This may be triggering to some. I believe I was traumatized by my birth experience but I don’t really feel like what I went through was traumatic enough for me to feel the way I do, so it just leaves me feeling weak or like I’m just being a drama queen. I was alone when I had my baby. His dad and I weren’t together or even speaking. I had a family member there because I was so terrified and I wanted someone familiar, but they weren’t there holding my hand and cheering me on, they were just there in the same way the chair they were sitting on was. I didn’t even see them next to me. The nurses barely looked at me, they were talking amongst themselves. The doctor wasn’t the one I had seen my entire pregnancy, he was older, and didn’t seem to have a shred of empathy left. They started setting up the room and without warning he stuck what felt like his entire hand inside me to stretch me, and acted surprised when it hurt me. I think he’s so used to women having an epidural and feeling nothing, or at least I hope that’s what it was instead of him just not caring at all. I didn’t have an epidural. I felt it all. To add to it I was on pitocin. When I finally started pushing my baby’s heart rate dropped really low, and I looked to one of my nurses and started to cry and said that it sounded really bad, she told me to stop crying. Once my baby moved down I felt the worst pain I’ve ever felt, it was like someone set me on fire. I was frozen. They were telling me to push but I couldn’t because every time I did it got worse. I just kept saying that I couldn’t, and started asking the doctor what the medical options were to get him out faster because I really didn’t feel like I could do it. The nurse told me to stop saying I couldn’t do it. Luckily my contractions did the work, my baby came out mostly on his own. I feel guilty now for not doing better, but I just felt paralyzed in the moment. I’ve never felt so out of control in my entire life. Feeling all of that and not knowing if it would get worse and feeling like there was nothing I could do to make it better, on top of knowing that my baby was struggling and I couldn’t help.. I’ve never felt so powerless and weak. I just remember crying afterwards, partly because of what I had went through but also because after an exhausting and terrifying 9 months I was finally holding my baby who I love more than anything, and that same nurse walks in the room and says “why are you crying?” as if she didn’t have any idea what I had experienced. Not the pain, the fear or the overwhelming love I had for my baby. Those few days in the hospital I felt so alone, and violated and for some reason embarrassed. Those same nurses shrugged off my baby screaming 24/7, and ignored my tears from exhaustion. This is the first time I’ve really talked about this. I’d love to say a big fuck you to that doctor and that nurse. Edit-I want to add that I am 5 months postpartum. Would it still be a good idea to complain to the hospital about it? I was having a lot of anxiety about it all when it happened so once I got home I just put it out of my mind and never tried to think about it. I never said anything to the hospital or really anyone else. Another thing I forgot to mention is that I hemorrhaged after birth, so I was in such a fog and really weak. It really pisses me off now because I was so shaky I was afraid to stand with my baby and for both of our safety they should have been checking in on us.