The day she was born she had two inches of blonde hair all over her head. (If you don’t have a frame of reference…two inches is long for a newborn!) That beautiful head, lifted right up, as she was lying on her belly. I pulled my phone out and started recording her as she moved her head around. I’ve gone back on rewatched the video where she amazingly moves her head around for at least 30 seconds.

I attribute her hair growth to my healthy eating, and the fact that I had hair as a baby. So I’m giving all the credit to me! (If you ask my husband, he’ll say that he willed it into existence!) I give Mae the credit for her strong neck. She is head-strong, determined and feisty with passionate strength!

In April we celebrated her birthday with family and a few friends who have been involved in Mae’s life for the first year!

---

A Note For the Reader:

As you get to know me, I have to disclose something. I’m a real advocate for Natural birth. Mae was born without intervention or additional medication. But even though I chose to have three natural births, it’s important to me that I remember and record my first unmedicated birth story.

---

First, the Why

Why did I choose natural child birth? Many of you may not relate to this. But natural child birth is as humanly real as it gets!

In my experience and, as natural childbirth is, there are usually difficult things to work through in, during, and after the process.

My life is usually led by a series of feelings. Those feelings are then linked to thoughts, which pushes towards reasoning–linking reason with strong conviction.

With so much conviction, I believed that having a child unmedicated was right for me.

Before I was married, I took a class that connected missing dots about intimacy for me. This class was taught by a midwife. It planted a seed for me to consider a natural child birthing experience. I recorded this experience in this blog post:

When I was pregnant with my first child, I had a friend who lived across the street from me, who gave me a book about HyponoBirthing®. The stories and ideas, that I read about in this book, resonated with me. There was another family friend that entered my life at the same time and did a couple of hypnosis sessions with me. It was so easy for me to release and feel ease as she was speaking. This book and these sessions led me to practicing deep breathing to music daily.

The Big Day, That Kept Me Up At Night

If I chose to write many stories, during my first pregnancy I could portray the overarching story, that this boy is a miracle, determined to be here! That is what makes this part of the story so difficult to write.

Everything that happened during birth, I believe, I brought it upon myself. I can now look at that young girl with compassion (I was 24 years old) and say, you deserve to heal. Somehow, someday it will all be made right. With a message of love, I get to give myself the mercy that I need.

Some the things happened because of lack of self awareness. But mostly I had been taught to stuff emotions down, and not say what I really think. It was a part of me that I had been practicing so long. So my true voice didn’t come along with me on that one a day that I needed it most.

After waiting, walking, praying, squatting, swimming, and waiting again I made a choice to go to the hospital for a scheduled induction a week after baby boy’s due date. The doctor told me that she would be in the hospital all night, the timing was right for me to be induced.

She recommended that I start with a vaginally inserted drug called CERVIDIL. It’s purpose is to promote the cervix or the inner vaginal opening to soften so it will be able to open more easily. I had agreed to go into the hospital at 7:00 PM. The promise made, was that I would receive the drug, and sleep through the night and the staff would start Pitocin (a synthetic hormone that is placed in the body through IV to start uterine contractions) in the morning.

I saw her once after I entered the hospital. She asked the nurse to start the CERVIDIL, AND THEN the doctor walked out the door…she didn’t come check on me again the whole night.

It didn’t take very long after receiving the CERVIDIL that my uterus was contracting. In fact it was contracting with such force and I wasn’t getting a break. It was aggressive and dangerous for the body, so the labor and delivery nurse made her best call, and gave me a shot of muscle relaxers. It was supposed to slow down the extreme reaction that my body had to the CERVIDIL. Then intense shaking and convulsions overtook my body.

The nurse again consulted with the doctor by phone and the doctor told her to give me another dose of CERVIDIL. The nurse was present with me, she had seen what the drug did to me, and the danger that it had put the baby in. We made a better judgement call to not do that to my body again.

I was shocked when they didn’t let me rest and recover from the intense event my body went through. Instead the nurse turned on the IV with Pitocin and I started the next phase of my labor journey. I was up all night as the wave of contractions passed through me. I tried to sleep, so the surges I was having were all in bed. It was extremely uncomfortable.

I was so disappointed. Through all of the physical stress, I never saw the doctor again until it was time for delivery.

I was in a dark room, in bed, my body working and moving and compressing all night.

I did have ear buds in and rhythmic music comforted me through the surges. I imagined that I was leading the orchestra. This is how I made it through each tightening and loosening action of the uterus.

Early in the morning I finally asked for a bath. I needed relief, a break, or a new position. As soon as I stepped into the tub I felt the need to push. My cervix had dilated to 10 cm quickly. This sensation was extreme for me!

As well as a shock to the nurse!

If only I would have had a little rebel in me, I would have not said anything and had my baby inside the bath tub. It was the perfect atmosphere. I was warm and could have easily entered a squat and allowed the the natural pressure of the contractions to guide my baby out.

BUT I followed the nurses rushed-command to get out of the bath. It was my first pregnancy. I didn’t know what I was doing and I followed ALL OF THE rules. (This specific hospital didn’t allow water births.)

