Today I’m posting a story shared by Shuly. She is a mother of two in the Cleveland, Ohio area. She is passionate about public health and bringing smiles to the world through humanitarian and theatrical clowning. She can talk pregnancy, birth, and parenthood all day everyday and can be reached at sgoldman07@gmail.com
I truly thank her for being willing to share her story and thoughts. I have no doubt her openness will help other moms out there struggling with nerve damage from childbirth.
Content warning: traumatic birth story (spoiler – we are all doing great 😊)
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The month of May is Maternal Nerve Injury from Childbirth Awareness Month. The birth of my first child, 5 years ago, was a difficult birth with a complexity of issues and layers of trauma both during and after the birth. This included being on my back for nearly 12 hours and pushing with my legs, bent at the knees, for 4 hours. The combination of not moving, having my legs bent for so long, and my child’s head compressing the nerve in my left leg, led me to suffering from severe femoral nerve damage in my left leg (my right leg had minor damage which healed relatively quickly).
I had no use of my left leg after my son was born. I could not lift it. I could not bear weight on it. The only sensation was tightness around my knee, the rest was numb from my thigh to my ankle. I could not bend it. I could not walk. I could not dress or undress myself. I could not move my body without assistance. I could not carry my newborn. I could not sway him to sleep. I could not go to him when he cried.
I could not be present for my baby.
But that’s not what this story is about. This story is about what happens after. After the endless hours of trying to figure out what is wrong because the hospital discharges you 48 hours after giving birth and tells you: “It should be fine”. After the dozens and dozens of trips to PT to regain movement and muscle. After the x-rays and EMGs to confirm and determine the extent of the damage. After you are out of the period of acute stress that follows a traumatic birth and birth injury.
This story is about the impact this injury and experience had on me and continues to have on me years after it occurred. The less talked about. The less known. This story is about the less visible.
As mentioned at the start, my son and I are doing well. We, with the help of friends and family, made it through the initial period of time that was most challenging physically. We made it through the time until I was able to walk unassisted again, dress and bathe myself, walk stairs, put my kid in and out of a car seat, and go to my child when he was crying. We found our new normal (whatever that means as a new parent).
Alright, I’m about to make some big generalizations, forgive me.
For many, there is something that happens around the time a baby is 4 months old. Society loses interest and concern in a mama and how she is doing. The newness is over. She has returned to work. She’s seems to be doing great at juggling diaper bags and grocery bags. She’s back on her feet. She’s fine.
… They have yet to invent the emoji that mirrors the face I am making at all of this. The best way to describe it is “oh heeeelllll no”. You still aren’t sleeping, every new rash on your baby’s body sends you into a panic speed dialing of the on-call nurse, you obsessively weigh your baby to make sure they are gaining weight, and you do your best to make sure your nipples aren’t leaking through your blouse during that important meeting you have with an investor on Tuesday. You are barely keeping it together.
This is a bit how I have felt about my nerve damage. People saw me walking. People saw me holding my baby. People saw me able to get in and out of my chair. For all intents and purposes, I seemed fine. But here is what people didn’t see.
The tightening of sadness in my chest when I would see a mom with a brand-new baby snuggled up in a wrap, walking around the park, no wheelchair or walker in tow. The numbness around my knee that still remains to do this day. I find myself absent mindedly rubbing that knee like Harry Potter absent mindedly rubbing the lightening shape scar on his forehead. The near giddy excitement I had when, three years after my injury, my leg kicked out during a knee-jerk reflex test for the first time since giving birth. The pain in my leg that comes like clockwork each month I get my period or when I am sick and rundown (with two toddlers in the house this is often, to say the least). The deep ache in my quad muscle from exerting too much energy, which doesn’t take much. That moment between when someone asks, “oh, so how’s your leg?” and my answer. That moment feels like it spans a lifetime for me. Everything that I just wrote goes through my mind. For many years it has not been a simple answer. It’s like when someone asks, “how you doing?” and you need to decide to really want to tell them how you are doing or just reply “I’m doing okay, thanks”.
There is another way that my nerve injury from birth impacted me that I never imagined until about a year and a half after the birth of my first child. My husband and I started talking about having a second baby. I was terrified. Again, there were many things that happened during the birth of my first child that were not directly related to the nerve damage, but there was something about the nerve damage that scared me even more than another premature birth, or the need of a vacuum, or even another NICU stay. I was so scared of having a repeat injury. I was so scared of having another care team where I felt disempowered. I was so scared that I was going to have to fight the entire pregnancy and delivery to be heard and affirmed.
Luckily, I found an amazing care team (there will be a different post about this) and they provided incredibly compassionate people-centered care. And even then, I still spent most of the pregnancy scared and hyper-focused on doing everything I could to not be scared. For me, that looks like preparation and planning. And oh boy, did I prepare and plan. I made lists and lists of questions and concerns for my care team, I practiced my “pitch” that I would say at the start of any appointment when any new person came into the room (nurse, doctor, midwife, technician, anyone) to make it clear that I had a traumatic birth and I will need to asks lots of questions (I felt the need to defend my self-advocay), I took part in new mom birthing classes even though I had given birth before, I tried hypnobirthing workshops, I did therapy, I made inspirational posters, I talked endlessly with my husband on my needs for him and his role in advocacy, and so on. It was exhausting. And, I didn’t know how NOT to do this. This is how the trauma of that injury and birth was playing out for me.
I’m 2.5 years post my second birth, and I am still angry about my experience of pregnancy with my second. This injury cheated me out of the experience I hoped for as a first-time mom. You don’t get that back. And then I feel like it cheated me out of my last pregnancy. I was so focused on preparing for the birth in order to curb my fears (in addition to caring for a 2 yr. old full time during the height of the pandemic), that I felt disconnected from the pregnancy itself. Again, I found myself not being present for my baby in the way that hoped.
And then there was the birth of my second child. In many ways so healing. My team and I worked together. I was listened to. I was included in decisions. And yet the experience is still mixed with feelings of anger. We celebrated that I could move my legs after giving birth. We celebrated that I could walk. My anger is that this even needed to be a celebration. For my body, this is something that should be so simple to do. Something that should not have been taken from me in the first place. Something that should not have had to be celebrated because it would just BE. There was a sense of relief around my birth because I could walk, even though I had lost more than 2 liters of blood, was dizzy, accelerated heartrate, uterus wasn’t contracting – the win was lifting my leg. That just doesn’t feel “right”.
There is a community I am part of for others who have experienced nerve injuries from giving birth and these are some of the topics that come up again and again for those of us out of the initial injury period. Why are there flare-ups of pain? Will the numbness ever go away? Is there anything I can do to fully get my muscle strength back? Do I have another baby? For some yes, for some no. For some they wanted to but have decided no because of this injury. How to deliver the next baby? Medicated? Not? C-section? Many of us terrified to not be able to move again with the use of an epidural but don’t want to have an unmedicated birth. The back and forth on this. Many landing on method of delivery that is not what they would have preferred but again, is dictated by their injury.
This year’s focus for our awareness month is on healing and recovery. As I reflected on this, I thought of my path of healing and recovery. It has not been a linear or singular path. Sometimes the physical and emotional healing intertwine and other times they are on their own planes. There are loops and twists and ever-developing factors impacting the healing and recovery process. I recognize that each of you have your own invisible challenges that you are working through. I might not see what those are but I see you. Thank you for taking the time to read this and for seeing me.
Nerve Damage from Childbirth 