When Birthdays bring Fear: Birth Trauma and PTSD. I shared this article on my feed because lately there have been several women in my life who have shared with me that they too, relate to this experience. For the longest time I thought it was just me and I felt very alone in this. After reading the article and hearing feedback from friends who also identify with it, I have decided to share a journal entry I wrote last summer, right before the twins' birthday. I share this in hopes that others will realize they aren't alone, that this is a real thing and it's not something silly you can just "get over."
Saturday, July 11, 2015
On Tuesday our sweet miracle babies will be 11 years old. I
don’t know where the time has gone. As the day approaches each year I have so
many mixed emotions. Of course I am looking forward to celebrating the lives of
these two incredible little people. They are indeed miracles and have grown
from the tiny 3 pounders that seemed so fragile into smart, strong, fun people
that I truly enjoy being around. I am so privileged that God chose me to be
their mommy. Every year Wes and I give them a huge birthday extravaganza. This
year they don’t want that. They want a simple party at home with family. That’s
it.
The other part of their birthday isn’t something I like to talk
about a lot. The circumstances surrounding their birth were traumatic for Wes and me. Let’s be honest…the big
birthday celebration is more for us than it is for them. It’s a distraction
from all of the grief and sad memories associated with the trauma of their
birth. I thought that through the years the flashbacks, anxiety and nightmares
would go away. It’s been 11 years and they haven’t. What I have learned is that
I have PTSD. It has taken me a while to come to terms with this, to admit it to
myself and it is extremely difficult for me to tell other people about it. I’m
not sure why I find it so difficult to talk about. Perhaps I feel like using a
term like PTSD makes me sound overly dramatic or perhaps because it feels like
there is something wrong with me…like I’m damaged. What I have come to
understand is that their birth was traumatic. I almost died, they could have
died, and the weeks and months after they were born we were literally fighting
for our lives. This isn’t something I can just “get over.” Well-meaning people
have said to me, “But everyone is alright now. You are all 3 healthy and you
should think about how incredibly blessed you are and how good God is.” Yes,
perhaps I should concentrate on the goodness of God and how He blessed our
family. In fact, I do thank Him every single day for how He has worked in our
lives and for the privilege of raising Sarah Grace and Jonah.
Here’s the thing I
didn’t understand until recently...PTSD is the result of trauma and we have
wounds that haven’t healed. So often I think of PTSD as associated with
soldiers coming back from battle, but we did fight a very real battle. A life
and death battle. I don’t always know what is going to trigger a flashback. I
can be walking along minding my own business and happy as I can be and then
suddenly I smell something that takes me back to the hospital and I am there
all over again, reliving the trauma all over again. Sometimes it is the sight
of adorable baby shoes, a maternity top on a mannequin in a store, it comes
right up and punches me in the gut and I’m stunned, trying to recover. It’s a
dark place to go and I don’t want to be there, but I can’t always avoid those
sights, sounds, smells, memories because I don’t always know what is going to
be a trigger. Yesterday I was home minding my own business when I started
smelling this smell like the NICU. I hadn’t been anywhere near a hospital and I
wasn’t cleaning with chemicals so I’m not sure where it came from, but I had to
light a candle to try to smell something different so that I wouldn’t go into a
full on flashback. I am learning strategies to deal with this and sometimes I
can keep myself in the present.
I hope that someday I can look at their baby pictures and
not feel panic as fresh as if it had just happened. I hope that someday I can
eat at Chick-fil-a and not feel nauseous as I remember that I ate at the one in
the lobby of the hospital almost every day when they were in the NICU. I hope
that someday I can complete their baby books and photo albums and not have a
panic attack just from looking at ultrasound and baby pictures. I do have a lot
of mommy guilt that these kids don’t have completed baby books. I have faith
that someday all of these things will happen. I am not there YET, but someday I
will be.
These are the things I know to be true:
- I can’t do this alone. The Holy Spirit will empower me, strengthen me, walk this out with me every step of the way and on the days that I can’t walk on my own, He will uphold me.
- . I need my network of family and friends to support me. They may not understand completely and that’s ok. I just need to know they will be there for me, hold me and encourage me on the days when I feel stuck.
- . My children don’t remember any of the trauma surrounding their birth and I thank God for that. They aren’t affected by these circumstances except for what they have been told. They know that they were born early and were fragile and we were very afraid. They know they are miracles and that we are so thankful God gave them to us. They know they were very sick and God grew them up to be strong, smart, big kids. They know they are loved – by us and most especially by God and that He has a purpose for their lives.
- Healing for me isn’t going to come overnight. I am making progress and some days are better than others. I am learning to put our time in the NICU into perspective. My week in ICU and their month in the NICU were certainly scary and traumatic – HOWEVER – it’s really only a one month period of time in the span of 11 years. Yes, there were other scary times and health challenges I faced, but in terms of the birth of the babies, we are talking about one month and then a couple of months that followed as Wes and I were scared that something would happen after we brought them home. Anyway, that’s a whole lot of good days compared to the 30+ really scary ones.
- I am not alone in how I feel. For one thing, my very best friend, partner, advocate and true love lived this with me. We have both been changed by this experience. You know that talk you have with your spouse where you say “If anything happens to me I want for you to get married again?” Yeah, that one. We had that talk right after they told me my body was shutting down and they weren’t sure they could fix me - just before they wheeled me to ICU. If I close my eyes, I can instantly be transported back to that room, him holding my hands and sitting on the edge of my bed. I meant every word of it. My point is, you don’t go through something like this and not come out changed. We grew closer to God and each other in those moments and learned not to take one moment for granted. In some ways I think Wes had it worse than me because there were points in time that I was so sick that I didn’t realize how bad things were. It was during those days that he held it together for both of us, driving back and forth between Americus and Columbus to make sure the babies and I were looked after.
- I am much stronger today because of what I have been through. I had lived with such fear my entire life. I was afraid to die. In those moments in my hospital room, when the doctors told me that they weren’t sure of anything but that there was a chance I could die, I wasn’t afraid. The one time I should have been afraid, I knew I was safe in Jesus and either he would heal me or he would take me to live with him. Either way, it was all going to be OK.
- God uses every experience for His glory. I know that all things work together for good for them that love God who are called according to His purpose. Some days I can’t see what that good is, but I do trust that God knows and He wastes nothing.
- My thoughts and plans are not His thoughts and plans. I am coming to terms with this and I know that not only do I not get to choose Plans A, B, C…I don’t even get to know what those plans are until God is ready to reveal it to me and chances are, He isn’t going to show me the plan anyway. I only get to see the next step, then the next, then the next. I am becoming OK with this although the control freak in me still freaks out a little bit with fear of the unknown.
I guess that’s all for now. I could go on
and on about what I have learned and what I know to be true. I just needed to
get some of these thoughts out of my head and into some sort of journal so I
can process them…or maybe not. Maybe I just need them out of my head and to
leave them alone without processing them. I just need for them not to be so
much at the forefront of my mind. The counselor is helping me to see that I
have unrealistic expectations of myself when it comes to healing from all of
this. I spent years thinking that if I relived it enough I would be desensitized
to it and it would go away. Instead, I sunk deeper and deeper into a dark place
that I didn’t know how to get out of. It’s going to take some time to figure
out how to deal with this and what to do with all of it. In some ways, that
dark place is comfortable because I know what that feels like. I no longer
remember my life before that. It will happen though, and those moments of grief
will be like one snapshot in an entire book of photographs. I am clinging to
that hope and praying that it happens sooner rather than later.
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