Andrex Advert: Pooing in Labour!

[Roaminginthegloaming]

I’ve been watching a couple of programmes on ITV X this week and there is currently an advert from Andrex toilet rolls.

The advert is quite a long one; it’s all about various women all about to give birth and raising awareness that many women do a poo whilst in labour, whether in a birthing pool or on a hospital bed. (I can’t remember if they showed a home birth?). There was a guy with a fishing net to catch the floaters in a pool….

It showed a room full of heavily pregnant women in a childbirth class bouncing on yoga balls chanting “PUSH - POO”!

It also showed various women with their newborns saying things like “my partner wiped me when I did a poo” and another mum saying something along the lines of “well you might as well get used to the mess”.

There were a few shots of people waving an (Andrex) toilet roll around.

It all seemed pretty weird to me. I’m aware that over the years period adverts have become more graphic, but doing a poo whilst in labour isn’t something I’ve ever discussed with anyone before - not even my mum, my sisters or my friends (and they’ve never raised the subject either!). Maybe I’m getting too old…..

Thoughts?

So glad I ditched watching telly with adverts eons ago.
The ad sounds really grim. It reminds of really juvenile potty humour.
Pretty soon AI will be generating ads for novelty’s sake.

First child born in Southern California in the 1980’s. No mention of possible soiling before the birth and a very nice male consultant there at the birth. A very different experience with second child in the UK where the midwives were so busy we were left alone for a lot of the time and not offered any pain relief at all! Ah well, just can’t win..

I’m waiting for adverts aimed at men to catch up with this new frankness. Yet to see any offering solutions to willy drip stains on trousers. Maybe this focus on the less fragrant aspects of femaleness is due to advertising bros working through deep psychological issues to do with their mums?

I have just seen this ad for the first time. It’s the final straw for me; just one more example of ad-land characterising women (in increasingly graphic ways) as at the mercy of our bodily functions … like a pp said, do we need to give men any more excuses to think of us as at the mercy of our menopausal brains, gushing (oh god) with uncontrollable period blood, pissing ourselves when we do yoga, and now faecally incontinent? Yes, bring back the puppies, please. Oh, and this has GUARANTEED I will never be buying Andrex. Ever.

I don't like it one bit .it's awful .I think it's a non issue but something that could potentially upset younger pregnant girls .
I think bringing it into the spotlight like this is wholly unnecessary.

@cyn surely there never was any shame and we don't need Andrew to tell us that

I have no idea whether or not I pooed in any of my deliveries, because if I did the midwife (or the obstetrician who did the forceps delivery) just discreetly wiped it away without saying a word to me, which is what I'd learned to do myself when working in obstetrics. It happens; advising pregnant women and their birth partners that it's normal and harmless is fine, but hanging an advert on it seems gratuitous.

Comments for this shite are turned off its YouTube advert 😬

As proof that anyone can take offence at anything, this pisses me off.

I was told endlessly that you won't end up on your back, it's not like TV. And I asked over and over about the fast labours that run in my family.

Lo and behold I dilated fully in 20m and was shoved on my back with no kind of pain relief to have a classic TV birth. Which nobody had prepared me for because they were insisting it wouldn't happen.

So Andrew can bugger off out of this.