We watched the doctors placing a toy-sized oxygen mask on our sons face and heard them fall silent as their motions became quicker. We scanned their faces for anxiety or relief and saw nothing, only blankness. We waited for the baby shout, but it never came.

Hours afterwards, to our immense relief, we were told Frank was fine. The resident paediatrician made it clear he wasnt concerned or even especially interested in Franks case. He could offer no real rationale for why our son was born flatline( his term) apart from the obvious deduction that hed been knocked out by the grip of the forceps on his head. It happens, the doctor told. We dont know why. He had a touch of jaundice, but there had been no evidence of oxygen deprivation.

By contrast, I was worse for wear. In addition to the forceps, Id had internal and external tearing as well as an episiotomy cut open and sewed back together. As one doctor afterwards set it: Its like a truck drove through your pelvic floor. I was dedicate transfusions for blood loss and paracetamol for the pain, which didnt help much.

When I was ultimately taken up to the neonatal division in a wheelchair and able to hold him, my son was so bashed up he looked like hed been in a bar battle. You should consider the other guy, the nurse joked. You already have, I told. The other guy is me.

This is not the story of a personal tragedy. Im conscious while writing this of the many mothers who have experienced far worse. Pregnancy and childbirth, when it goes wrong, can result in all manner of horrors, including the loss of a child its own experience I cannot pretend to understand.

Instead, this is a story about whats been written out of Britains official birth narration. Franks birth, as described, would be classified in our maternity system as a success. For a system that prides itself on being female-centred, the NHS maternity care system is failing post-natal women. Not only has the physical and mental health of new mothers become secondary, it sometimes seems inconsequential. This is the untold story of the suffering our maternity care system ignores.

Its difficult to admit this now, eight months after Franks birth, but in those first weeks I did not feel the exhilaration that comes with a newborn. I cared for my son dutifully, feeding, bathing, burping, swaddling, soothing him through the night, but much of the time I felt weirdly detached, like a zombie shuffling through the motions.

The sound of his shout induced black supposes, a darkening of my already dull mood. I recollect looking at him and registering the fact he was beautiful, but being unable separate his body from the horror of his birth. I preoccupied over the idea that something was wrong with him, that hed been deprived of oxygen and the doctors had concealed it from me. I took him to see the community midwife twice because I was persuaded his eyes were traversed. When I demanded to know if the midwife thought he looked like he had brain damage she looked at me oddly.

In those first few weeks I had flashbacks every day. Id be standing in the queue at Sainsburys and abruptly Id be back in the madness of the delivery room, blood pooling on the floor beneath my bed wondering if my newborn was dead. I ruminated over the details of what happened for weeks, unable to think about little else. Some days I told the story to anyone who would listen; others I could scarcely speak at all. Eventually I went to see a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with trauma. Not post-partum depression she was very clear on this phase but post-traumatic stress, as a result of the physical and emotional ordeal of Franks birth.

Physically I was also fighting. As Frank grew bigger and bonnier, illuminating up the world with his first gummy smilings, I wasnt bouncing back. Every hour I determined myself alone in the room with a doctor, health visitor or community midwife Id demand they analyse me to determine whether or not I was healing properly. Again and again I was told everything appeared fine the stitches had healed and I was given the all clear for workout, for sexuality, for life. But something was amiss.

Like many new mothers I was suffering from stress incontinence( urinating when I coughed or sneezed) and a weakened pelvic floor, but there was something else. A strange drag sensation, a heaviness that wouldnt abate. I described these symptoms over and over and was ignored by health professionals until one day, over a cup of tea, a girlfriend suggested I might be suffering from a pelvic organ prolapse. The next day I booked an appointment with my GP who referred me to a gynaecologist who confirmed that, indeed, I had a moderate-to-severe occurrence of a condition called cystocele, otherwise known as a prolapse of the bladder. What this entails is that my vaginal wall was so badly injury giving birth that my bladder was spilling out into my vagina. The best course of treatment, he told me, was corrective surgery. Its something I cant have until Im three months clear of breastfeeding, which is some months away yet. In the meantime Ive been prescribed a course of post-natal physiotherapy, which involves performing pelvic floor exercises under the supervision of a doctor and having vibrating wands shoved up my nether regions in order to reverse tissue damage.

This is not as fun as it sounds.

In spite of all this, Im one of the lucky ones. Most women who experience birth injury and trauma never get properly diagnosed or treated. Its hard even to get any one to recognise there might be a problem. My spouse, astounded there was no routine follow up for me after such a traumatic birth, tracked down the obstetrician whod delivered Frank to seek guidance from her. She did not respond. We found out afterwards this sort of contact is not promoted; no comment or advice could be offered. A hospital collectively delivers.

The Birth Trauma Association, a peer-to-peer supporting group, estimates that 10,000 women in Britain are treated for post-traumatic stress ailment as a result of birth each year. Thats the largest single cohort of PTSD sufferers in the country. They estimate as many as 200,000 more women may feel traumatised by childbirth and develop untreated symptoms of PTSD.

