Before I get into this post, I have to caveat it – I am not a medical doctor or even a person with any sort of medical/psychological knowledge to make an accurate diagnosis or to be considered even remotely knowledgeable on the subject of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), so really this is just my rambling thoughts.

I have always hated the thought of saying our recurrent pregnancy loss has resulted in a form of PTSD.  In fact, I’ll admit, when other infertility/recurrent pregnancy loss bloggers have used this term, it’s made me cringe a bit.  In the past, I’ve even argued with my counselor on the subject.  Honestly, I’ve always associated PTSD is related to war veterans and emergency service personal who have seen and experienced things I don’t even want to imagine.  I’ve always just thought what I’ve been through simply cannot be as bad as what they’ve been through and so even though the thought of another pregnancy still makes me break out into a cold sweat, I’ve always discredited my suffering as being enough to qualify.

But then today happened.

We have been dealing with some adoption stuff these last few weeks.  I wont go into specifics (I cannot at this time), but after a few days of dealing with some benign adoption related stuff, we sat in a waiting room for paperwork to be processed and at one point Mr. MPB looked at me and told me I was being bossy and incredibly mean to him.  I was, I had no excuse.  For the last few days I suspect I’ve been a walking nightmare to live with.  And then it donned on me – I was so stressed and so anxious and so upset that I thought I could puke and probably cry right there in the middle of the waiting room.  Yet, rationally, I knew what we were doing wasn’t stressful, it simply wasn’t a big deal and is completely inconsequential in the scheme of the entire adoption.  But that didn’t make a difference.

I firmly believe my reaction was 100% a direct result of what we experienced at the hands of our agency as we cared for our son in this first few weeks of life.  The memories of the agonizing battles we had and the near cruelty we endured, at the hands of the very people we were paying to support us and care for our son, makes my skin crawl. Every single time I think about all of this, I literally feel my breathing go shallow and my heart rate increase.  No matter how many truly amazing things happened and how great some things were, all of it is overshadowed by how bad some things were.

So, do I have PTSD?  I honestly I don’t know.  But I do know that months later I am still sick over what we endured.  And if I let it, it will keep me up at night and make me nearly puke in the middle of a waiting room.

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