Reflections (Warning: potential triggers)

Listening to the sounds of my partner moving around in the other room, I furtively turn down the volume on the television and brace myself for the next hour's viewing.
I've developed a strange need, in the months since my daughter's birth to watch programs such as 'one born,' especially those advertised to contain traumatic births and/or emergency C-sections.  It's like poking at a bruise. I know it will hurt and that it's completely unproductive but I can't help it.
It's not the birth stories that I'm actually after; it's the cathartic release afterwards.

When I posted an account of my daughter's birth in the previous post, my intent was to keep the blog up-to-date and to write something a little neater at a later date.  Now I feel it is best left as it is.  There is something almost fitting in the rough, unpolished account I've given. It may have been a long labour but to me, it still felt as if it was spiralling out of my control too fast for me to adjust. As a result, I was left feeling like her birth was something that happened to me, rather than an experience I had been waiting for all my life.  I felt robbed of the natural birth I had been fighting for tooth and nail all through my pregnancy, I was frightened by how fast everything was happening and angry and confused with myself and my inability to let go of the feelings that memories of her birth evoke and the implications for future birth (should we be so lucky)

I tried to voice these feelings; first to my mother, herself having delivered by emergency C-section twice and then I tried to broach the subject on my first home visit. I was told in the first instance that I had been too focused on my expectations for birth and that I needed to let it go and focus on my beautiful baby girl. The health visitor made noises to indicate she was listening as I tried to explain but I actually started to feel like I was making something out of nothing. Even when I briefly mentioned it on my post-natal check up, it was almost as if the GP took a mental step back as I was talking - like she was humouring me.

So now, I'm left feeling guilty about these emotions and not sure how to handle them.  I take baby for long walks during the day and once I've found a secluded spot on the cycle path, I allow myself a few frustrated tears.  I watch programs relating to birth as if I need this reason to validate my need to cry.

Maybe these feelings will pass one day, I don't know.  In the mean time, I just keep going.