Traumatized from watching my wife labour

indigostarfire

New member
So 2 days ago my wife gave birth to a healthy beautiful girl. That part was great and I amcso happy to have her but i must say I was not at alll ready for what labour would be like as a man satching my wife go through the worst pain imaginable. She originaly wanted an at home birth and might of died if we didnt go to the hospital due to her cervix lip rolling righht at the moat painfull part, (the transision is what the midwive called it)
She was in labour for 52 hours. After the first 40hours of labouringat home bo sleep she finaly tapped out and agreed to go to the hospital.
The laughing gas was actually helpong with the contractjons allot at first so i felt some relief. But then thing amped up to the point where the gas wasnt doing shit and she was screamj g in pain while grasping the maskk g and desperatly inhaling with every breath she had. She got to 9cm and was stuck the for about 8hours. I never felt so helpless and destroyed in my life, i begged her to get an epideral but she kept declinkng it and proceeding, which didnt make sense to me because she was screaming that she doenst want to go on on wants to die and rathe rdie than continue yet didnt want the epideral. I was kicke dout multiple times just for askkng it anytime she would say something like "id do anything to make it stop"!
It was like watching your loved one get tortued for hours on end and she ha dno energy adrer being awake so long. To me it just makes sense to get an epideral at that point.

Anyways finaly the midwive noticed the cervix issue and said theaby wlnt progress unless she relaxes more and gives more time, so they ogfered fentynal. She said yes, they gave her 3 back to back shots of iv fentynal in a span of 20 mins and it did absolutly NOTHING for her pain!!. . . That showes me just how bad her pain wad, I mean like they give fentyanl to burn victims and that's enough to relieve their pain. But even 3 doses did nothing, finaly she begged for the epideral when they told her the baby decended a bit backwards. I swear that 30mins of her waitingfor the epideral screamkg and crying her eyes out to make it stop while allso helplessly inhaling into the laughing gas that wasnt doing anythignat this point. It felt like the longest 30 mins of my life. After the epideral kicked in she was able to relax and relief for about 1hour and then felt the pressure to push, she pushed in 5mins and the baby came out like nothing.
The epideral might of saved her life as it gave her body the ability to relax and let things progress.

Anyways I am making this post because I am mentaly scared I can't get the image out of my head. I hear her screams in my head and had nightmares about her being in labour again.
To all the strong women out there, yoy don't ha e to be a hero, if things aren't progressing and you are at your breaking point, sometimes grting the epideral is needed and is the best idea for your situation, balecsuse not all births are the same.
My wife had a very strict birth plan amd was doing g everything in preparation for it for 9 months and she got unlucky. No amount of prep can prepare you if things go bad because they can go wrong no matter how much birthing prep you take and birthing classes you take.
For women, you are strong stronger then most men could ever be and coodos to all of you for being a le to endure wjat you go through to give life. I love my child and wish I could of been the one giving birth instead because watching is a torture in its own way. Its the worst kind of mental torture toy could ever imsgine.
It was like take the worst heartbreak you ever had, and then miltiply it by about a thousand..
Still no where close.. .
 
@indigostarfire This sounds horrific... Have you talked to anyone about this? Maybe you should before it turns into something worse. The one thing I learnt about birth plans is: nice to have one, but don't expect it to happen that way. Nothing that I wrote down in my birth plan actually happened.
 
@indigostarfire I'm a midwife. In the uk we offer a debrief service for parents - primarily for mums, but I think you should talk to your partner and explain you're having trouble processing and ask if she'd organise a debrief for you to attend.The reason you'll need your wife to attend is that birth notes are confidential to the patient.

Research shows that postnatal depression and PTSD are much more common for those with little or no antenatal education around birth, which sounds like it may have been the case for you. It's too late to learn before it happens but having someone talk through the notes, give you the context and understanding, could help to reduce your risk of postnatal depression (currently 1 in 10 men suffer from PND).

As someone else suggested, therapy is a good idea but therapists won't likely know enough about midwifery or birth to help put things into context so I'd recommend doing both.
 
@knish How do people access this debrief service? I asked my gp, health visitor, and phoned up the maternity ward I gave birth in and none of them had ever heard of it before and just shrugged me off (you know what the nhs is like!) but I keep seeing it referenced online. My birth was over 12 months ago now and I’m pregnant with number 2 so worried I’ve missed the boat, but I’d absolutely find a debrief session helpful.
 
@felipeoliveir As others have said, you can go through PALS. Usually it's a self referral and you absolutely haven't missed the boat. Birth notes (paper ones) are kept until your youngest child turns 25 years old. It's never too late to seek the support you deserve! I'm sorry if anyone is not supporting that correctly.
 
@knish US Americans: I did the debrief this commenter is describing, and I recommend it. I had a normal childbirth experience until the very end. Baby was fine, but I may have died within minutes had I not been in a hospital with doctors and a surgical suite. I didn't really know what was happening at the moment because the medical staff was staying so calm and moving so quickly and decisively, but afterward it was clear that it could have been really bad. I was in no state to understand anything, though, except that I was out of surgery and back with my baby and exhausted. When I got out of the hospital, I called my delivering Dr and made an appointment specifically for her to go over what had happened to me and how it had been treated and what future impact I could expect or if this would make me more likely to experience miscarriages etc. in the future. The scheduling people totally understood, and the doctor came prepared to answer my questions, draw some diagrams, and lay everything out. 10/10 experience.
 
@whigg To clarify, you did this with a U.S. hospital/doctor??? Was it an appointment type that’s covered by typical insurance or did you have to pay a higher rate? I had no idea we had something like this
 
@stanleyinoh I have a High Deductible Health Plan, and having my baby and going to our various appointments has made me meet the deductible and the out of pocket max for the year. $5000? $7200? Something terrible like that. So now that they have ALL my money, I get to go to the doctor whenever I feel like I need to (until Dec 31 when I'm back at 0, woo hoo, what an incredibly cruel and stupid system we have). I think the appointment was scheduled and billed as a "postpartum checkup for an issue" (so not just a routine physical or annual visit), and I still had the normal postpartum checkup at 6-8 weeks post delivery.
 
@knish I attended birthing classes and thought I was prepared to see what I saw. But it went way longer than I ever thought it would. I was expecting 24hours birth, maybe 36hours if it's really long, but not 52. After about 40hours of watching the one you love go through hell, you start to lose it.
 
@indigostarfire Apologies for the assumption, I was basing off some of the things you said - you mentioned twice that your partner might have died. Just for reassurance, she would not have died from a cervical lip rolling (I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this) and she wouldn't have died from the pain without the epidural and may have still progressed without it.

I understand how difficult it is to watch someone you love in that much pain, particularly with a long labour. I still think it's really important that you seek professional support to put it all into context as it sounds like you are coming to conclusions that make it much more traumatic.
 
@indigostarfire Get a therapist asap. If you're having trouble processing now, the coming days in all likelihood will sink you deeper into that pit. Newborns can be very taxing on mental health. You're probably not feeling it yet, but you will once exhaustion starts to accumulate.
 
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