Quiet Confessions: In Honor of Birth Trauma Awareness Week

Content Warning: This episode contains detailed discussions of medical trauma, postpartum hemorrhage, psychiatric hospitalizations, and suicidal ideation. Please protect your mental health while listening.

Welcome back to Quiet Confessions, a mini-episode of Quiet Connection where I sit down to chat one-on-one with you about my personal journey.

In honor of Birth Trauma Awareness Week, I'm re-airing a deeply personal episode from season five. Today, we're talking about traumaversaries: the anniversaries of the hardest moments of our lives. For many birthing individuals and parents, these anniversaries are tied to perinatal mental health disorders (PMHDs) and birth trauma.

I'm sharing my own story, including my scheduled C-section that turned terrifying, a severe postpartum hemorrhage at home, surviving three psychiatric hospitalizations, and later facing a brain hemorrhage from a pituitary tumor. I open up about what it's like to live with PTSD, face flashbacks, and handle the heavy seasons on the calendar.

There is no toxic positivity here. I won't tell you that everything happens for a reason. But I will tell you that you aren't alone, your feelings are entirely valid, and we can survive these hard seasons together.

Key Takeaways

• What is a Traumaversary: A traumaversary is the anniversary of a traumatic event. For many parents and birthing individuals, these milestones are deeply tied to birth trauma and perinatal mental health challenges.
• Chelsea’s Timeline of Survival: A look at how a scheduled C-section spiraled into a spinal headache, a life-threatening postpartum hemorrhage at home, severe PMHDs, three psychiatric hospitalizations, and eventually, a brain hemorrhage from a pituitary tumor.
• The Reality of PTSD & Flashbacks: Trauma doesn't just disappear. Flashbacks can bring back the sights, smells, and physical sensations of the original trauma, especially when the anniversary season rolls around.
• Saying No to Silver Linings: It's completely okay to hate "silver linings". You don't have to find a beautiful lesson in the worst things that happened to you. You didn't deserve it, but you can still find gratitude for where you are today without romanticizing the pain.
• Tools for Navigation: Surviving a traumaversary means reminding yourself that you're safe, you aren't in that dark place anymore, and you're surrounded by love.

Soundbites

• "A traumaversary is the anniversary of any form of trauma that happened to you... and that anniversary may bring about some big feelings. Or it may not. It's a deeply personal thing."
• "I say I missed the first six months of my daughter's life due to my perinatal mood and anxiety disorders and being hospitalized for those several times."
• "I hate silver linings. I don't like the idea of them. I feel like what I went through was not okay, and I didn't deserve it. You didn't deserve whatever it was that you went through, either."
• "No, I'm not thankful for what happened to me, but I am grateful for what has come of it."
• "If you have experienced trauma and you are triggered or much more aware of big feelings around the time of year that these things happened to you, I see you. Your feelings are so valid."

This episode discusses topics that may be triggering for some individuals. Please check the show notes for more information and be mindful of your own mental health and comfort levels.

Visit our Patreon to help support our mission to normalize the conversation and end the stigma surrounding PMADs!

Transcript

Chelsea Myers (00:00)

Hey QC listeners, it's Birth Trauma Awareness Week. And in honor of that, I am re-airing an episode all the way back from season five where I discuss traumaversaries and how I navigate them. This episode contains some materials that are probably gonna be a little bit triggering.

Just like the content warning says, be mindful of your mental health while listening and know that if you've experienced birth trauma, you are not alone. I hope that this episode brings you some validation and maybe a little bit of comfort in knowing we're in this together.

Chelsea Myers (00:00)

Hey, welcome to Quiet Confessions, a mini Quiet Connections episode where I sit down and chat with you about my personal journey. I'm happy to have you here with me. Today I am going to talk about Traumaverseries. If you've never heard the term Traumaversery, I will tell you what it is. It's honestly exactly what it sounds like. A Traumaversery is...

the anniversary of any form of trauma that happened to you or in your life or to someone that you know. For a lot of us in this space, the maternal mental health space, the parent space, it has a lot to do with our perinatal or postpartum experiences is where our trauma lies. But trauma can come from anywhere.

Trauma can come from your childhood. Trauma can come in your adult years before you were a parent, way after becoming a parent. And that anniversary of that trauma may bring about some feelings, some big feelings. And they may not. It's a personal thing. But I'm going to talk to you about my traumaversaries because I am right at the beginning of traumaversary season.

