Birth can be extremely traumatic especially if there is hospital staff around that dont give a toss about you.

The birth of my first son was not what I expected, I walked into it blindly and unprepared (I read one book and that was "what to expect when expecting" (an incredibly medicalized version of birth that recommends the "best odds diet" for everything), not a great read for a first timer.

My son was posterior, so it was an incredibly painful labour and I spent the whole ten hours of it asking my partner to kill me. The hospital staff were cruel and said and did some pretty cruel things.
I was only 20 (so just a baby myself really). I was left in stirrups for an hour, didn't get a bath for quite some time or to see my son until 9.00 at night after I birthed him at 2.30 in the afternoon. When I asked to hold him the nurse said no even though they had already resussed him and she was back in the room with him talking to the nurse, then she took him and he went up to intensive care nursery.

The wards were crammed full of beds and I kept hitting my head and feet in my tiny little cubicle. No midwifes helped with baby bathing etc or feeding. Asked for discharge next day and was only allowed to go if I bottle fed because I had not established breast feeding yet. Hope the RBWH has changed since then (I think the wards don't have so many beds in them anymore, or so I have heard).

So no my first birth experience was not at all what I expected but through the PND afterwards that is what I thought that I deserved.