Hi everyone,

So my little one is five days old and the birth wasn’t exactly smooth, and I’m struggling a bit mentally with the whole situation.

I was induced on Thursday night I’m (03/06) and began having mild contractions after they inserted the gel. My waters broke at 6:45am that morning, and they took me into the labour ward. My contractions started to get closer together and more intense, and I got morphine around 9am, and then the epidural at 10:45am when I was 5cm dilated. I was then labouring until 9pm when the midwife said we should push. At this point, I was having issues with my epidural and they suspected I was leaking. I also had a high temperature and they suspected infection. I started to feel my contractions again but my midwife said to use them to push baby out. I pushed for two hours, at which point the doctor came in and I agreed to a forceps delivery as my whole body was beyond exhausted. I closed my eyes for the process but nearly passed out when they were inserted. I don’t really remember the in between part, but I pushed for another 30 minutes and then my baby was here. The doctor told me to up my epidural dosage as he was starting stitching, but due to my epidural leaking and not giving it time to kick in, I felt the entire 1.5hr stitching process. After that my baby was handed to me and I breastfed her. I was too tired to hold her, so my partner had to hold her for me. They then took me to my room in the maternity ward. My baby was crying and I couldn’t get up to console her. I ended up asking the nurses to look after her that night, so I could get some rest.

I guess I wasn’t prepared for what I experienced, and I’m struggling now to come to terms with the delivery. I struggle to sleep at night time as I often relive the experience and it scares me. For the first few days after birth I could physically ‘feel’ the forceps and stitches and it really scared me. I’m unsure how to move on from this or make sense of my experience. I’m feeling very lost and lonely, and was wondering if any other mums have had a similar experience to mine and are willing to share how they’ve come to terms with their birth?

Thank you in advance, and I apologise for such a lengthy post.