Every night for the first couple of weeks as I lay in bed with my husband I would interrogate him about the details of the labour. What happened? What was said? Who was there? By continually going over the details of the traumatic event, I was processing it and those fragments of pain and trauma were falling into a narrative that would allow me to eventually come to terms with what had happened. However there were still gaps in our knowledge and we would later contact the hospital for a debriefing. We had someone senior come to visit us to answer our questions and the information we gathered was the glue that helped me put the final fragments into place.
My body was also still holding onto the trauma. My leg would shake as I dropped off to sleep as if I was having a contraction. I would have flashbacks of the labour and see the faces of health professionals with looks of hatred for me. This happened for quite some time but the intensity weakened and its hold on me loosened.
Mental distress can also manifest in other ways. It is common to have intrusive thoughts and images of harming infant postpartum (examples can be found here https://bjgp.org/content/67/661/376). I was in this boat but it did not distress me because of my clinical experience and profession I was able to normalise these thoughts. They were just thoughts and I knew that it was normal for mothers to experience this postpartum. I would find out later that sharing the specific thoughts I had with a fellow mum struggling with OCD (when I was in a mother and baby unit 6 months later-more to come on this later) helped to normalise what she was going through.
The mind and body was telling me things weren’t right and more was to come.. the trauma had left an imprint. I no longer had the intrusive thoughts, flashbacks and shaking legs, but I had the depression that was strengthening its grip around me. I was spiralling into unchartered territory of motherhood and postnatal depression.
Psychologist and Patient 