Begin with the End in Mind

At work, when starting a project, my boss and I try to think about how we think an application will be used in the future. Right now we’re working on a project that will revolutionize, at least for our company, the way we collect and track subcontractor data and performance (safety, quality, and earned value). Our initial goal is very simple; however, we can both see that this has the potential to morph into something much more involved than what we’re trying to accomplish right now. We’ve been trying to make sure that this application has the flexibility to change as our company’s needs change. Every time we meet to discuss it, we’ll say “begin with the end in mind”.

So, when I read this blog post, it made me start thinking about the way I am inconsistent in applying it to my PTSD journey. When I started counseling, my counselor defined some goals to achieve – no more nightmares, being able to look at my daughter’s baby pictures, and not crying every time I talked about the experience. We accomplished all of those things, at least most of the time, but I’m still having problems. The problem is that I didn’t define me. I simply defined a change in the symptoms.

Now, I’m heading back to counseling to deal with this again. I’m trying to get all the way down to the roots, so I can free myself from this burden. I have to redefine my image of me. In some ways I’ve accomplished it. I’ve actually become more accepting of my body since my daughter was born. I now own a swimsuit, something that had been missing from my wardrobe for at least 10 years. I bought a slinky dress that had my husband salivating (according to him, I’d never looked sexier). I’ve made peace with my cantaloupe sized boobs, and will actually wear deeper v-neck and empire waist shirts than I ever did before. I’ve learned to ride a bike – I mean trike, but it’s still a big change. I love work. I’ve always felt safe there, and despite the sleepless nights, the anxiety, the edginess, my performance remains stellar. So, what’s left? I don’t know, but obviously something is still missing because I’m haunted again. I’ve had three nightmares in three nights, this isn’t normal anymore, and I don’t like it!

Weeds On My Mind

My husband has been working on a major landscaping project for the last few weeks. Actually, he’s finishing up a major landscaping project from when we first moved into our home 5 years ago. For some reason, despite the use of landscape fabric and rock, the weeds have overtaken the landscaping around the front of our house. The weeds have even taken root in the tiny area between the pavers of the front sidewalk. Every year, it’s a pain in the butt to go out and weed the area. We’ve lost plants / shrubs to the ever increasing weed population. The sidewalk has started to spread wider as the weeds have pushed the pavers apart. This year, we’ve had enough. We’re pulling up all of the rocks, the landscape fabric, and the pavers, and starting all over with new fabric, mulch, and rebuilding the sidewalk.

So, how does this relate to my PTSD?

The weeds are the thoughts from the past that keep intruding into my present. They’ve been choking the life out of me for the last two years. It seems like every six months, I go through and yank them all out, but pretty soon they’ve taken over again. I have one passing thought, I don’t acknowledge it, I don’t challenge its validity, and I just let it hang out. The next thing I know, there’s another one, and another one, and another one. They grow huge, the roots dig down deep into the fertile soil of my brain, and they begin to take over.

I have to find away to turn my hyper-vigilance inside myself. I need to use it to root out the weeds / thoughts when they’re tiny instead of letting them grow big and strong. I need to finish my landscaping project, and free myself from the weeds in my mind. I want to be able to spend that time having fun, focusing on my family, being ME instead of dealing with the garbage of the past.

It’s not easy. I know it will take a lot of work, but I’m done with this… just like I’m done with fighting the weeds in my yard.

Acknowledging Irrational Thoughts

Wow!

I feel so much better. Putting a face on why I'm feeling the way I do, acknowledging my feelings instead of stuffing them makes them so much easier to deal with on a daily basis. It's completely irrational to be afraid of a billboard, a piece of mail, or a tv ad. I know that in my head. It's why I was stuffing everything down. It's too irrational to deserve being voiced. It's much easier to be angry. To blame everything except what's happening in my own head.

Denying irrational thoughts doesn't eradicate them. It reinforces them. Getting rid of them means accepting that the thought is real, and debunking it. I know this, but sometimes I get caught up in the feelings and stop listening to myself. I just feel.

Change requires constant monitoring of my thoughts. I requires that I debunk untrue thoughts and that I reinforce accurate thoughts. That's the only way to get past this.

I was never in danger driving to work, well no more danger than anyone else on the road is in on a given day. I was never in danger while watching TV or getting the mail. I must remember to reinforce those accurate thoughts to make it harder for the irrational ones to get through.

