'I'm still on that table': Meghan Trainor reveals she was diagnosed with PTSD after childbirth
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Meghan Trainor openly discusses her difficult childbirth experience in her soon-to-be-released book 'Dear Future Mama'. The 'Made You Look' singer, 29, and her husband Daryl Sabara, 30, have been open about welcoming their son Riley through C-section in 2021.
The 29-year-old Massachusetts-born celebrity, who previously opened up about her peculiar bathroom habit, says in a passage from her book put out by People that she was given a PTSD diagnosis after the birth.
READ MORE
'I couldn't go to sleep'
Riley had to be sent immediately to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where he suffered from breathing problems for several days. Meghan Trainor was left behind because she needed to be stitched up on the operating table. After she got home, she started having nightmares about the hospital setting. "I couldn't go to sleep at night. I would be in tears and tell Daryl, "I'm still on that table, dude. I'm trapped there. I can't remind myself I'm in bed and I'm safe at home,"' she told People. "I had to learn how traumatic it was," the star, who is currently expecting her second child, added.
'Why isn't he crying?'
Trainor describes the moment she noticed something was wrong after the delivery. "They whisked him back over the curtain, and after a few minutes I realized that I hadn't heard him cry. 'Why isn't he crying?' I asked, and I saw Daryl's face change as he looked over to where our baby was being worked on by the doctors." Then, according to Trainor, she requested some skin-to-skin time to strengthen her bond with the child. "The energy in the room was tense, and someone told me there wasn't time, but that sweet angel of a nurse brought my baby over to me and set his warm little body right on my chest."
She went on, "It was exactly what I'd been dreaming of for all those months. I put my finger on his cheek to make sure this was real and that I was awake. Daryl took a photo, and they whisked him away. I'd held him for maybe six seconds." She wanted him to depart with their son when Daryl asked if he should stay with her, but a doctor advised against it. '"Dad,' she said, 'you should go with your baby.' I was devastated. Good thing I was drugged, or I'd have jumped up with a gaping hole in my belly and run right after them.'"
'He was so close and yet out of my reach'
"I didn't feel pain, but I could feel the sensation of every tool inside me," she said, sharing the graphic details of the next 45 minutes. "I felt and heard a suction tool up by my ribs. I could still smell my own burning flesh." The musician continued, "Usually when you're being sewn up for 45 minutes, you're like, 'Look at my gorgeous baby. We did it. This is everything.' But I was laying there alone." Her recuperation was complicated by the fact that she had to be on a different hospital floor than Riley. "It was torture to know that he was so close and yet out of my reach," she said.
'Just worked through it'
Meghan revealed that once the family returned home and she began to deal with PTSD, she sought treatment from a therapist and "just worked through it," adding that "time heals all." 'Dear Future Mama' is scheduled to be released on April 25.