My son is now 4 months old and I’m still struggling with how he was delivered.

I went in to be induced at 38+2. Had a controlled release tampon thing (can’t remember what it’s called) in for 24 hrs and nothing happened. They put another one in for another 24 hours and again nothing happened. During this time they were monitoring to baby every four hours and doing my BP every two as they were concerned it was getting high. After the second 24 hours they wanted me to have a rest day (if have to stay in hospital but not be given anything to induce labour). I declined this and said I wanted to press on. They then broke my waters. I was only 1cm dilated at this point and told that my cervix wasn’t very favourable. For the to even be able to break my waters I had to have gas and air. The dr told me that usually they wouldn’t break someone’s waters if their cervix was like this, but as I didn’t want a rest day he made it happen which is why it was so much more painful than it should have been.

An hour after they broke my waters, they put up a pictocin drip. I asked the midwife what the aim was with the drip as she kept turning up the strength and she told me ‘we just keep turning it up until the baby can’t cope any more’. This seemed odd, but I didn’t know any different so trusted that she knew what she was doing. Suddenly the contractions started coming thick and fast. I was having 4-5 minute contractions with a 30 second gap in between. I was leaning over the bed trying to cope with the pain and the midwife kept telling me I needed to stand up and to stop doing what I was doing. Another midwife came in to monitor me and said that the contractions were coming fast and examined me. I was only 2 dilated at this point. I got an epidural as I was struggling to cope with the pain and knee they were just going to keep turning the strength of the drip up.

I had the epidural which was amazing. Finally I was 10cm dilated but the midwife told me the baby was still quite high so we had to wait another hour before trying to push him out. We waited for that hour but he didn’t move down at all. I pushed for an hour and a half and the baby didn’t move. The OB was called in and we were told we needed to go to theatre for an instrumental delivery. They tried forceps, but they still couldn’t get him out. Then we tried suction but again it didn’t work. I was told that I needed an emergency c section. They did the c section and my little boy was finally out. Then they couldn’t stop me from bleeding. The dr came over and pumped me full of blood clotting meds, and after an hour and a half they finally closed me up. I had lost just over a litre and a half of blood. I felt so cold and weak, i genuinely though I was going to die at one point, which I think was because of the way the blood loss made me feel. After an hour and a half I finally got to hold my baby. No skin to skin as the midwife had already dressed him and had fed him as well with milk I had expressed.

Two days later they realised that I needed a blood transfusion to counter the blood loss that I had in theatre. I had two units of blood and finally felt a bit more human. We got discharged the following day. When the midwife came to check up at home, she discovered my BP was very high so I was sent back in to speak to the dr. I was then diagnosed with PP preeclampsia.

Since coming home from the hospital, I’ve been have nightmares and flash backs about the birth. There are days when I feel so guilty about how my baby was delivered into this world and how long it took before I could even hold him. Is this normal? I feel like I’m losing the plot, and have days where I just feel completely numb emotionally. Any advice would be amazing.

Sorry for the really long post