Clogged, Stuck, Trapped

So, my PTSD has been flaring up over the last several months. I know that my first trigger was the ER episode. I thought I had handled it well. I thought because I could watch the episode later that I was better. What a crock, it was just my brain faking me out again.

Then, the billboard was put up on the road I take to work. Every morning, I see that sign on the road. A few weeks later, a new billboard was put up on the road I take home from work. Great, now they've got me coming and going. Then they started their direct mail campaign. It's looking me in the eye from my mailbox when I get home. Then they started the TV ads. This week, it made the front page of the local paper. I feel bombarded and trapped. I can’t get away from the reminders.

"It's a suite experience!"

All I can think is its dangerous.

Watch out.

Don't go there.

It's NOT SAFE!

Run!

Trapped!

Hide!

Fear!

Escape!

Pain!

I'm anxious, edgy, and fidgety. I’m not sleeping well at night. I had still been keeping the nightmares at bay, but last night they came back with a vengeance.

I realized things weren’t quite right back in May. I told my husband that I NEEDED to go away on vacation. I thought a change of scenery, a change of routine would help, and it did for a while. But, like always, it was a temporary fix. A few weeks ago, he told me, “you just don’t seem like yourself”. The warning lights started flashing bright green and red. I’M BACK!

I don’t want you back. I want ME back. I thought I had conquered you. Why won’t you leave?

I’ve lived with PTSD my entire life. My father is a Vietnam Vet. I was born only two years after he completed his second tour of duty. I didn’t know what it was called, but my memories are loaded with memories of my father’s struggles with PTSD. I watched him have flashbacks. I watched him fly into a rage over something that should have been trivial. I lived with his skewed perceptions of the world, of safety, of his belief structure.

And, now I struggle to make sure I don’t create the same environment for my daughter. I’m in counseling for her and my husband. I sought help to break the cycle of this illness. I will not allow my home to be a place of fear and anger.

My counselor thinks that this is old stuff. I have to find a way to get past the state of fear that I lived in as a child that the trauma of my daughter’s birth dredged up from the depths of my mind. I must find a way to find safety within myself because the outside world will never be 100% safe.

I must not fail.

Why can’t I just get away from all of this?

My 20 year high school class reunion is coming up in August. My husband and I have decided to attend, so I’ve spent the last couple of weekends, blame Stacey and Clinton from TLC’s What Not to Wear (my husband does), looking for a dress to wear to the event.

It’s been difficult to find a dress. To start, I’m a larger than average girl. Not a lot larger, but large enough that I can’t fit into the dresses in the regular misses department at the stores. Therefore, my selection is pretty limited. Added to that, I was a wall-flower in high school, and I don’t want the dress that I buy to reflect that part of my past. I’m not that shy, scared girl anymore. I’m a wife and a mother. I own my own home. I have a career that I’m good at and enjoy. I’m a PTSD survivor. I want a dress that has people seeing the confident woman that I am now. I want them to see that I’m not shy and retiring, but willing to put myself forward the way I am now acknowledging my own faults.

I had bombed out at 12 different stores two weekends ago. I tried on approximately 80 dresses, but nothing hit all of the right notes. I’ve spent the last week grumbling about it to my co-workers. It was so frustrating to have one little thing wrong with so many dresses.

So, last weekend I dragged my husband to the local Macy’s store. We went through the entire store, and grabbed every single dress they had in my size (between 30 and 40 dresses total). I tried on sleeveless dresses, short sleeved dresses, and long sleeved dresses. I tried on casual sundresses, work type dresses, cocktail dresses, and even mistakenly tried on a prom dress. (We were just grabbing, not really looking at the dresses.) I tried on dresses that I would typically never consider. I’m pretty modest, so I don’t wear sequins, tight, or sleeveless clothes. However, given my insatiable desire to find the “right” dress, I ignored all of my own rules. So, I started trying all of these dresses on in the dressing room. I showed my husband each and every one of them. One of them had my husband’s jaw hitting the floor. It was like va-va-voom – totally sexy, slinky, sex-kitten dress, and I looked GOOD! Actually, I looked gorgeous. I’ve never seen myself like that. I’m not ugly, but I’ve never thought of myself as pretty. Anyhow, it just happens that this dress was on clearance for $40, so I decided to go ahead and buy it.

Monday morning rolls around, and I’m talking to a couple of co-workers about finding this great dress. I told them that my husband’s going to get a sitter, so we can go out for my birthday next month, and he’s even thinking about springing for a hotel room. In my mind it was a pretty innocuous, non-triggering conversation to be having, when Chantel says, “woohoo, baby number two making night”.

