Trauma

So I had my last counseling session the other day and it has been fine. There was a part of me that thought this is cool. It kind of puts the past in its place and I can move on from there. Although at the time I was pretty keen not to let it go, now I am kind of pleased. I am sure that there will be times that are tough but that is just life really. Some times are crap and some times are good. It was funny that at the end of the session I kind of thought that there might be good will hunting moments in that we hug and stay in touch. But that did not happen and that is cool.

But I did get to thinking about the trauma of having a preterm. We were totally traumatized by what happened. Emotionally and physically we felt like we had been through the wringer and it has only really been in the last couple of months that we have felt that we have come up for air.... probably only to go under again when the next child is born. But at least we now know what to  expect the second time around.

But I wondered why is it that people who have preterm children are usually initially traumatized by this? There were some women that were having their 3rd baby in the unit when we were there and all of them had been preterm.  I am sure that they, as will we if this baby comes early, were not traumatized as much by the second child as you know what to expect and I wonder if this is where the answer lies. If you expect it then it probably cushions the blow somewhat. I have a friend that had twins at 32 weeks and she does not seem overly traumatized by the event. But then if you are having twins there maybe there is an expectation that this can occur.

And that leads to expectations which I think can get everyone into trouble. I expected that I was going to have a lovely home water birth which was going to be a defining moment of my life. Instead I got my life defining moment but it was so far from what I expected that I did not know where I was.

I have been trying to contain my expectations for this baby. I have 3 possible outcomes in my head that may happen.
1- being that we get hellp again and the baby comes early.
2- we go term and have a natural birth
3 -we go term and have a csection.
The third one is the one that I really don't want to happen as I want to have a natural birth which I fear is quite hard in a very interventionist maternity service where there are no independent midwives or doulas to protect the rights of the women in the area that we live. But that is another very long story which I am not going to go into in this blog ( I am sure that it will come in as/ if we get closer to term)

Anyway coming back to trauma. The unit  where Molly was was great for physical care. They looked after Molly and followed the guidelines that were in place in the unit but they forgot one big important part. Molly was more than just a baby in an incubator and I was more that just a first time mother. We needed to bond and we needed time to hang out and that both John and I were so important to Molly that it was equal with the medicine that they gave. But they did not address that. I am not sure whether other units are different. But this one did not nurture the family as a unit at all. And this is something that we will definitely do differently next time. Whether invited to by the unit or not.

If I had one piece of advice for parents who had just had a neonate baby I would say: This is your baby. You need to bond and you need to connect. Hold your baby and make the hospital staff aware that you know that you are as important to the baby as the interventions that they are giving. For you it does not stop when you get out of hospital. It goes on and what happens in the unit does matter.

Fingers crossed that we do not have to go through it again. But I think that it is best to be prepared. To cushion the blow if it comes.

Having written this, it is hard to think about the trauma that we went through when for so long it was so real that we tasted it with every meal. It was like a cloud that would not go away. Now it seems like  space that I cannot even out myself in to reflect. Man that is cool. A lot of hard work but totally cool. I suppose that is the thing about trauma. It is totally horrific when you are going through it but when you get out the other side, it is pretty cool looking back at what you survived. I have changed so much from what happened and I would not go back to who I was and it took a bloody big event for me to do that.

I kind of see it as becoming Sarah Davies. When we got married it felt very weird calling myself that. If my last name had been anything decent then I would not have changed it but after 2 years I finally feel ok about calling myself Sarah Davies. Maybe this is an indicator of the changes that I have gone though.

Anyway Molly is waking.

Thoughts to all the neonatal parents.