Mums share the moments modesty, dignity and manners went AWOL during birth
When writer Jo Hartley penned a piece recently detailing how mums very often part with their usual grace and manners during labour, a lot of Babyology readers were delighted …
It’s only natural
… Delighted to hear other stories from the swampy trenches of the labour ward. Delighted to laugh at others’ mortifying stories. And delighted to share some of their own.
A couple of midwives chimed in to kindly remind us that there is no dignity lost during labour and birth – and that everything is natural and totally FINE.
While that’s encouraging and heartening to hear and we feel more cared-for and less judged, you probably won’t convince the amazing farting postpartum mum that this is entirely accurate.
Not gonna lie, parts of us don’t believe it either. (Yes it is the farting parts! Hooray!)
Read more about labour and birth:
- Now what? Everything that happens to mum right after giving birth
- Fear of labour and birth: Does the language we use really matter?
- Why do hospital staff say you’re NOT in labour – when you know you are?!
Come on down … POOP!
When prompted, lots of mums regaled us with tales of name-calling, genital flashing and pooping like a total boss when they had their babies. In fact POOP was the most cited labour surprise! Congratulations POOP!!!
“There comes a point in childbirth when all dignity goes out the window – what was yours?” we asked on Facebook.
By this point all the mums that answered had long abandoned their inhibitions and were possibly tapping their responses into their phones whilst wearing surgical undies and an undetected biscuit in their hair.
“BEARDY!”
“In all honesty I think it was after I tried the gas,” one mum told us of her loss of nice manners/inhibitions. “It went straight to my head. The ob walked in and I yelled out ‘Beardy’ before he had a chance to introduce himself. He was known as Dr Beardy from then on.”
Another lady said she’s available to put out small bonfires and possibly hose down grubby cars, noting her dignity was lost “when my waters exploded across the room like a burst fire hydrant, hitting the wall with a powerful splat … just as the midwife was about to check my cervix.”
One mum told Babyology that she found a whole other way to greet clever and attractive men, and that’s when she felt her dignity slipping away.
It was “when the young hot anaesthetist came in the room to my bare butt pointing at him and me screaming. I even said ‘sorry for my butt’ haha.”
That’ll do it.
Hello sh*t show!
For someone else, those magical moments when you push your baby out to meet the world felt more like tragic-al moments. But she still got a baby in the end, so #blessed etc
“I had gastro,” she told us. “What do you think happened when I had to ‘push’??? ”
One new mum had not realised how popular her vagina would be – and it proved a little unsettling.
“Had my first at a university hospital,” she elaborated. “Didn’t realise they let that many students in a room at one time. Thought why not just broadcast this on national television?”
Others simply had advice for mums heading into the powerful, transformative experience that birth is.
Leave your dignity “at the door…. bye bye. Pick it up on the way out,” one seasoned mum suggested.
