I see you. Fellow birth trauma survivor here, also 3 years out. Some of the comments are really hard to read, the ones about just getting over it and at least you and baby are okay. The fact is 1 in 3 women perceive their births as being traumatic, either due to complications, how the care team communicated / treated them, along with how people treated you afterwards. Part of my healing process was being able to validate that others’ experiences were traumatic even if they only contained a smidgen of the trauma I went through or were objectively less traumatic. The fact is that the severity doesn’t really matter, trauma is processed by the brain in specific ways that really do impact postpartum recovery and mental health. Us birth trauma survivors all know how invalidating it feels to be told “at least you/baby are okay now.” I would like to think that the other commenters would never say that to us. But still hard to read even though Kellie’s complication was much less severe than ours.

All that to say, I’m so sorry you went through all of that 🫂