Not to minimise the complex emotions, even trauma, that can follow a difficult labour (as if having a healthy baby is the ONLY consideration and the mother's feelings aren't important) but I do think we need to be kind to ourselves and feel compassion for ourselves. Having had an easy first birth, and twins naturally with minimal intervention, it was a huge shock to me that baby no 4 presented every problem imaginable. He was transverse, he went breech, I had ECV. I developed high blood pressure, had to drop my planned home birth, suffered an induction that took from Monday- Saturday, had a failed epidural, problems with my bladder afterwards, readmittance to hospital post birth with high bp and then a baby with a posterior tongue tie who didn't bf till 6 weeks. Do I think it was 'my fault'? No. Perhaps I could have refused induction when I did, gone home, gone into labour naturally and avoided much of that. But knowing the risk to the baby of maternal high blood pressure I accepted the interventions and the cascade that followed wasn't really a surprise, I was well informed enough to realise how it might go. I was sad that I never got a home birth or a water birth. In a way that bonus baby was my chance to have a less medicalised birth than I had for the twins, who by their nature tend to attract more fuss. But it was not to be, and I know I didn't 'fail' anything. In fact, I was quite heroic, going through a lot of it alone due to the heavy snow and my partner being stuck at home with the other children. I do think the actual process of birth is life changing, and most women will have a lot of incredibly complex feelings about it afterwards.