Part 2: Difficult Birth Start Due To Bad Luck

Hi coaches, thank you for your guiding follow-up questions. Yes, I have started therapy with a birth trauma psychologist so I am getting help, which I am proud I have asked for, normally I deal with stuff myself. I am using the Ask a Coach to get some answers to my thoughts and to use your support to get a bit further into what things, thoughts and feelings are happening inside. I thought about your questions:

What will blaming someone or something do for you? Release my inner anger, I feel anger deep inside and I want to be mad at someone. Knowing who to blame would give me this chance. I guess the reason why I don’t allow myself to be angry without the blame is because I have a thought about ‘anger’ when you just had a baby. That you are meant to feel happiness, bliss, gratefulness, maybe a bit of sadness but not anger. Anger would made it feel that I am so ungrateful for my daughter.

What if you didn’t blame anyone or anything for needing a c-section? What might happen then? Then I would need to accept it the way it happened, and my brain is still looking for the missing puzzle piece. If there is no one to blame then it was bad luck, I couldn’t have done anything more and I would need to accept it that THIS just happened to me without reason. I am scared I would start trusting myself less and ‘fear’ that this bad luck is following me.

 

 

Answer:

 

First of all, yes yes yes you! Way to look out and advocate for yourself and what you need. We hope that your work with your therapist is supportive in all the right ways.

And your answers to these questions are so insightful. It seems like you’ve cracked a door to exploring anger. I love the metaphor about the puzzle piece, and here’s why. Have you ever had a puzzle piece go missing? Think about how you responded to that. There are things in life that we will never know the answer to – like where the puzzle piece has gone off to, and why you had an emergency c-section, or how and why the universe exists at all. It makes so much sense that you want someone to blame because your brain is trying to do it’s job to make the world and your experiences make sense and keep you from feeling more pain and anger, even though it’s a human thing to feel angry about something going exactly the way you didn’t want it to. Is it possible that feeling angry makes a lot of sense – that maybe it’s even acceptable, or a normal emotion to feel after what you experienced? What comes up when you think about that?

Even in the best of circumstances, being postpartum is a tender time – a time for recovery and adaptation, and embracing all kinds of change, and you need as much tender love as your new baby, especially when you feel angry. Spread the love on thick for yourself.