Postpartum PTSD is a bitch because it’s like “oh, you had trauma from your pregnancy/birth? Here’s flashbacks and nightmares of all the trauma you’ve experienced in your life”
I’m having nightmares of past abuse (unrelated to my pregnancy) and flashbacks of being told Sam had passed. It was really hard because I’m sure they had been kicking that morning. But they could have just been floating in their amniotic fluid. We had been trying to get a printout of Sam’s heartbeat since the first night of my induction, and that first night they were so active, they kept kicking the heart monitor. So I think I was in denial that next morning when they tried again and couldn’t find it with the doppler.
We had the ultrasound tech come in and there was no cardiac activity. Frank put his ear on my stomach and we knew. But it didn’t totally set in until the OB called their death.
I screamed and made ungodly noises, then started throwing up. I just get stuck in that moment sometimes. I feel like I left a piece of my heart in L&D room 117.