AARGH! I’m talking about a dress, not making baby number two. I’m not going to intentionally have any more children. My husband and I have decided that neither one of us in comfortable with the risk. My pregnancy and delivery were complicated. In fact they were more complicated than my hospital had ever seen. It’s not like they were just a little bit more complicated than usual, we’re talking almost off the charts complicated. The odds of having that many complications in a single delivery are higher than the odds of winning the lottery. For me, the risks of dying are very real. When your medical records record a conversation about placing mom in the ICU, she’s not making up stories, or exaggerating about nearly dying when giving birth. It’s rare, but moms do sometimes die. There’s no point in giving birth to another child when my odds of not being there to raise that child are so high.

Anyhow, I’m just frustrated. I know Chantel doesn’t know my birth story. I know she didn’t mean anything bad by saying this. She’s working under the typical assumption that most people have their children two to three years apart. It’s just that the casual way she said it kind of tripped me up a bit.

I’m so much better than I was. This experience has started fading into the background. It’s still there. I know I still filter every new experience through it, but it’s not like it was before. I guess I’m just a little naïve in thinking that as my daughter gets older things will stop triggering me. I keep thinking that it’s in the past, and yet I’m having a conversation about a sexy dress, and birth pops up. When are people going to stop talking about it? How old do I have to get before it stops being a common topic of conversation. It’s not that I can’t talk about my daughter’s birth. I do talk about it, but I don’t see the need to go into details with every Tom, Dick, or Harry that walks into my life.

Birth Rape Rears its Ugly Head Again

After two years of living with the consequences of my OB’s actions I really should know better than to Google Birth Rape. It seems like every 9 – 12 months something stirs up the discussion fires on this topic. This time, Café Mom seems to be the instigator. There’s poll, a forum, and a journal / blog post on the topic. Now, at least one L & D nurse is weighing in on the subject as well.

There seems to be some misconceptions about what women are referring to when they define their birth experience as a birth rape.

1. Just because someone, a nurse, midwife, or doctor, breaks your water doesn’t make it a birth rape. Just because birth is painful doesn’t make it a birth rape. Just because you have a cervical check doesn’t make it a birth rape. Most of the time, healthcare providers ask permission to do these things. If you consent, it’s NOT rape.

I had my water broken, but I consented. That procedure was not birth rape. I had an IV, but I consented. That procedure was not birth rape. I had several cervical / vaginal exams, but I consented. Those procedures were not birth rape. I was asked to lie on my side during the majority of my labor, but I consented. That was not birth rape. I had continuous fetal monitoring and EFM, but I consented. Neither of those were birth rape. I had a vacuum assisted delivery, but I consented. That was not birth rape. As long as you consent to the procedure whether it’s verbal or written it’s not rape. Just like when I consent to having sex with my husband it’s not rape.

2. Women who call it birth rape deserved what they got. After all if the baby has to come out, so whatever is done in that process is acceptable. If you go to the hospital as long as someone with an ID badge does it to you it’s okay.

Where I live, we have a Patient’s Bill of Rights. Competent patients have the right to decline any and all medical procedures. Competent patients have the right to be told what their diagnosis is, what the treatment options are, what are the risks associated with those options, and allowed to make their OWN decision. Therefore, the doctor, midwife, or nurse is not always right. They don’t have the power to force a woman to submit to procedures that she doesn’t want. They don’t have the right to coerce a woman into submitting to any procedures, and they don’t have the right to abuse their patients.

3. Women are just whining because they didn’t get the experience that they wanted to have.

What? There are a lot of things about my daughter’s birth that didn’t go the way that I wanted. I didn’t want to be induced. I wanted to go into labor on my own. However, complications prevented this from being possible. Did that traumatize me? NO! Did that result in a need for counseling? NO! It was simply a disappointment. Do I label any of those procedures that I didn’t want, but consented to, as birth rape? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

4. If it’s a rape, why don’t you report it, and have the perpetrators prosecuted?

I did report the actions of my doctor. I reported them to the State Medical Board, the hospital where he practices, and I sent him letter. However, the State Medical Board has the same attitude that a lot of women on this forum have- he’s the doctor, so he’s right. My report was denied because I didn’t have enough evidence to prove it. Doesn’t that sound like a typical rape case? It’s my word against yours. It doesn’t make what happened to be less truthful or less traumatizing. As to why I didn’t sue him, well like a lot of rape victims, I didn’t want to re-live it. I didn’t want to sit in the same room with him. I didn’t want to bare my emotions, and mental issues in front of a jury that doesn’t believe that birth rape happens.

