Member-only story
Having my baby almost killed me… twice
The immediate and longer term dangers of a traumatic birth
I want to tell you about the arrival of my son. Our precious bundle we’d waited a long time for. I want to tell you about the day we both nearly died, and then the months afterwards where I spent a lot of time thinking I should have.
Pregnancy was straightforward and apart from the usual complaints, to all extents fairly easy. We were excited. My biggest worry was whether the babygrows I’d bought were too “boy-ish” if it was a girl, as we hadn’t found out what we were having at our 20 week scan. Okay okay, perhaps my actual biggest worry was about whether I might tear during birth — but you get the gist — we were, until this point, quite blissfully unaware of what lay ahead. Our son started to make his way into the world in the early hours of the morning, ten days ahead of schedule. It was just like they’d told us in antenatal classes. I felt strong, powerful and in control.
Then it all started to go wrong. There was too much pain, in the wrong places, at the wrong time. Contractions that never stopped. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. My mum had told me, “Don’t worry — the contractions hurt — but you get a break between them.” Nope. It continued like this for hours. Nobody listened, or at least nobody heard when I told them…
