Yours sincerely, the Mum in you #2

Dear the Woman in me,

We need to talk.

We’ve been dancing around this subject for a while.

We need to talk about birth; past and future.

I know how terrifying Alice’s birth was for you, I was there. I have watched your experience hold you back for almost 9 months and it is heartbreaking. I have relived those hours with you over and over. I have felt the shame, the guilt, the fear, the anger and the sadness. I was there with you and I am here with you now.

We still have a long way to go as far as healing is concerned but I wanted to remind you of how far you have come.

You are no longer plagued by uncontrollable flashbacks. If you do have any they are minor and manageable. You can talk about what happened, you can be honest when people ask ‘are you having anymore?’ You can work and do your job just as well as you ever did before.

Don’t let people tell you that what you’re working through is like fixing a broken leg in terms of needing help because it’s not. This was your experience and yours alone, no one will know what you felt.

I want you to have the confidence to own your experience one day, to be able to wear it as armour instead of a wound.

I’m not saying it wasn’t horrendous but you successfully went through labour and birth on gas and air! I know you see as labour as the time you lost control and therefore lost yourself and never found yourself again.

This isn’t how I see it.

I see this as the time you transformed into 'mum', don’t snigger you know it’s true. I see it as the time you became so much stronger than you ever were before.

If you keep moving forward I know a day will come when Alice’s birth is no longer a trauma in your past.

But you have to let go.

There are times where you forget or maybe the birth doesn’t seem as bad and you freak out when you feel this is happening. You sometimes remind yourself it was awful just to make sure you don’t get pregnant again! But then you will cry at night because you can’t have any more children as you wouldn’t be able to cope with birth again.

Breathe. Enjoy Alice, no decisions need to made right now.

If how you feel about children and birth changes daily so be it. Embrace all possibilities, possible futures with other children or just with Alice.

If nothing else know that you are a mum now. No one can take that away. Being a mum is wondrous and better then you ever imagined anything could be.’

Yours sincerely, the Mum in you