VBAC Grief - Page 2

[Alenushka]

I am so sorry.

One thing I learned in healthcare that sometime things do not go as planned no matter what was tried.  We can't control our bodies all the time.

You are not a failure.  You an amazingly strong mother and you did all you could.  Is birth about an experience or  about having a baby?  I think it is about having a live baby.  That is the goal of the birth. You achieved this goal.  Your experience did not go as planned but a lot of things do not go in life the way we planned and we can go over and over those experience and get stuck in them and feel traumatized. Or....we can accept, breath and move on. You have a long path ahead of you as now you are a mother of two !

It could be helpful to see therapist for a few sessions.

[Arete]

I too am so very sorry.  To speak with honesty, I felt like a failure with my c/s (almost 60 post membrane rupture and never went into labor at all) and still do.  (One year later.)  But I have been a success at breast feeding (DS thinks he can live on it forever!) and at other things, so I tell myself.  I am maybe entitled to fail at something now and then.  That said, I am DESPERATELY wanting an HBAC, and I do not doubt that if it doesn't happen, the cycle will start all over again.  But what really bothers me about your message, OP, are the insensitive comments made by your family members.  I would have bitten anyone's head off who'd had the nerve to speak to me like that when I was suffering from PPD, PTSD, and what have you.  "That hole?!"  I fail, I simply fail to understand how anyone could think it is better or more appropriate to have a child ripped out of a gaping bloody wound sliced in one's belly.  I turn queasy even to remember it.   Please do stand up for yourself, and tell then if they cannot understand it, to at least have the decency not to mention it.

[Arete]

Whoops, that was a later poster who had the insensitive comments, not the original one.  That's who I meant!

[yaboobarb]

Hugs Momma.
My friend had much the same happen to her - She questioned herself constantly and made herself miserable. ( She had 2c , + 1 infant death ( caused by nurses "resuscitating with an unplugged machine)  ) and lastly a TRIUMPHANT home birth.)

Babies that are born from epidural use become malpositioned so I would not count on that as a diagnosis or justification.  I think if someone  of authority told me during labor that I needed to rest with an epidural, it might have made me very worried. ( Am I handling this OK? Does this person know something I don't know, Could this go on forever?") I think fear can go a long way in making labor un-doable and exhausting.

My labor with my second baby was VERY INTENSE and very frightening. ( Think Tsunami waves!) I had a home birth, but thank God I had *TOTAL* beingness- support- belief of me, or that energy could have made things go bad.

I have seen many moms exhausted and frightened by the *way* things are said to them, depleting them of the mindset and energy of which to give birth.

Could it have been different? Maybe, but this was your birth. Be gentle with yourself, love the part of yourself that wanted to do the best for your baby.

Can I suggest Byron Katie? She has wonderful meditation called , The Work which will help you with your suffering.  It is free to earn and use.

Hugs again.
Barbara