And when I say Traumaversary season, holy moly, it lasts months. There are very few, if not, there may only be one or two months in the whole calendar year that don't contain a Traumaversary but I look at this as the start of my Traumaversary calendar because my youngest was born on June 27th.

And as I'm recording this, is June 22nd. It's actually my wedding anniversary. And yes, I am out celebrating it with my partner, but I have a little bit of time to myself. So of course, I'm recording an episode. But my daughter's birth, my youngest daughter's birth started a journey that I am still on. But

journey that would be the most difficult of my entire life and it lasted for I mean time is relative but for me I I say I missed the first six months of my daughter's life due to my

perinatal mood and anxiety disorders and being hospitalized for those several times and we'll get into that. And on top of my birth trauma and my postpartum hemorrhage later and then beyond that, you know, rather than just pile them all on you, I'll give you a little bit of a timeline. So.

My youngest was born on June 27th and it was a scheduled C-section. So I went into it feeling pretty confident to be completely honest because I knew I wasn't going to labor. knew that like I knew the day she was coming. I knew around what hour she would be coming. I'd never had major surgery before so that was scary and I was scared. But I was comforted in

having some form of control. And she was a C-section because she was breech and there was only one doctor in the whole hospital who would deliver a breech baby vaginally and we weren't sure if we would be able to get that doctor. And I honestly just did not want to put her at risk unnecessarily. And we did all the things to try to get her to turn, but she was stubborn.

and she has remained that way and she did not turn.

My c-section was terrifying. I don't know how much blood I lost, but I do know that immediately following the surgery, was unwell. And it was evident. And we didn't know what was going on. But we were sort of folk. I had like

I had sort of a golden hour. My daughter was in the NICU for a little while. And then when we were finally reunited, I took her and I held her and I felt like I felt complete and that lasted for about an hour. And then I became very, very sick. I developed a spinal headache from the procedure

no one from anesthesia could come see me. So I was suffering through a spinal headache, which again, if you're unfamiliar with that, it is probably one of the most painful headaches you could ever experience in your life, worse than a migraine. I have something to compare it to now, and I will get to that later.

in this episode, but I suffered through that for over 24 hours because no one could come see me to do the blood patch procedure to remedy the situation. So I was cycling between bags of ice on my head, not sleeping, couldn't really hold my daughter anymore because I couldn't move. It was very positional. The pain would increase any time I would be

upright or move at all. So my experience in the hospital, I also started like feeling incredibly anxious, like hyper anxious and just in a constant state of.

like fight or flight. And I couldn't explain why. And I just begged to leave even though I felt so sick. I couldn't eat. My head was hurting. I was afraid of everything and nothing at the same time. And it was horrifying. They let me go. They let me go home after I think we were only in the hospital for two or three days.

I think it was the third day and I was still so sick and that started my whole journey to I think it was two or three days later. I hemorrhaged at home. I had been ill. I still wasn't eating. I still wasn't sleeping. And I just said I'm gonna go lay down for a minute and I laid down literally for less than two minutes and then I just stood up and

I everything come out of me and yeah, I hemorrhaged at home. My older daughter was right there, my husband was right there, my in-laws were two minutes away, they were already on their way over. They got there just before the ambulance and whisked my daughter upstairs and I was bleeding out on my bathroom floor and I was taken to the local hospital.

where they were not equipped to deal with my blood loss so I was transferred to the bigger hospital where they did not treat me in a very humane way. the two doctors slash midwife slash OBGYN, I don't know who they were because they really didn't introduce themselves to me and they were talking about me over me. And then they, content warning, I'm gonna be.

a little bit medically graphic here, but they just said, okay, we're going to reach inside and see what we're dealing with and immediately reached inside of me into my uterus and I writhed in pain and the bleeding got worse and they said, okay, we're going to the OR. So I received several blood transfusions and an emergency DNC and a back ray balloon and I was in the hospital recovering from that. And I had just...

left the hospital. And that kicked off my OCD into hyperdrive, which we talked about in the last episode. I was reassurance seeking, like it was my job, that any doctor or nurse who walks into my room, is this gonna happen to me again? Am I gonna be okay? Am I gonna die? And the doctor, one of the doctors in particular, was

so frustrated with me. She just kept saying, I can't keep answering this question. I'm telling you the same thing. We can't tell you if it will happen again, but it's highly unlikely. There was one nurse who was so kind and she's the nurse who helped me shower. Finally, I'd been in the same bloody nightgown for two days. No one had helped me change. No one had helped me clean myself up.

