If someone who was expecting a baby asked you, a mum, for a detailed idea of birth and your post-baby body, would you sugar-coat your reply or just let rip with all the gory details?
A mum-to-be called Neverknowing went into online parenting forum MumsNet and asked this question: “I wanted to start a really honest thread about what it’s like after giving birth…”
Almost 200 replies later, and this woman may well be wishing she’d never started the discussion. And she’s probably also having some pretty gross nightmares.
Here are some of our favourites:
Your stomach feels like blancmange wrapped in cling film for ages after…
The aging process accelerates
Piles never really went after number 3.
Sneezing involves weeing on yourself about 50% of the time!
It doesn’t matter how well you think you’ve done your pelvic floor muscles and how well they usually work, bouncy castles are challenging even 16 years later.
I cannot get on with tampons now.
Sometimes your nipples bleed while you’re feeding the baby, so that if they sick up milk it comes up pink.
Your hair will fall out in a serious way from about 2-7 months postpartum.
I seemed to leak from every orifice. Clots, milk, sweat, tears.
My fat fingers stayed fat forever. I can’t take my wedding ring off! My feet went up a size and I had to chuck all my lovely shoes.
For a while my bits felt so heavy I thought they might fall out
All the skin on my belly scabbed up, including inside my belly button, where it had all stretched almost to tearing, and no one told me about that one!
Piles! Has anyone mentioned that already? If not piles, piles, piles.
Anyone mentioned the explosive farting yet??! For weeks. Real stinkers, every time I moved, without warning. You really have to have a family who find it hilarious as otherwise you feel fairly grim.
Unfortunately after a forceps delivery, my nether regions were traumatised. As was I when I got the mirror and had a look. It was like the Battle of the Somme. Top tip: if you must look, stand over the mirror – don’t lie down and look!
You may … wet yourself in front of your husband.
Before anyone who hasn’t had a baby yet buys a lifetime’s prescription to the pill, there were a couple of more positive responses too – but, in the spirit of being honest, these were very much in the minority.
It wasn’t ALL bad: Your heart grows to most amazing loving and yet the most terrifying organ in you! You will never know you could love another the way you can until you met your baby!
My body was better than pre-pregnancy.
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