Then the worst thing of all happened! THE WORST INVENTION EVER MADE FOR THE BIRTHING MOTHER…

They put me back into a bed and put my legs in stirrups. Stirrups DO NOT ASSIST GRAVITY.

Why, WHY didn’t anybody help me. Why was a young mother in labor, that was able to move, put back in bed and into stirrups. I will never know. I think it was just the doctor’s way of doing things. (She was back in the room by this time.) Was this a joke? I felt completely alone. There were no words, only frustration and rage that I held inside of my body.

I tried to push that BIG baby out. My stamina lasted about an hour. The nurses did a shift change during that time. The new nurse on shift kept doing her paperwork on the computer. I was so angry at her. She was more attentive to that DAMN computer then the sweating human in front of her.

My mom was there, she sat in the corner, maybe a little stunned. I think it was hard for her to watch, and she wanted to give me privacy. I can’t even describe the lack of human connection. Still, ten years later, there are NO words to describe how surreal.

No one asked me how I would naturally prefer to be positioned. It was patterns and commands that I recieved.

Later these words came up in my angry moods. Unsupported came up over and over again. I felt like I was prepared and no one else showed up for me. (With that description I would use the word victim to describe my core emotion.) A whole room, filled with people and not one knew how to think about what I was going through and what I would personally need.

At least the nurse the night before didn’t follow the doctor’s orders and insert another dose of CERVIDIL. (Thank you, nurse whoever you are!)

A monitor was tracking the baby’s heartbeat. After my his heart beat started fluctuating the doctor decided to do an episiotomy. I agreed, because I was out of energy. A small incision was made at the vaginal opening and the baby was born. He was eight and a half pounds and oh so long. He was large, but had this perfect face shape and adorable features.

***Heads up, if you’ve never given birth this part is graphic, but every women needs to know.

I would like to describe the worst thing, of all things that happened to me on my son’s birthday. (Maybe the worst thing that has ever happened to me.)

In order to stop bleeding, it is typical to continue Pitocin through the IV drip to help the uterus shrink. But no one ever told me that the nurse manually kneads a postpartum patient’s belly with their fist.

This is what happened to me after I had baby Scott.

There was no warning. I had no mental preparation, and worst of all no explanation. It was rough and aggressive. Again, I know this was necessary–but there’s a way pound a slab of beef in the factory and have no emotional connection or tie to it. This is a metaphor of how I was treated on Scott’s birthday.

I felt the sensation of leaving my body. Then minutes later convulsions started again as my body went into shock.

It is interesting to return to these memories and look at the photos that were taken in the hospital. In all of the photos I am smiling. How naive I look, not knowing the toll this experience would take on me physically.

In these pictures, I now see the girl with baggy eyelids, forcing her smile. I wish I could give her a hug. I wish someone would have held her and said, “It’s all going to be ok. One day this will make you stronger, more compassionate, a better caregiving and more self aware. Hopefully one day you can advocate and learn how to use your voice.”

I don’t dwell on these circumstances anymore. It has been 10 years. Wow, and this boy, he’s mature and tall, and he’s pretty great!

And the doctor, she retired ONE year after I had Scott.

And my heart really goes out to all those who deliver babies. (Unless the work/life balance is done right) they work long hours, often into the night.

The Truth about Healing

It took me eight years, and a ton of therapy, and a self-discovery journey that I never would have dreamed of, to teach me that healing is possible.

One thing that I do know, is time does not heal all wounds.

In the case of my birth trauma, my wounds would have stayed wounds, unless I became aware of how this night affected me. It invited me to enter a discovery process that helped me acknowledge the grief that I needed to go through in order to heal.

In this post I share more of the healing process, including the specific thoughts, feeling and circumstances that I found myself working through, as I addressed the trauma and emotional pain that was residing after this birth experience.

Below I list resources I have used or found through my own healing process.

I wanted to end this post with a photo of my two babies. My first, and my last.

This is a journey, and the journey will continue. But for now, I am glad that they have each other. I will continue to speak to Scott about the importance of us being together, and how it was a miracle that he was conceived. There’s a lot to be grateful for, but gratitude isn’t everything if you are suffering. I want anyone reading (and suffering) to know that. Please, if you are suffering, tell someone who will believe what you are feeling. This is my plea to you!

Until we meet,

Resources

My healing story: Healing From My Birth Trauma Experience

An Instagram account that encourages women to share their own birth trauma stories, in order to lessen the isolation or feelings of lonliness.

To find a pelvic floor specialist trained to release trauma left from birth:

A course by Peter Levine PHD, and Creator of Somatic Experiencing™.

A Step-by-Step Program for Restoring the Wisdom of the Body

Self-Discovery Questions

• What resources have you used to find a path of healing not mentioned here?

• Have you ever asked a loved one about the experience they had as they gave birth?

• Have you asked your spouse or partner (sibling or friend) how they felt as they witnessed someone they love go through something that was necessary but really hard?