Let me preface this by saying that I know lots of women have much more serious and scary experiences, and I feel blessed to have a happy, healthy baby and to be happy and healthy myself. But, I am just learning more about birth trauma and I feel like I need to share my story and this seems like a safe, supportive community where I can do so.

I am a FTM and I delivered my boy in early April. Early on my pregnancy was tough, but after the nausea went away at about 22 weeks I had a good experience. Everything was normal the whole time and I was 1 cm dilated the week of my due date. The date came and went however, and we were scheduled to be induced on a Wednesday evening.

My husband and I went out to dinner, had a nice night in and went to bed early, knowing the next day is when our lives would change forever. I woke up about 1 am with cramps in my lower back and I thought I had to use the restroom. I had eaten something spicy for dinner so I thought it had maybe bothered my stomach. I took antacids and a stool softener and tried to go back to bed. But the cramps continued.

Don’t ask me why I didn’t just assume I was in labor, but the cramps didn’t feel like the way people described them. They weren’t regular and they didn’t come around to my front. Around 6 am I called my mom’s nurse friend and she said you’re probably in labor, go to the hospital. So I finally woke up my husband and we rushed there in a dramatic fashion because by then my cramps or *contractions* were 5 minutes apart.

I was almost 3 cm dilated when we got checked in around 7 or 8 am. My doctor asked if I wanted him to break my water and start pitocin and I said I guessed. I hadn’t thought back to how I wanted to deliver because I figured we would be induced and pitocin would just be part of the process.

I was OK with the pain until the pitocin kicked in and then the contractions got really frequent and really strong. They would come on immediately and they felt like they were one right after another. I tried laughing gas but couldn’t get enough relief from it. Then around 1 pm I got an epidural and felt much better.

Around 7 pm I started feeling more pain and an urge to push. I was fully dilated and my nurses turned off my epidural machine so I couldn’t push the button for more medicine. I guess they didn’t want me to be too numb to push the right way. On the first push they saw my baby’s head and they went to get my doctor. They all thought he would come really quickly.

But two hours of pushing later, his head was in the same spot, and my epidural had fully worn off. I wasn’t just experiencing labor without any pain relief, I was experiencing induced labor without any pain relief. And it was awful. My screams must have sounded like I was being murdered. I cried and begged them all to help me. I felt panicked and scared like I wouldn’t be able to continue to do it and my baby would be stuck.

My doctor and nurses pulled at my body, trying to stretch it for him. I got an episiotomy, and I tore. I felt it all. Finally, he came out. That part felt like relief. But I was still in so much pain when I delivered the placenta, when they pushed on my abdomen and when they stitched me up. I couldn’t see straight and I asked them if they could turn the epidural back on. They couldn’t.

I remember him being placed on my chest and feeling his warm, wet body on me. I saw his skinny legs and I instinctively held him. I saw the milky green color of his umbilical cord and heard the two small yelps followed by a big cry before he settled when they placed him on me. They told me he was a little purple but he turned red soon after. I still couldn’t see well.

My husband cried but I didn’t. I cried at every birth video I watched leading up to it but I didn’t have the moment I thought I would during my delivery. I was unable to focus on him because of the pain. I was panicked that I wouldn’t bond with him because of it. I talked to him through tears but they were from the pain, and I felt like I was faking the connection with him.

I was able to nurse and lay with him skin to skin, but I felt broken. They had to use smelling salts to revive me because I almost passed out when they finally got me up to use the restroom and clean up. The next two days I got iron infusions because my doctor said I lost more blood than he had realized.

The nurses and doctor were amazingly sweet and supportive, so nothing was negative there. But I felt so unable to care for myself that I was petrified I wouldn’t be able to care for my baby. I just couldn’t wrap my head around what happened to my body and I was so traumatized by the experience. I wasn’t a person who went in imagining every detail of the perfect birth plan, but if I had that certainly wouldn’t have been it. I still can’t shake that feeling, even a month later.

I’ve been talking about it more and my parent group may do a session about birth trauma, so I’m looking forward to that. But I still get a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes when I think about it. I beat myself up because, again, I feel blessed that it wasn’t worse. I also don’t want to talk about it too much or write it down somewhere else because I don’t want my son to someday get the wrong idea and feel like I wasn’t happy about his birth. But it is how I feel and how I experienced it, and it is what it is. I’m doing OK otherwise, if you’re wondering.

That’s all, and if you’re still reading, thank you for sticking around.