I’ve been processing my birth trauma and finally had the courage to confront my midwife about her holding back my cervical lip without my consent during my homebirth and somehow her response made me feel WORSE. Thoughts? Advice? Should I report her to the AMCB? Help.
Am I overreacting for being really hurt on my first Mother’s Day?
My son is 3 months old and I’ve been having a really difficult time breastfeeding and producing enough milk. It’s been emotionally exhausting for me because I really wanted to exclusively breastfeed, but we’ve had to supplement with formula and I’ve been struggling with feeling like my body isn’t doing enough, even though logically I know I’m trying my best.
Last night baby boy woke up at 3am and I was up most of the night feeding, pumping, and trying to calm him. I finally got a little sleep around 5:30/6am. I had pumped milk and put it in the fridge for the morning because every ounce feels important right now.
This morning my partner told me “Happy Mother’s Day” before leaving for work, but when I got up I found the milk spilled all over the fridge. He had been in there because he brought me a warmed bottle earlier, so I know it happened while he was in the kitchen. He didn’t clean it up or say anything. Then I realized he had made coffee for himself but didn’t make any for me, even though I drink coffee every single morning because I’m exhausted taking care of the baby.
I know these sound like small things, but I completely broke down crying. I think it’s less about the milk or coffee themselves and more that I wanted to feel appreciated and thought about on my first Mother’s Day, especially with how hard postpartum and breastfeeding have been for me.
He’ll probably say he didn’t have money to buy anything, and honestly I wouldn’t have cared about gifts. A handwritten note, making me coffee, cleaning up the milk, literally any small act of thoughtfulness would have meant a lot.
He’s also taking me to his family’s Mother’s Day dinner later, but that was already planned by them, not by him specifically for me.
Am I overreacting because I’m emotional and postpartum, or is this a valid thing to feel hurt by?
I can’t stop replaying my midwife sticking her hand inside me, stretching my cervix & holding it back as I was pushing. The pain of her doing that as I was SCREAMING that it hurt, the images, feelings and sensations of it keep replaying OVER and OVER again in my head while I’m breastfeeding. I’ve sought out therapy, am using music, tv, distractions, playing Tetris, I’m seeing a trauma informed lactation consultant. It’s helping but it won’t stop replaying in my head and I’m at my wits end. I’m a survivor of sexual assault and told my midwife I didn’t want any cervical checks for this EXACT reason. I was terrified that even though I’ve gone through extensive therapy regarding my trauma that cervical checks might be too similar and trigger me. And that’s EXACTLY what happened. I’m also incredibly upset because I was not in an emergency situation when she did that, baby & I were both safe and I continued to labor at home for multiple hours after she violated me. I don’t know how else to get these thoughts out of my head. I replay her shoving her hand inside me, stretching my cervix and then pushing against my cervical lip as I was screaming in pain over and over and over and I don’t know how to make it stop. It’s exactly like it was when I was replaying my sexual assault over and over again and it took YEARS for that to stop. I don’t want this to take years to stop. Any advice?
So I am 10.5 weeks pp with my son doing both breastfeeding & pumping. I’m having really intrusive thoughts when I’m breastfeeding him at night time and it’s making my breastfeeding journey feel gross instead of beautiful and I need advice on how to handle this. Before birth I had told my midwife that i had sexual trauma and didn’t want any cervical checks done unless it was an emergency. I ended up having a really long labor and so she asked at one point if she could check me, I consented, she did, everything was fine. And then awhile later she asked if she could check again and I again said yes. She checked (I was 9cm) & then I began to have a really intense contraction & felt the urge to push. When I was trying to push she kept her hand in my vagina to hold part of my cervical lip out of the way to see if i could get him farther down but did not tell me that first. It hurt, I screamed ouch & told her it hurt and she explained why she was doing it as she kept her fingers there and said that I needed to try to keep pushing. It was so intense I didn’t know what to say so I just I tried to push like that but it felt violating with her fingers inside me. I blocked it out & didn’t even realize that whole experience was traumatizing until our 4 week postpartum appt when I sat next to her, smelled her body odor and immediately felt this overwhelming violated sick feeling rush over my body. When I finally figured out why that happened it was nighttime & I was breastfeeding. Now it keeps popping up as an intrusive thought every time I breastfeed my son at night and it’s incredibly uncomfortable to keep replaying that in my head. It’s fine during the day and isn’t an issue when pumping because I’m distracted by other things & can push that thought/feeling out of my head but at night in the quiet & silence my brain won’t stop thinking about it and it’s traumatizing me and making me want to stop breastfeeding. I don’t know if this thought process is something others have gone through and what I should do? Please help