While most women who experience childbirth cannot call it a wonderful and easy experience, most can say it was tough but they got through it fine. For me, delivering my daughter was probably the most traumatic experience I ever had physically and emotionally. Most women would experience it as their worst nightmare. It was an experience that altered my life forever, and while I did get the wonderful benefits of having my daughter, I lost a great deal of my physical normalcy and my emotional well being.
During my delivery, I went through a harrowing night that nearly took my life followed by another night of near death. After being in labor for 13 1/2 hours and losing nearly half my body's blood due to hemorrhaging from a severe laceration, I was fragile and weak. I felt like my the very fiber of life was torn from me. The toll it took on my sense of self was significant. As I went through the following months post delivery, I was different in so many ways. First, I was in a significantly weakened physical and emotional state because of my delivery. But my mind was now different too. I came to the brink of the gates of heaven in those long darkened hours of bleeding post delivery. Laying alone and knowing I had a new life to be responsible for felt overwhelming. I was bleeding profusely and barely conscious. In those long night hours, death creeped and knocked at my body's doorstep a few times.
In the many months that followed, I experienced many struggles adjusting to my new body impairments,. This took a toll on my ability to enjoy the normal bonding time that a mother should have with their new child and affected my ability to get back to life . I needed special at home care for two weeks after going home from the hospital, my stay there had been 4 1/2 days. Yet three weeks post delivery, I was still struggling just to cope with the trauma I experienced and the changes that were now a part of me. Within the first year I had contemplated the benefits of death more than a few times.
The overwhelming traumatic process that I experienced tore at me physically and emotionally. I then experienced exacerbated suffering caused by my now ex husband, and the damage cannot be explained in mere words. Because of this, the post partum depression I struggled with for over 26 months post delivery altered my views of life. I was irritable, deeply saddened, and deeply resentful. To this day, my body has never recovered from the trauma.
However, there was a significant blessing that occurred within the trauma that August long ago. My life and my daughters life were spared. In my near death experience close to the whispers of God, I have found new meaning and new direction in my life. In the years following these horrible hours and days, I have grown much less tolerant of others who are negligent and abusive. I have found more meaning in simple things, and I have grown much closer to the one who saved me from death's door-God. My daughter is a beautiful young woman about to be married and she has been affected positively by my attention to details in life and my value based compass.
During my delivery, I went through a harrowing night that nearly took my life followed by another night of near death. After being in labor for 13 1/2 hours and losing nearly half my body's blood due to hemorrhaging from a severe laceration, I was fragile and weak. I felt like my the very fiber of life was torn from me. The toll it took on my sense of self was significant. As I went through the following months post delivery, I was different in so many ways. First, I was in a significantly weakened physical and emotional state because of my delivery. But my mind was now different too. I came to the brink of the gates of heaven in those long darkened hours of bleeding post delivery. Laying alone and knowing I had a new life to be responsible for felt overwhelming. I was bleeding profusely and barely conscious. In those long night hours, death creeped and knocked at my body's doorstep a few times.
In the many months that followed, I experienced many struggles adjusting to my new body impairments,. This took a toll on my ability to enjoy the normal bonding time that a mother should have with their new child and affected my ability to get back to life . I needed special at home care for two weeks after going home from the hospital, my stay there had been 4 1/2 days. Yet three weeks post delivery, I was still struggling just to cope with the trauma I experienced and the changes that were now a part of me. Within the first year I had contemplated the benefits of death more than a few times.
The overwhelming traumatic process that I experienced tore at me physically and emotionally. I then experienced exacerbated suffering caused by my now ex husband, and the damage cannot be explained in mere words. Because of this, the post partum depression I struggled with for over 26 months post delivery altered my views of life. I was irritable, deeply saddened, and deeply resentful. To this day, my body has never recovered from the trauma.
However, there was a significant blessing that occurred within the trauma that August long ago. My life and my daughters life were spared. In my near death experience close to the whispers of God, I have found new meaning and new direction in my life. In the years following these horrible hours and days, I have grown much less tolerant of others who are negligent and abusive. I have found more meaning in simple things, and I have grown much closer to the one who saved me from death's door-God. My daughter is a beautiful young woman about to be married and she has been affected positively by my attention to details in life and my value based compass.
