Anniversaries – I thought that my daughter’s birthday would be the hardest anniversary for me to deal with, but I’ve noticed that I’m not struggling as much with that specific day as I am in the 3 – 4 months leading up to it.
I was talking to my husband the other weekend, and I made a comment about my co-worker saying that I was making a big deal out of her birthday. (I’ve been planning her party for a while now. I want the invitations to be just so. I want the food / menu to be planned out in advance, and I want it to fit the theme of her party. I’ve started buying the favors for the kids. I’ve researched the local parks, to try and pick a location.) My husband said that I’m getting a bit obsessive, and I did the same thing last year. However, he did say that I’m better than I was last year, so that’s good – right? To me, I’m not planning a monster party. I am planning to make all of the food ourselves. I’m planning to invite the same people who were there last year – grandparents, aunts & uncles, cousins, and close family friends who were there the night that peanut was born. To me, this isn’t a hire a clown, or face painter, or pony, over the top kind of party. I’m not inviting her entire class from daycare – 14 2 year olds running around – YIKES! I want to have it at a local park, but that’s because I want the kids to be able to play on the playground instead of having games. Since peanut is only going to be two, I think games are kind of pointless.
Anyhow, that conversation has been bothering me a little. It’s been hanging out in the back of my mind like a tickle in your throat that won’t go away. I realized that I started planning the party at the same time of the year that I started experiencing complications during my pregnancy. This obsession, compulsion, planning kick is completely the result of the anniversary of things starting to go to hell, and I’m trying to CONTROL what’s going to happen in the upcoming months since I was completely out of control during those months of my pregnancy.
Isn’t that kind of weird? Oh well, it’s “better than last year”, so I guess I’ll have to ride it out again. Her birthday doesn’t seem to be as horrible as the months leading up to it. I guess by that time, I’m emotionally exhausted from everything else. The good thing about that is that I can actually somewhat enjoy her party. I’m also not stressing about her party falling on Mother’s Day this year, so that’s a huge bonus. I guess I’m starting to be able to separate my experiences as a mom from my experience with her birth.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
Besieged? You don't know the meaning of Besieged.
I read a blog post the other day by a doctor talking about medical (doctor) writers. She happens to really like a specific author, and the quote that she included in her blog was about a doctor feeling besieged.
Besieged is kind of a triggering word for me. I felt besieged at the hospital. Therefore, it’s not a word I’m comfortable hearing in this context. I read through the entire post, and looked the word up in the dictionary. The specific meaning of the word in this context referred to being overwhelmed. I can understand a doctor feeling overwhelmed at times. There are times I feel overwhelmed at work. Everyone from the burger slinging cook at Mickey D’s to the President of the United States will feel overwhelmed from time to time. However, there’s a huge difference between feeling overwhelmed and feeling like your castle walls are being breeched.
I don’t think people really understand what being besieged feels like any more. When the army surrounds your castle, when the gates hang crookedly from the hinges, when the larders are empty, when the well has gone dry, when the foundation is cracked, when the attackers have you strapped to the rack, and your family, friends, and army are being slaughtered then you know the true meaning of being besieged.
This is the way I felt in the hospital. I was surrounded by medical personnel who were supposed to keep me safe, and instead I was nearly destroyed. My personal gates were violently breeched with no warning by the doctor. My soul was emptied, and my emotions had run dry. I felt like I was strapped to the rack with all of the tubes, monitors, and paraphernalia I was attached to, and being tortured by the pain between my thighs. My marriage was in tatters, and my brand new family was hanging together by a thread. I faced endless nights of nightmares. I faced flashbacks during the day. At that point in time you have to make the choice to pick up the pieces, or wallow in the pain, fear, anger, failure, shame, and rage.
I made the choice to reach my hand out for help. I had to rebuild the foundation of my being one stone at a time. I had to learn how to live again, how to love again, and how to have fun again. I had to learn to harness my anger and control my rage. I’ve had to face the reality of my fears, and build a tomorrow I believed was gone. I’ve learned to cope with the anxiety, and I’ve grown stronger.
I’ve been besieged. I’ve been betrayed. I’ve been violated. My new castle walls may not be pretty, they’re pitted and pocked by the previous battles, but they’re much stronger than they were.
Besieged is kind of a triggering word for me. I felt besieged at the hospital. Therefore, it’s not a word I’m comfortable hearing in this context. I read through the entire post, and looked the word up in the dictionary. The specific meaning of the word in this context referred to being overwhelmed. I can understand a doctor feeling overwhelmed at times. There are times I feel overwhelmed at work. Everyone from the burger slinging cook at Mickey D’s to the President of the United States will feel overwhelmed from time to time. However, there’s a huge difference between feeling overwhelmed and feeling like your castle walls are being breeched.