On the physical injury side, the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in 2015 found that 24% of women still experience pain during sexuality 18 months after giving birth. The same year researchers from the University of Michigan devoted 68 women MRIs seven weeks after having newborns. Of the admittedly small sample, they discovered 29% had fractures in their pubic bones, which all of them were unaware of, and 41% had tearing and severe damage to their pelvic floor muscles that had remained undiagnosed. Another recent US study, published in the publication PLOS One , determined 77% of mothers still suffered from back pain and 49% experienced urinary incontinence a year after having their babies.

Its obvious that childbirth is deeply traumatic for many women minds and bodies. Simply over a century ago almost 7% of pregnant women in England and Wales died as a result of it. But birth is much safer now so why are so many women still suffering its after-effects undiagnosed and untreated?

Part of the reason is that the conversation around birth trauma and injury is steeped in shame and institutional sexism. Im not just talking about the general prudishness surrounding women reproductive health issues. There is a prevailing attitude I encountered among many health professionals which is that new mothers should basically learn to suck it up. As one GP said to me in semi-exasperation: Youve had two children. Your body changed. You cant expect to feel the same as you did before.

Rebecca Schiller, chair of BirthRights, an organisation that seeks to promote human rights in childbirth, told me that institutional denial of status of women experience is a huge problem, especially when it comes to post-natal care. There is a general attitude of Your experience doesnt matter, all that matters is a healthy newborn. When, of course, the two are inextricably related.

Part of the problem, I have come to believe, is that pregnant women are not properly informed of health risks of birth trauma and injury in advance.

With my first pregnancy I was determined to have an all-natural, drug-free, at-home water birth. I rented birth certificates pond at the recommend of my NHS homebirth midwife and when labour began I ran around the house illuminating scented candles. But seven hours in, when my newborn turned out to be an undetected breech, I was rushed to hospital in a wailing ambulance. Once it was determined my son would be born via emergency caesarean, a doctor talked me through all the risks in advance and asked me to sign a surgical waiver. And yet, with my second son, when I waived my right to an elective C-section and opted instead for a normal birth, I was assured by several midwives that opting for a VBAC( vaginal birth after caesarean) was the safer, better option and would result in an easier recovery than a surgical birth.

As I found out afterwards, women in my age group( 40 )~ ATAGEND, especially those who have had a previous C-section, have much higher rates of assisted births and assisted births often lead to injury and trauma. The NHS and the NCT have very little to say on birth trauma. There are no birth trauma or injury counselling services and after care, as I found out, is difficult to come by. There are private alternatives( like my psychiatrist ), but there are private options for everything if you can afford it.

To get state-funded care, you have to fight for it, which many birth-injured and traumatised new mothers are in no nation to do. Complicating matters further is the issue of post-partum depression. Just look at the postnatal chat groups online and you will find women frustrated at being told they simply have a hormonally induced occurrence of baby blues when what theyre actually feeling is a normal reaction to a profoundly distressing experience. Diagnosing a birth-injured or traumatised mother with post-partum depression is the healthcare equivalent of asking a justifiably irate female if perhaps, only perhaps, shes about to get her period? And yet it happens all the time.

There is a reasonable rationale for this apparent nation of institutional denial. Birth trauma and injury conflict with the NHSs dominant maternity care ethos, that natural births are safer and more empowering for women. This despite the fact that the UK has one of the highest infant morality rates in western Europe and, according to the NHS litigation authority, pays out hundreds of millions in maternity negligence claims each year.

As the NHS continues to pay scant attention to the issue, rates of birth injury and trauma continue to rise, due to a confluence of factors including ageing mothers, obesity and larger newborns. But why isnt more attention paid to the routine psychological and physical damage endured by so many post-natal female?

This is a question Maureen Treadwell, chair of the Birth Trauma Association, has been asking for nearly two decades. She founded her organisation in response to the number of women she knew whod been refused pain relief during labour and aimed up traumatised by the experience. If a human underwent dental surgery having prayed for anaesthetic and not received any, marriage recommend therapy yet if the same thing happens to a woman we tell her shes a good girl, well done. Its madness, she said.

According to Treadwell, birth trauma is exacerbated by a culture that celebrates only one various kinds of birth. The system, as well as the dominant culture, fills women with false expectations. It deludes women into thinking that birth ought to be this wonderful, empowering experience and when it isnt women feel awfully ashamed.

Last year when Jamie and Jools Oliver had their fifth infant, Oliver tweeted about his wifes unbelievably composed natural birth. It sounds ridiculous, but I wept reading that tweet. New mothers are deeply susceptible to guilt and it often begins with not having performed birth in the circumscribe way.

Eight months on, Frank and I are muddling along in an exhausted nation of contentment. The trauma of his birth is fading, superseded each happen day with the marvellous reality of him. My body is now the body of a mom battle-worn, cosy and intimidate in its accomplishments. I am grateful for my boys and for the fact that I got help for a condition many mothers experience but for which few ever try acknowledgement, let alone treatment.

Like I told, Im one of the lucky ones.