It was pretty awful. So that experience was terrible. So that whole, I bunch all of that up together as the first series of traumas. So the birth of my daughter, my daughter's birthday is always very difficult for me because I get flashbacks and then I get flashbacks of my hemorrhage and yeah.

And then from there, as we talked about, I did have very severe acute perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. I continued to be very, very ill and I wasn't eating for weeks and I felt so sick and I felt so scared that I became suicidal. And I was

I was hospitalized three separate times.

The first time I was hospitalized, I went to the local hospital and waited in an ER bed for three or four days before they found me a bed at a mental health facility at the southernmost part of my state. It was a three and a half hour drive in an ambulance down to this mental health facility. The second...

psychiatric inpatient stay. I had only been home for a day from my first inpatient stay and my therapist got me a bed at UNC Chapel Hills perinatal psychiatric inpatient unit. So we got on a plane and flew me down to North Carolina and I stayed there.

for just shy of a month. And my third, I had been home for about three weeks and I was about to start an outpatient treatment at an outpatient treatment center because I was still really struggling when on Christmas day I reached another breaking point and became suicidal again.

And had my third hospitalization, which was, I think, two weeks and my most horrific. It was terrible. It was very inhumane. And we can get into the hospitalizations in different episodes, but...

those are big traumas that around, so that all happened in succession. So I had my daughter in June, then I had my hemorrhage in July, August, I was struggling. September, I was okay for a little while, and then October, Halloween was the last time I had felt somewhat normal.

By the beginning of November, I was in my first psychiatric unit. Through Thanksgiving and beyond, I was in North Carolina. And Christmas Day, past New Year and beyond, I was in my third inpatient stay.

Beyond that, and I did a lot beyond that, but in March of last year, I had a brain hemorrhage from a pituitary tumor. And since then have become disabled and chronically ill and it's an ongoing journey. And this pituitary tumor very likely had been there from the start of all of my postpartum challenges because

They are more common before childbirth and it's more likely that they rupture right after childbirth, but lucky me, it didn't and it lasted. But the symptoms and the signs, everything that was happening to my body and all of these things that I didn't understand can all be explained by a pituitary tumor. And it ruptured and it bled into my brain. So I was in the intensive care unit and then I was in the neurosurge floor. And yeah, it is still an ongoing journey, but.

And that was in March. Because of all of these things, I have PTSD. And like we've talked about in previous episodes, I am triggered by things, all things medical, doctor's offices, hospital visits, medical shows. I'm going through some exposure therapy where I have to watch medical shows.

and I have flashbacks frequently. have flashbacks and I can literally feel, hear, see, smell all of the things like I'm right back in all of those situations. All of that to say, I'm in that season right now and I'm surviving. That's a line that my therapist like sees with me and it's one that I remind myself a lot.

Every year, I wouldn't say it necessarily gets easier, but I gain more tools to navigate the traumaversaries. So this year, am I still having flashbacks? Yep, I sure am. Am I still in a heightened state of anxiety and depression? Sure am. The state of our nation isn't helping things, but I am surviving.

I'm getting up every day, reminding myself I am not in that place anymore, reminding myself that I am safe, looking at my family, and you guys know me, I hate silver linings. I do not like the idea of them. I don't like having to come up with something good from every bad situation. That's okay if that works for you. It doesn't work for me.

I feel like what I went through was not okay and I didn't deserve it and I don't necessarily have to find some lesson that I needed to learn or anything along those lines. I will say I'm thankful for all of you and for the community that we've built through Quiet Connection and that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't have gone through what I went through. But.

It wasn't okay. I didn't deserve it. And you didn't deserve whatever it was that you went through. None of us do. And I don't believe that these things happen to teach us a greater lesson. Sometimes things happen and they suck. And these things happened and they sucked. But I'm looking at my family, knowing that I'm safe, knowing that I'm loved, knowing that I have so much love for them, and that...

I wouldn't trade them for anything. Would I go through what I went through again? Absolutely not. I would not. No. Never. That's not an option. But I would never trade away my children, the relationship I have with my partner, or the things that have grown from this experience. So no, I'm not thankful for what happened to me, but I am grateful.

for what has come of it. So Traumaviruses, whether you are a parent or not, if you have experienced trauma and you are triggered or much more aware of big feelings around the time of year that these things happened to you, I see you, your feelings are so valid, you're not alone.

You're not alone and I'm not alone. And I'm going to wrap it up there today because again, I could go down so many rabbit holes, but we'll save that for another week. Thanks for sitting with me and I'll see you next Thursday.