Kintsugi
On the due date of my second pregnancy, my mom gave me a necklace. It was a brown sparkly heart with a strip of gold in the middle - a Kintsugi necklace. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. The Japanese believe that the broken pieces are part of the object's beauty; they are not seen as a flaw.
But what happens when a person breaks?
How does a person recovering from a string of traumatic events mend themselves into something whole and beautiful again? When you are the one that feels broken, how do you repair yourself?
The first time I thought I may be experiencing PTSD was in November 2019. On the way to a routine doctor’s appointment, listening to a podcast and zoning out, I passed an ambulance. It was the same ambulance company that had transferred me six months prior to a hospital with a level III NICU equipped to handle my water breaking at 28 weeks and 2 days pregnant and the premature birth of my second daughter. As soon as I passed the ambulance and saw the name on the side, I burst into tears, shook uncontrollably and wanted to throw up. It took me days to calm down from that experience and I still can't drive by that local company’s ambulances without feeling it all over again.
I spoke with my therapist about starting Eye Movement and Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) in January of 2020 because the traumas just kept stacking up. My husband and I made the heart wrenching choice to terminate a wanted pregnancy for medical reasons in 2018. We were fortunate to get pregnant again, but this subsequent pregnancy was fraught with anxiety, bleeding, intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) and the aforementioned preterm premature rupture of membranes (PPROM) at 28 weeks. I lived in the hospital for five weeks. I was two hours away from my home, my husband, my 21 month old daughter, my family, my friends and our pets. Our daughter was born prematurely at 33 weeks and spent three weeks in the NICU before coming home. Three months later, I had a cancer scare that resulted in an invasive surgery, in the same hospital and the same recovery room as my D&C for our terminated pregnancy.
It was a lot of shit in less than a year. I still regularly wonder how I survived.
However, after speaking with my therapist, upping my medications and increasing our sessions, we decided to table EMDR discussions because it seemed like I was doing slightly better.
My medical trauma made me question everything related to my family’s health as well as my own for the following year after our daughter was born healthy. An allergic reaction my daughter had to sweet potatoes, our cat’s congestive heart failure, the pandemic: I was easily triggered back to my pregnancy with her and remembering all that could go wrong.
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Pregnancy after loss is traumatic and full of triggers. How could it not be? You are reliving the trauma that occurred within your body. On May 9, 2019, we found out that our daughter was small for gestational age based on her measurements. This ultrasound was supposed to be a just for reassurance ultrasound to help lessen my anxiety about my lack of weight gain all pregnancy, my history of a baby with brain abnormalities, my fear that we had missed something. Instead of reassurance, my OB validated my anxiety and referred me to a maternal fetal medicine specialist.
After the reassurance ultrasound that wasn't, I called my OB to help lessen my anxiety. To this day, if the sun is shining, the birds are chirping and the wind is blowing in a certain way, I go right back to that day and that phone call just by looking out my bathroom window.
"I just wanted to check and make sure there isn't anything else I should be doing before my appointment on Tuesday. Obviously, if I go into labor or my water breaks, I'll head to the hospital,” I laughed nervously.
"Well, that's not going to happen, so we will talk to you after your ultrasound,” the nurse reassured me.
Except. It did happen. Two days later, on Mother's Day May 12, 2019, my water broke when I was 28 weeks and 2 days pregnant.
That conversation with the nurse on Friday became a self-fulfilling prophecy of all the anxious what-ifs that had been percolating in my brain for months. All of the preparation and googling of worst-case scenarios that had been running through my brain at all hours of the night weren’t for nothing. It was happening.
I couldn't have prevented this from happening. But no one could tell me why it did.
That one conversation with the nurse had irreparably damaged my self confidence in my body. It had failed me twice now in two pregnancies, in two horrific and traumatic ways. How could I trust that I didn't have other undiscovered problems? Trauma lives in the body. Most of my traumas had actually occurred within my body which made it impossible for me to believe I was not on the cusp of another terrible diagnosis or life altering event. I felt broken. Shattered.
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Earlier this year, I had a week that seemed to be the culmination of all the traumas. I hold tension and anxiety in my neck and shoulders and after a week...months...years of holding in the trauma, my arm went completely numb. I was convinced I was having a stroke. My wonderful husband talked me through my symptoms and told me he didn’t think I was having a stroke, but if I would feel better going to the ER, he said I should go. That's when I realized that I didn't want to go to the hospital. Not then. Not ever again.
While on hospital bedrest waiting for my daughter's arrival, I received daily non-stress tests, weekly ultrasounds and had a staff of world class doctors and nurses ready to step in if anything went wrong. As much as I didn't want to be there, it felt like the safest place to be given the circumstances. Shortly after my daughter's birth, hospitals were still a safe space. I could be tested and checked out and reassured that I was not, in fact, dying. I had gone to the ER for at least one panic attack and several other times to make sure my premature baby was ok.
At some point, that shifted and the idea of even going to a hospital became the most terrifying place I could ever imagine stepping into.
If I go to the hospital, I might be admitted. I need to kiss the girls one more time…But what if something happens? I never come home? What if I never see them again? My mind raced. And I couldn't help but go to the worst-case scenario.
That night was a breaking point.
My therapist referred me to a trusted colleague who had experience with EMDR. My intake with her required that I fill out an Impact of Event Scale. (For reference, PTSD is a clinical concern for scores above 24. Scores above 33 represent the best cutoff for a probable diagnosis of PTSD. Scores above 37 are high enough to suppress immune system functioning -even 10 years after an impact event).
I scored 49.
Seeing that score was both a complete surprise and also an of course moment. On the one hand, how could I possibly have PTSD? I wasn't a combat veteran. I wasn't violent. I was able to function most days.
On the other hand, I was waking up from nightmares crying, perpetually hyper-vigilant about everything and everyone in my life. I was withdrawing from friendships, couldn't remember important details about my hospital stay and my daughter's birth while simultaneously feeling like I was back in hospital reliving some of the scariest days of my life. I checked all the boxes and then some. It was oddly validating. And it also broke me wide open.
Two professionals have since diagnosed me with PTSD. I've come to accept that as part of my story. There is still so much stigma surrounding it that I couldn't even bring myself to share it with most people for months. The media has portrayed PTSD in such a way that I was convinced no one would believe me.
Accepting and acknowledging my diagnosis was also just another thing to pile on to my mental load. Another thing to work on in therapy. Another thing to fix. It felt overwhelming. And sometimes, still does.
Picking up all the pieces and starting again.
The necklace my mom gave me came with a card that said the following:
"All beautiful things have unique imperfections. Your scars and wounds and imperfections are your beauty. Like broken objects mended with gold, we are all Kintsugi - the breakage and mending are all honest parts of our past and should be celebrated and not hidden. They are pieces and parts of who you are. Every beautiful thing is damaged. You're more beautiful for having been broken."
It’s been almost two years since my daughter was born. All of the traumas that have tangled themselves up into my journey of pregnancy and motherhood are coming to the surface now.
I have a diagnosis. I have the support I need. I am beginning to find ways to mend the broken parts and celebrate all that I have been through. For my daughters, for my family and, most importantly, for myself.
~anonymous