5. You don’t develop mental issues from a bad birthing experience.

Actually, I did develop mental health issues as a result of his decision. I spent 18 months in counseling for PTSD. PTSD doesn’t go away. You learn to live with it, you learn to cope with it, but it doesn’t go away. I’ll have these scars for the rest of my life. They’ll gradually fade with time, but they will never go away. I live with nightmares, flashbacks, dissociation, and anxiety. I have panic attacks when I go to the doctor. I have had flashbacks during sex – what a mood killer. I’ve denied my husband sex because I’ve been terrified of having another child. My marriage was nearly destroyed because of the severity of my symptoms.

6. So what do I call my birth rape?

For me, birth rape refers to a specific procedure at a specific time that was performed without my consent.

My daughter was born at 11:32 pm. Approximately 15 minutes later my doctor asked the nurse to tell him when ½ hour had passed after the baby’s delivery. At that point in time, he knew that the placenta wasn’t detaching properly. Did he discuss this with me? No. He just kept biding his time waiting to see if it would change. Shortly thereafter, I notified the doctor that his ½ hour was up. Did he tell me then, that there was a problem with the placenta? No. He attempted cord traction to get the placenta to release. The umbilical cord tore off the placenta leaving the placenta attached to my uterus. Did he notify me then that there was a problem with the placenta, and offer me the opportunity to choose between treatment options of having him try to manually remove it or have it surgically removed? No. He just shoved his hand inside me, and tried to pull it out himself. Why wouldn’t I have seen this as a rape? He wasn’t saving my child. She was already born. He wasn’t saving me since at this point he didn’t see this situation being emergent. I was competent, and capable of consenting. He chose not to allow me to consent.

The pain of this procedure was extraordinary. It’s beyond the realm of anything I had ever experienced. It sent me into a place where I was incapable of providing consent for any additional procedures. Even though I didn’t consent to the D & C, even though I didn’t consent to the re-installation of my uterus, even though he spent almost an hour with his hand elbow deep in my hoo-ha trying to shove my uterus back into place, I’ve never considered those procedures to be birth rape. The situation had become emergent, I was mentally incapable of providing informed consent, and I was at the mercy of his skill, knowledge, and competency.

You see, Birth Rape is about power and consent. It’s not about sex. It has nothing to do with sex. In some ways, birth rape is worse. You’re in a place and surrounded by people who are supposed to keep you safe, but you’re not. You can’t advocate for yourself if they don’t tell you first what they’re going to do. You can’t fight for your rights when they deny them. My doctor wasn’t evil. He wasn’t trying to harm me. He got caught up in the complications, and all he saw was a problem. He forgot that I was a person, and only saw the complications.

Birth rape is real. Birth rape is evil, and eventually it will become prosecutable. Right now it’s impossible to get anyone to believe you.

Sometimes Surviving is Enough

While we were on vacation last week, I listened to a song on the ipod – Alive off Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell 3 album. I don’t listen to it often, but it’s my favorite song off of that album. The album was released when I was pregnant. Every time Alive was playing, Peanut would dance in my belly. I don’t know why, but she really seemed to either love it or hate it. It’s an interesting song. It celebrates surviving.

My counselor asked me once if I was proud / gave myself credit for anything going well with Peanut’s birth. I’ve struggled with giving myself credit for anything that happened during Peanut’s delivery. As far as I’m concerned the whole experience was a failure. I failed, the doctor failed, the anesthesiologist failed, the nursing staff failed, and my support people failed. There’s nothing but failure from my point of view. However, when I listen to this song it makes me start to wonder if it isn’t enough to just survive.

The doctor’s didn’t kill me off that night.

I didn’t give up, and let myself die that night.

My husband didn’t walk away from our marriage after that night.

I'm a runaway train on a broken track
I'm a ticker on a bomb that you can't turn back
This time, that's right
I got away with it all and I'm still alive
Let the end of the world come tumbling down
I'll be the last man standing on the ground
As long as I got blood rush through my veins
I'm still alive
Holly Knight, Jon Bon Jovi, James Michael, Andreas Carlsson, Richard Samborra, Desmond Child, and Andrea Ramanda



I’m not quite ready to rejoice in my survival, but sometimes survival is reason enough to be proud.