I don’t think people really understand what being besieged feels like any more. When the army surrounds your castle, when the gates hang crookedly from the hinges, when the larders are empty, when the well has gone dry, when the foundation is cracked, when the attackers have you strapped to the rack, and your family, friends, and army are being slaughtered then you know the true meaning of being besieged.
This is the way I felt in the hospital. I was surrounded by medical personnel who were supposed to keep me safe, and instead I was nearly destroyed. My personal gates were violently breeched with no warning by the doctor. My soul was emptied, and my emotions had run dry. I felt like I was strapped to the rack with all of the tubes, monitors, and paraphernalia I was attached to, and being tortured by the pain between my thighs. My marriage was in tatters, and my brand new family was hanging together by a thread. I faced endless nights of nightmares. I faced flashbacks during the day. At that point in time you have to make the choice to pick up the pieces, or wallow in the pain, fear, anger, failure, shame, and rage.
I made the choice to reach my hand out for help. I had to rebuild the foundation of my being one stone at a time. I had to learn how to live again, how to love again, and how to have fun again. I had to learn to harness my anger and control my rage. I’ve had to face the reality of my fears, and build a tomorrow I believed was gone. I’ve learned to cope with the anxiety, and I’ve grown stronger.
I’ve been besieged. I’ve been betrayed. I’ve been violated. My new castle walls may not be pretty, they’re pitted and pocked by the previous battles, but they’re much stronger than they were.
Monday, February 16, 2009
In honor of Valentine's Day
My husband has been really great during this journey. It's not one that either of us intentionally signed up for, but he's handled it far better than I expected. He's the one who recognized when things were spiraling out of control. He's the one that prodded, and poked, and harassed me into seeking help. He's the one who kept poking and prodding and harassing me into not accepting that medication was going to solve everything. He's been willing to do whatever it takes to get me healthy and happy again.
One night stands out for me. It was the first night that he was staying home with our daughter so that I could have a night out with the girls. He came home with a present. He sat me down on the couch, told me that he loved me, gave me the present, and told me that he wanted us to recommit ourselves to each other.
You see no matter what, he loves me. It doesn't matter to him if I'm fat or thin. If I'm damaged or normal. He accepts me the way that I am right now.
It's an amazing feeling. I can't begin to tell anyone how important or essential that has been to me over the last 21 months. Whatever it takes, he's there.
I wear the watch that he chose for me gladly. It's not my style. I'd never have picked it out myself, but it reminds me that I'm never alone. He got a matching one for himself, and it's just one more sign of our commitment to one another. We wear them like our wedding bands.
So, thanks for being there for me. I love you.
One night stands out for me. It was the first night that he was staying home with our daughter so that I could have a night out with the girls. He came home with a present. He sat me down on the couch, told me that he loved me, gave me the present, and told me that he wanted us to recommit ourselves to each other.
You see no matter what, he loves me. It doesn't matter to him if I'm fat or thin. If I'm damaged or normal. He accepts me the way that I am right now.
It's an amazing feeling. I can't begin to tell anyone how important or essential that has been to me over the last 21 months. Whatever it takes, he's there.
I wear the watch that he chose for me gladly. It's not my style. I'd never have picked it out myself, but it reminds me that I'm never alone. He got a matching one for himself, and it's just one more sign of our commitment to one another. We wear them like our wedding bands.
So, thanks for being there for me. I love you.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
How Far I've come
As you can see, I'm not posting as much. Things have been much better lately. I was talking about the journey that the PTSD has taken me on the other day. I don't often take the time to reflect on how far I've come in this journey. I get so caught up in what's happening each day, that I just don't take the time to think back to where I was. There are some days that I almost feel like the old me. I've resigned myself to the fact that I'll never be who I was, and I'm beginning to make peace with what I think I'm capable of becoming now. I really think that I'll end up being more than I ever would have been if I hadn't experienced this.
I had a uterine inversion in addition to several other post-partum complications. At first, I coped by running away from what happened. I believed that if I ignored it, it would go away. I took my daughter out of the house every day. I believed that if I acted like a "normal" mom that no one would know that I spent hours at home crying when my husband was gone. Also, when I was out of the house it was easier to pretend that I was "normal".
