What it's like to have had a traumatic birth and PTSD

• I feel guilty for not being well.
• I feel jealous of people whose birth experiences were after mine and not especially traumatic, especially strangers or people I didn't like much to begin with.
• I am afraid to sleep because in the period between getting in to bed and going to sleep I am liable to relive vividly, including recreating physical sensations, aspects of the birth and immediate aftermath.
• I am terrified of my upcoming repair surgery - 21 days - because it will involve a hospital bed, theatre, probably a canula and drip, stirrups, a hospital gown, those weird hospital blankets... all of that. I am also very, very afraid of coming home too sick, as I did last time - I shouldn't have come home from hospital when I did, and if Rob's paternity leave hadn't been about to run out I doubt I would have. They weren't very keen on letting me out and only the fact that my mother and my partner were going to be at home with me convinced them.
• I am in physical pain all the time, to the extent that I am afraid to go to the bathroom because it increases the pain a little.
• I deeply resent being sick for so much of Linnea's tiny baby stage; it was even briefer than most babies, and I missed it.
• I worry that I will alienate or alarm people by talking about it so much, and I resent the implication - which comes from me! - that I should conceal the pain I'm in and the effect it has on me.
• I vacillate between being sorry for Rob and angry with him for not being sick.
• I am grieving for a loss: I will probably never ever go into labour again. I catch myself thinking "Next time..." and have to remind myself that no, there will be no next time for labour - next time, and every time after that, will be a c-section. No playing Scrabble next time, no counting contractions, no waiting for the baby to decide it's ready - a date and another theatre.
• I don't have the energy to cope with other people's upsets at all. I don't have the energy to celebrate with other people either. A perfectly pleasant, low-key, low-energy visit from my sister nearly wiped me out. The fact that other people exist is emotionally exhausting - but I can't neglect them, because I desperately need their support, all of them, to counter the voices in my head.
• The voices in my head are my worst enemy. They say - I should not be sick. It is my fault I am sick. Other people give birth fine. Other people recover from birth fine. Other people don't catch colds. Other people do all the housework and all the cooking and all the babycare and are fine. Other people are tired of me being sick. It's boring to hear about how someone is sick all the time so I should stop talking about it. No-one will ever believe that this could be as traumatic as it is, so I should shut up and deal with it and stop being a wimp. Lots of people are worse off than I am. It can't be that bad if I want more children (someone said this to me, and it has really stuck. I don't really think it's true, but the voices in my head like it). It's not fair to Rob to be so sick, such a wimp; I should get well before he loses his job.
• I am a lot less afraid of my surgery now that I know I have life insurance, so the house will be paid for if I die under anaesthetic. I am afraid I will die.
• Several times a day I have clear snapshots of scenes in which I or Linnea are horribly injured and no-one can possibly help or find out for hours. Many times, Rob has had to go to work not knowing whether I will be well enough to cope all day; last week he had to leave while I was lying on the floor unable to stand up or move much, hoping I would get better and not worse. He put the phone near me so I could call an ambulance if necessary. He can only stay home if he knows I am too sick to cope, since that happens so often that staying home on the "maybe" days would be ridiculous.
• And yet there are days - sometimes several of them in a row - where I can easily walk a few miles pushing the buggy, run errands, cook, do housework, play energetically with the baby, and still have energy left over after she's gone to bed for extras. So I could be well if I just tried. Obviously.