Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
couldn't put Humpty together again.

I caught the last 20 minutes of Trauma last night. One character told the other that he needed to go get help. The other character responded, "what if once I let it all out I can't get it all put back in?"

That's the way I feel now about my PTSD. In the early days, I talked about my trauma. It gushed out of me on a daily basis. It was like I had to find a place for it to go that wasn't inside me, so I talked, and talked, and talked some more. I had friends tell me to let it go, and still I talked. I had people tell me it didn't matter what had happened to me, and still I talked. I thought that by talking, I could get it all out.

Now, I know that there's more to it than that. Talking about it was like opening the vent on a pressure cooker. It allowed me to open the appliance safely. However, now I worry that I might let something out that I don't want to have to put back inside me.

PTSD became the filter that my thoughts were processed through. PTSD became the glasses that I saw the world through. PTSD became my dirty little secret. It became my binky.

So, now I have to find away to allow myself to break enough that I can re-assemble myself into the person I want to be. I guess I'm ready to take that fall.

Facing Forward instead of Looking Back

My daughter was in her rear-facing carseat for a long time. Most kids turn around at a year, but she was so small that she didn't hit the minimum weight requirement for an additional 7 months after that milestone. We looked forward to the day that she'd be facing forward, that she could see out the car window, and that we could hand her things from the front seat. The day she turned around was a celebratory day! She was finally a big girl.

PTSD is the same way. You have to find ways to look forward instead of backward. We have to fight to live in the present, and not the past. It's hard to accomplish this, and once in a while we all fall off the wagon, but you have to get up and try again.

The month of September was hard, very, very, very, very hard. I was finding myself starting to slide back down that slippery slope of looking backwards. So, I've started trying to re-focus myself on the present and the future. I've made plans to take my daughter to the pumpkin patch this weekend. I'm trying to make plans for Halloween. I'm looking at November, and trying to see what I can line up, and I've made plans for a weekend getaway just before Christmas.

The past is gone. I cannot re-live it. I cannot change it. I must find a way to move forward into my future.

33 weeks of memories

I had an email from my sister-in-law yesterday. She’s pregnant for the third time. In my head I know this is a good thing. They want this baby. They’ll do their best for this baby. However, it’s making me anxious, edgy, and upset. I chickened out of calling her yesterday. I sent a brief Congratulations e-mail. I didn’t put it together until this morning, but her baby is due on the same day Peanut was due.

That’s what has me freaked out. They have the same due date. Each week I’ll be thinking about my disintegrating pregnancy and birth. There’s no reason to suspect that her pregnancy will go the same way that mine did. It’s incredibly rare for that to happen, but for the next 33 weeks I’ll have that reminder of ickiness.

I have to find away to break my association between those dates. It’s not my pregnancy. It’s not my birth. It’s not me. But it hurts. I’d love to have another child, but I know that neither my husband nor I can face another pregnancy. We’ve decided to have the big V performed this year. I know this is the best decision we can make. But I’m still sad that I will only have one child, one pregnancy, one birth.

Thirty three weeks of memories…

The value of routines

The last month has been difficult, trying, and chaotic. I have Bell's Palsy, my husband has a cracked tooth with an abscess, my daughter switched daycare centers, one of my dogs has an ear infection, the other dog has a nose infection, my grandmother passed away, and my water heater fan needed to be replaced. We have been flying by the seats of our pants for the last month. As a result, I'm edgy, anxious, and irritable. I've been triggered by my health issues. I feel like everything's out of control. However, October is a new month, and we're hoping to get back into the swing of things.

I've found that having a flexible routine is key to my ability to cope with the PTSD. There's something comforting about knowing, in general, what's going to happen next. I don't feel the need to plan every minute of the day. I don't obsess over eating dinner at 6:30 pm instead of eating at 5:30 pm, but I've found that following my routine makes it easier to stay on track. It keeps me in the present and looking forward. It reduces my anxiety levels which I desperately need after the last month. Reducing anxiety means less irritability which makes life better for my entire family.

I can't wait to get back to my routine. Get up, get dressed, get peanut to daycare, go to work, pick up peanut from daycare, cook and eat supper, play with peanut, have an hour or so with my husband, and go to bed.

Is birth women's war?

I’ve been thinking on this post for a while. I’ve started writing it, and put it away because I couldn’t find the words. However, after reading this blog post, I decided to pick it up and try again.

Is childbirth women’s war?

When I was pregnant, I asked my grandmother about my mom’s birth. At 85 years old, she could still vividly remember that day and her experience. My mom can still relate the stories of my and my sister’s births. My best friend can pull her memories of each of her children’s births at a moments notice. When you get together with a group of women at a baby shower or a wedding shower, it seems like birth stories come out of the closet.

I believe that we’re genetically programmed to remember the experience of giving birth. The combination of the hormones, the pain, the fear, the anxiety, the joy, and the love imprint those memories deeply into our brains. It’s not that big a stretch to believe that those memories can sometimes be improperly stored causing PTSD.

All over the internet, on discussions of PTSD after childbirth, you’ll see an argument stating that this cannot be a mental health disorder because it’s a natural occurrence in a woman’s life. However, no one debates the validity of PTSD in soldiers returning from war. Men have been going to war for thousands of years. Why is their experience considered to be out of the norm, but a woman’s childbirth experience is dismissed or trivialized?

Men have found some interesting ways to cope with the fallout of the experiences long before the PTSD diagnosis was made during the Vietnam War. They formed and joined groups like the VFW or the American Legion. They go, and hang out with others who have had similar experiences. It’s a safe place to discuss the horrors of what they saw, the feelings they had, and they can process the events.

Yet, women don’t have these types of places to go. In today’s society, new moms are often isolated from society. We’re left to navigate this new terrain by ourselves. Our parents are working, so we frequently don’t have our moms or dads to rely on in those first few days. Our husbands go back to work typically a few days or a week after the baby is born. We struggle to establish breastfeeding, caring for the other family members, and try to get enough sleep to function. There are days when just getting a shower seems like an insurmountable task. Is it any wonder that those memories can get hung up under those conditions?

I’ve heard some people wonder if PTSD after childbirth is a rich nation’s problem, but I don’t think it is. I think no matter where women give birth, that they’re at risk of developing this condition. Women in third world countries know that childbirth isn’t safe. Their entire pregnancy is spent in an atmosphere of anxiety. Will I survive? Will my child survive? If something goes wrong can they get me to a doctor or a midwife? They live with those fears for months. Those months of anxiety set them up for developing this condition when their childbirth experiences go awry. Just because they don’t have the resources for diagnosis and treatment doesn’t mean that they don’t develop the condition.

Others have blamed the medicalization of childbirth on the development of PTSD. However, I know that medical procedures don’t cause PTSD. It took months of counseling to admit this, but my PTSD had nothing to do with the medical procedures that were performed. They were entirely the result of the way that I was treated while I was in the care of the doctors and nurses at my daughter’s birth. The PTSD was a result of a lack of communication, a lack of understanding, a lack of consent, and a hostile birth environment.

Yep, I did call it a hostile birth environment. This is something that doctors, nurses, midwives, doulas, and support people can change. Medical professionals can choose to treat a birthing mom respectfully. They can choose to speak to her with honesty. They can accurately, and without coercion, discuss her options. They can choose to allow her to make a choice, so that she can own that decision. They can choose to make sure she understands the positive and negative consequences of her choice.