It wasn't until my six week post-partum appointment that I really started to notice that my head wasn't quite on straight. It wasn't until the doctor touched me again that I had the first flashback. The feeling of his gloved hands touching me down there sent me back to the hospital room with his hand / arm elbow deep in my hoo-ha. The exam, just a typical exam, nearly brought me to tears. When I was in the hospital, I didn't get a good explanation of what had happened to me, and given the extreme trauma my body and mind had gone through, I didn't push for answers. I was told my uterus turned inside out, the placenta came out in 20 pieces, and I lost a lot of blood. None of those things are helpful at explaining /understanding what had happened. At my six week appointment, I finally had the wherewithal to start asking questions about what had happened. It was the first time I was told I had a uterine inversion, placenta accreta, and post-partum hemorrhage. That information sent me on a spiral of obsessively researching the complications. Every chance I had, I'd be reading about it, researching it, looking for the rates of recurrence, etc. It became my life for the two weeks I had left of my maternity leave.
My husband couldn't take it. He hated the obsession, so he started pressuring me to see the doctor. I went back to my old family practice doctor, not my OB, because I thought I had PPD. Actually,he's the one who suggested the PTSD diagnosis. We tried medicine, but I was still too obsessive. My husband kept hounding me to get help. He believed I needed more than just the drugs, counseling would be more effective, and he was right. I went back to the doctor, and asked for a referral to a counselor. At that time, I was having nightmares every night. I was having flashbacks a couple of times a week. I was obsessed with what had happened. I did the bare minimum when it came to work, to taking care of my daughter, to being a wife, but every other moment was spent thinking about, re-living, or reading about the complications. The counseling helped. It took months of seeing someone.
The first thing I had to work on was my anger with my husband. I hated him for allowing the doctor to do that to me. He was supposed to rescue me, protect me, save me, and instead he allowed the doctor to violate me. It took quite a while before I got past that. The next thing was learning to like sex again. I never told my husband, but, for the first six or seven months, I had flashbacks during sex. (I found the procedures they had performed on me to get the placenta out and reinstallation of my uterus extremely violating since they didn't tell me what they were doing before they started the procedure.) The feeling of having his penis inside me reminded me of the doctor's hand being inside me. I hated it. I couldn't get into it, and it hurt as a result. The pain fed the flashbacks, so it took a while to get to the point where I could look at it as just being close to him and not as something I "had" to do to keep him happy. After that, I still struggled with flashbacks whenever I gave my daughter a bath. I struggle with going to doctor appointments at the clinic, and it took me 14 months before I could walk back into the hospital where she was born. I'm just now starting to feel like the "old" Me.
I'm just starting to regain my sense of purpose, my ability to focus at work, and my ability to work through problems at home. There are still triggers, things like a friend being induced or talking about what happened with medical personnel, can still have me struggling. I know how to monitor myself for problems now, and I go back to counseling for a tune-up when I need one. It took me a long time to realize / accept that the complications and the procedure didn't cause my trauma. Yes, it was painful. Yes, the procedures they performed are vile. However, it was the lack of communication when I was still capable of understanding what was happening that caused the trauma.
So, now I found a new doctor, one who really listens to me. This doctor is a family practice doctor, so both my daughter and I are treated by her. That way, I see her more often than once a year, and she knows how to handle my needs. I've been really up front about needing a lot of communication. She knows that I need her to tell me what she's doing when I have a pap smear. She knows that I need to be highly involved in medical decisions. It helps me to deal with the fall out of the poor care I received during my daughter's birth.
As for having more children, if the only complication I'd had was the inversion, I'd be pregnant again right now. All of my reading /searching has led me to believe that the odds are in my favor of that not happening again in a future pregnancy. There's a support group for uterine inversion survivors on Yahoo that has so many positive stories of having second children that I could get past it. The problem for my husband and me is the accreta. The only study I've found that talks about the recurrence rate puts it at40%. I just can't get past those odds. I've met with several doctors. All of them have told me that I can have another pregnancy. I've even been told that they'd prefer that I deliver vaginally. They tell me that they can make it safer in the future. They would make sure the surgical team is accessible immediately.They would make sure to talk to me. They'd make sure I was treated with kid gloves. But I keep coming back to the 40% odds of having it happen again. I just can't risk the daughter I have growing up with out a mother because I chose to give her a sibling. She needs a mom. She can have a great life with or without a sibling.
I've come a long way, baby!
I had a uterine inversion in addition to several other post-partum complications. At first, I coped by running away from what happened. I believed that if I ignored it, it would go away. I took my daughter out of the house every day. I believed that if I acted like a "normal" mom that no one would know that I spent hours at home crying when my husband was gone. Also, when I was out of the house it was easier to pretend that I was "normal".
