If you had told me a few years ago that come late 2007 I would not only be planning for a third baby, but a homebirth too I think I would have fainted or laughed or just thought you were plain crazy.
Birth is horrible and dangerous dontcha know!?
Its useless to look back and think if only I had have done blah blah blah…if only I had seen a psychologist sooner and had help or something. Its all irrelevant now… Sad yes, but moving on and looking forward to a new chapter that will hopefully give me some closure on the chapter just gone.
I have read that you can’t ‘cure’ a bad birth by having a good birth…maybe not, I don’t expect the memory to disappear completely, but I NEED a homebirth. I need to see and feel a birth free from unnecessary intervention and disrespectful treatment. Quite frankly, I need to know that I can birth a baby.
That’s it.
I want know what spontaneous labour feels like, what it feels like when waters break of their own accord, what it feels like when the baby’s head is crowning and what it feels like to actually push a baby out!
I’d like to actually enjoy pregnancy too, that will be a big goal for me with the next pregnancy!!
Its quite probable that I will puke my guts up again, but I want to try and see the positives, marvel in the wondrous experience that growing a baby is.
With Jet I was sick and I just hated it, I think it was so easy to hate it all. The pain of an unstable pelvis…the constant nausea the whole way through…the fluid retention…
Indy’s pregnancy while it had the above similarities, with a lot more puking, was a whole other story. Oh boy. Now that is an experience I hope no one else ever has to go through, and I hope I don’t go through anything like it again. (It would be dishonest of me to say I’m sure it won’t. I have no idea what effect being pregnant will have on me, I am confident that I have come a long way since then and learnt so much, as well as having a lot more support that it isn’t likely, but it still worries me and scares me all the same)
I can’t say exactly when Jet’s birth started effecting me and to what extent. I do know that before I got pregnant with Indy I knew I wanted a c/s (because dontcha know a c/s means controlling the situation (ugh) and all the pain of labour could be avoided…sigh) and I know by later on in the pregnancy I was experiencing flashbacks. I think I told anyone who would listen that labour and birth were horrible and c/s’s were the answer (I truly shudder when I think about that now, I was so stupid!!).
I wasn’t counting on the Obs to be so anti-c/s, from what I had heard Obs are happy to slice and dice (I still don’t know why they weren’t keen to do it to me…) and I think that just made everything a lot more intense for me. I was terrified of going into labour, petrified! I thought that I would rather die than go through the hell that was labour, and I was for much of late pregnancy, suicidal.
The Obs didn’t care that I had been through such a traumatic experience, it was nothing to them. No one wanted to know about it all, I think if anyone had (which they didn’t) I wouldn’t have told them anyway…I was suspicious of my GP for suggesting counseling because I felt that his motivation was to talk me into having a vaginal birth, which in a guess a way it was, but probably not in the horrible way I had thought at the time.
Eventually I got a psychiatrist on side, I had been seeing him off and on since I was about 20? He wrote a letter to the Obs and after that they let me have a c/s. Why the shrink didn’t diagnose PTSD I have no idea…but I plan not to return to him again. Not only for that, but for other poor advice that I am thankful I was educated enough to not follow.
Fast forward a few months after Indy was born… Said shrink diagnoses me with PND (what a crock!) and refers me to a psychologist because he felt that the level of attachment I felt with my kids was abnormal or something like that. I had mentioned something like that I sort of felt trapped because I wanted to spend time away from them, but at the same time I couldn’t bear to, throw in the fact that I hate anyone holding my kids, especially as newborns.
Somehow, somewhere, in one of the appts with psychologists I come clean…
I had for so long hated, absolutely hated anyone that said how much they loved their birth experience etc…
But deep down I didn’t really. I was just so very envious.
Before I got pregnant with Jet I assumed everything would go to plan, I would have a fabulous birth, breastfeeding would just happen and I would be the most fabulous mother ever! I had wanted to be one of those ‘lucky’ birth loving women.
I think I still have a chance at that.
A few months ago I somehow found out that there are in fact 2(!!) Independent Midwives where I live, before that I had been considering freebirthing. And so now the ball is rolling.
Previous c/s irrelevant. I’m not planning a HBAC, I’m not even planning a homebirth, its just another birth.
oh the hilarity! My blog is so quiet and boooooooring at the moment I thought I would post a bunch of belly pics to make it look like I am not a crap blogger LOL.
)
It'd be a more profitable use of your time, and a substantially more likely cause for alarm.
(damn you for living miles away!!!)
....the next week I had glandular fever. Smack bang in the middle of year 12....sort of hasn't had the same appeal since then. I have tried,lol, a few times....but I just don't 'get it' anymore, so now I don't bother.
Obviously we didn't last, but I hold no regrets... I just hate it when people make a big deal out of it...
I was lucky enough to find some help (because I was suicidal and apparently it was just 'emotional blackmail' to my mum 
) and was able to move into temporary housing.
....not as badly as I used to be... But they still make me nervous and I get butterflies in my tummy. Apparently I was jumped on and knocked over by a dog when I was 2 and have been pretty much terrified since. I remember when I was a kid I used to scream and cry if a dog was anywhere near me.
