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Giving birth to a child can be an amazing experience. We all know that pregnancy can help empower women and be really difficult and painful at the same time. However, there is something about childbirth that does not come out of the delivery room at a hospital.
Below are 6 unbelievably gross things that happen when you give childbirth:
1: There Is A Great Chance That You Might Poop During Childbirth
Yes, you read it right. All that pushing to get your child out of your womb can cause other things to come out as well. It is a women’s worst nightmare to soil themselves in public. However, within the delivery room, this seems to be a common practice. There is no need to feel embarrassed as to what you have just done as the nurse is most likely used to this sight and will actually clean it up for you as well.
Reading such things before delivery can totally make you feel gross. Then again, during labor, you might not even be concerned about this since you have much bigger things to worry about.
2: First A Baby, Then A Placenta
That’s right, delivering a baby is only half of what a woman needs to get out of her body to complete the process of childbirth. Your doctor may have told you that the bond you share with your child is actually known as the placenta. This gross looking organ needs to be taken out of your vajayjay as well.
Just when you think you are done delivering your baby, the doctor or nurse might ask you to push again to deliver the placenta. You will most likely experience mild contractions even after childbirth. Your doctor might give you a medication to continue the contractions or massage your lower abdomen to expel the placenta. If the placenta isn’t completely removed from the uterus, it can cause severe blood loss and be life-threatening in some cases (1).
3: Getting Rid Of The Mucus Plug
Before you read this next point, make sure you have a puke bag handy. This gross discharge actually serves an extremely vital role during the pregnancy process. Mucus creates a barrier referred to as the mucus plug in order to protect your child from bacteria that would have otherwise entered through your cervix (2).
As you go into labor, your cervix dilates making the thick glob of mucus to fall out of your body. This can be a disgusting sight. The mucus plug can sometimes come out in pieces and fall out weeks, days, or even hours before labor. So, it may be hard to predict when you will witness this “bloody show.”
4: Episiotomy
Giving birth to a child is far from a beautiful scene. It can be uncomfortable and painful long after you deliver your baby. Sometimes, the doctor may need to manually increase the size of the opening in order to allow the baby to come out during childbirth. Your doctor might make an incision in the perineum to help speed up the process of childbirth if your baby needs to be quickly delivered. An episiotomy is also performed to avoid any natural tears that might occur during childbirth (3). Healing from an episiotomy can be uncomfortable, but know that with proper care and rest, you will recover. If your worried about having an episiotomy, feel free to raise your concerns with your healthcare provider.
5: The Baby
Now, before you close this page in anger, hear us out. Your baby will not look how they should at the time of delivery. This is because they are completely drenched by all those body fluids inside you. Furthermore, their head may resemble a cone since their skull changes shape as they move through the birth canal. You should not panic, as your baby will start looking better gradually (4).
6: Uncontainable Farts
Once you have taken the epidural, you will not be able to feel or control the lower half of your body (5). This means that there is an extremely high chance of you farting in the nurse’s face during the delivery process!
Honestly, with your body medicated and under severe pain, there is probably no way you are going to bother about anything apart from when it will all be over.
