I feel that my posts until now have very much focused on the physical impacts that the AFE caused, which although harrowing in themselves were very much only part of the repercussions.

I want this to be constructive to anyone that has been through anything similar and not triggering, so here’s the warning…

I had a standard review with the Intensive Care Unit team about 3 months after I was discharged and part of this looked at the psychological impacts that the AFE and my time in hospital had had on me. They used several questionnaires that looked at if/how the trauma was still affecting me.

• Was I still having related, disturbing and unwanted memories and dreams?
• Was I avoiding situations or memories and thoughts that could remind me of what had happened?
• Did I have difficulty remembering important parts?
• Was I blaming myself for what had happened?
• Was I feeling distant or cut off from other people?
• Was I irritable and or super alert?
• Was it making me jumpy and forgetful?

I suppose it was only when someone asked me to reflect on these things and write it down that I really thought that it might actually not be OK – to me it had just become normal. Waking up at night thinking I was still in the hospital, turning the TV off when it had anything hospital related, walking into a room with absolutely zero idea of why I was there, avoiding any program or situation that might involve discussions of pregnancy or birth, the feeling of a wall between my connections with people, the complete and utter inability to be alone in the dark on my own. When they added up the scores they concluded I was clearly suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). My circumstances are extreme but post-natal PTSD is more common than we might like to admit, with around 4-6 per cent of women developing PTSD after birth.

I read a quote from Dr. Gabor Mate that rang particularly true, “Trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside of you. It is the psychological wound you sustained, the meaning you made of it and its cognitions about the self and the world.” Maybe it is the scientist within me, but I have found understanding what happened in my brain around this time strangely fascinating, but it has also really helped me to rationalise how I have felt.

The brain is naturally equipped with an alarm system that is part of your normal survival mechanism, but when someone is suffering from PTSD it becomes overly sensitive and reactive. The parts of the brain responsible for thinking and forming memories stop being able to work properly. These two things combine make it much harder for someone suffering from PTSD to separate normal ‘safe’ environments or events from situations that might actually be threatening or dangerous. Everyone’s trauma is different and the response within your brain is equally individual, so not everyone reacts in the same way or shows the same kind of signs of PTSD, but the parts of the brain involved are very much the same.

The amygdala is essentially your in built alarm system, it is one of the most primitive and animalistic parts of your brain that is designed to set off an alarm system to ensure you can survive dangerous scenarios. But when someone has developed PTSD it is this part of the brain that becomes super sensitive and interprets harmless situations as threatening.

Next is the prefrontal cortex. This is the part of your brain that is responsible for thinking through decisions, observing how you are thinking and then putting the brakes on to rationalise a situation – it is essentially regulating the response that your amygdala is triggering. In a brain that is suffering from PTSD, this response is just not being generated properly and so the response that the amygdala creates just spirals – you become ‘triggered’ by something, creating massive physical reactions or become excessively anxious to seemingly safe scenarios.

The third main area of the brain that is typically affected in people suffering from PTSD is the hippocampus. It is essentially the memory centre of the brain, so symptoms such as intrusive thoughts and flashbacks, being hyperalert and all the jumbled up memories that follow traumatic events are largely related to things going on in the hippocampus. The overwhelming effects of trauma on the body means that the hippocampus has just not been able to code the traumatic situation properly – you might not remember anything at all, or its all jumbled up in the wrong order, or you have just filled in the gaps incorrectly. It can often lead to you seemingly not being able to stop thinking about the situation and your brain working really hard to make sense of everything.

For me, although there were things that would trigger that primitive amygdala-prefrontal cortex kind of response, the issues around memory and tyring so hard to constantly figure out what had happened to me were without a doubt the most harmful and difficult feeling to deal with. I had, and still have, huge chunks of time when I know I was conscious but I have absolutely no recollection of. I had been no memories of the start of our family and there have been times when I have felt that not understanding these periods of time would get the better of me. Over time, and with a lot of support, I have however learned to understand that these gaps are a clear reminder of the link up between my body and brain – my body simply said to my brain, “you don’t need to remember this” and over time I have learnt to respect this and live with these black holes. I don’t for one minute want you to underestimate the time and work that has gone in to getting to this point, but I will save the in’s and out’s of the therapy and support I sought for another day because quite frankly it is fascinating and so important to understand how you can get your brain back on track after something like this. But with the right therapy and support it is possible to find the place for these feelings to sit in your mind. They never go away, but the impact they have and frequency that they impact you slowly settles. Bit by bit, it has become an accepted part of who I am.

In the struggle to cope with my new normal and despite all the negative impacts the PTSD was having on me, I was flooded with the feeling that my little family could literally deal with anything and that as a unit we were stronger than anything else life could throw at us. So, at the risk of leaving this on a Netflix-style cliff hanger, we will leave it until next time to delve further into this. But hopefully this has helped to understand the very basic framework of how my trauma looks – and always remember be gentle with yourself, it takes time to heal.