It wasn't until my six week post-partum appointment that I really started to notice that my head wasn't quite on straight. It wasn't until the doctor touched me again that I had the first flashback. The feeling of his gloved hands touching me down there sent me back to the hospital room with his hand / arm elbow deep in my hoo-ha. The exam, just a typical exam, nearly brought me to tears. When I was in the hospital, I didn't get a good explanation of what had happened to me, and given the extreme trauma my body and mind had gone through, I didn't push for answers. I was told my uterus turned inside out, the placenta came out in 20 pieces, and I lost a lot of blood. None of those things are helpful at explaining /understanding what had happened. At my six week appointment, I finally had the wherewithal to start asking questions about what had happened. It was the first time I was told I had a uterine inversion, placenta accreta, and post-partum hemorrhage. That information sent me on a spiral of obsessively researching the complications. Every chance I had, I'd be reading about it, researching it, looking for the rates of recurrence, etc. It became my life for the two weeks I had left of my maternity leave.
My husband couldn't take it. He hated the obsession, so he started pressuring me to see the doctor. I went back to my old family practice doctor, not my OB, because I thought I had PPD. Actually,he's the one who suggested the PTSD diagnosis. We tried medicine, but I was still too obsessive. My husband kept hounding me to get help. He believed I needed more than just the drugs, counseling would be more effective, and he was right. I went back to the doctor, and asked for a referral to a counselor. At that time, I was having nightmares every night. I was having flashbacks a couple of times a week. I was obsessed with what had happened. I did the bare minimum when it came to work, to taking care of my daughter, to being a wife, but every other moment was spent thinking about, re-living, or reading about the complications. The counseling helped. It took months of seeing someone.
The first thing I had to work on was my anger with my husband. I hated him for allowing the doctor to do that to me. He was supposed to rescue me, protect me, save me, and instead he allowed the doctor to violate me. It took quite a while before I got past that. The next thing was learning to like sex again. I never told my husband, but, for the first six or seven months, I had flashbacks during sex. (I found the procedures they had performed on me to get the placenta out and reinstallation of my uterus extremely violating since they didn't tell me what they were doing before they started the procedure.) The feeling of having his penis inside me reminded me of the doctor's hand being inside me. I hated it. I couldn't get into it, and it hurt as a result. The pain fed the flashbacks, so it took a while to get to the point where I could look at it as just being close to him and not as something I "had" to do to keep him happy. After that, I still struggled with flashbacks whenever I gave my daughter a bath. I struggle with going to doctor appointments at the clinic, and it took me 14 months before I could walk back into the hospital where she was born. I'm just now starting to feel like the "old" Me.
I'm just starting to regain my sense of purpose, my ability to focus at work, and my ability to work through problems at home. There are still triggers, things like a friend being induced or talking about what happened with medical personnel, can still have me struggling. I know how to monitor myself for problems now, and I go back to counseling for a tune-up when I need one. It took me a long time to realize / accept that the complications and the procedure didn't cause my trauma. Yes, it was painful. Yes, the procedures they performed are vile. However, it was the lack of communication when I was still capable of understanding what was happening that caused the trauma.
So, now I found a new doctor, one who really listens to me. This doctor is a family practice doctor, so both my daughter and I are treated by her. That way, I see her more often than once a year, and she knows how to handle my needs. I've been really up front about needing a lot of communication. She knows that I need her to tell me what she's doing when I have a pap smear. She knows that I need to be highly involved in medical decisions. It helps me to deal with the fall out of the poor care I received during my daughter's birth.
As for having more children, if the only complication I'd had was the inversion, I'd be pregnant again right now. All of my reading /searching has led me to believe that the odds are in my favor of that not happening again in a future pregnancy. There's a support group for uterine inversion survivors on Yahoo that has so many positive stories of having second children that I could get past it. The problem for my husband and me is the accreta. The only study I've found that talks about the recurrence rate puts it at40%. I just can't get past those odds. I've met with several doctors. All of them have told me that I can have another pregnancy. I've even been told that they'd prefer that I deliver vaginally. They tell me that they can make it safer in the future. They would make sure the surgical team is accessible immediately.They would make sure to talk to me. They'd make sure I was treated with kid gloves. But I keep coming back to the 40% odds of having it happen again. I just can't risk the daughter I have growing up with out a mother because I chose to give her a sibling. She needs a mom. She can have a great life with or without a sibling.
I've come a long way, baby!
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