How do nhs staff deal with this

[StressedButBlessedx]

Hi, just a curious question to ladies in the uk. I'm pregnant with my second child and I was wondering how the midwives deal with pooping during labour? My labour with DD was so traumatic that I have no idea if I did or didn't. But during a normal labour, do they make a fuss or even mention it if you poo whilst pushing?

This is actually the thing I'm most stressed about lol.

I didn't even know I had until my mom told me afterwards.
I did spend the first part of labour thinking I needed a poo and shouting it at them so makes sense :D

Back labour is a bitch

@tattychicken

Yep crapped with all 4 of mine. My youngest was the worst, he was 12 days overdue which I used as an excuse to eat curry every night for 7 days on the trot. In the end he came very quickly, I barely made it to the delivery room, and and I exploded shit all over the midwife. She was wiping it off her glasses apparently. She was still surprisingly cheerful and unfussed by it.

OMG! 🤣🤣🤣

Nobody seems to tell you how grotty childbirth actually is! Or that you just bleed out for over a month afterwards!
I packed maternity pads because I was told I should. Didn’t have a clue 😂

@00100001

Seriously...have you even given birth??? there's just as 'bad' stuff coming out if your nether regions ... Why is the poo worse than the blood, or the vernix, or the placenta etc???

I think it's perceived as worse because everyone knows that "pooing yourself" is considered an embarrassing thing to do.

PP have said their husbands still laugh about it years later so other people can be pretty cruel in a way that they won't be laughing that there was blood everywhere.

Some have said the presence of their husbands made them inhibited, I get that,I don't go to the toilet in front of my husband. Medical professionals all in a day's work, fine.

You have a poster last night saying oh don't worry ladies it's just a little bit abd imagine a toothpaste tube being squeezed and at the exact same time 21:25 another poster saying she's seen a woman do "a massive log".

I think women should be offered the opportunity for a bit of privacy to do a poo if they want it, maybe a bedpan, again if they want it. Some don't care but some do, and if they do why add to their stress by then feeling embarrassed or humiliated.

Plenty of things are natural and you can still be embarrassed by them. If you're not I think that's amazing and more power to you, but if you are there is no point in someone saying not to worry, it won't help.

Thanks to all the midwives or other HCPs who just get on with it and clean women up calmly and kindly.

I wasn't particularly anxious about this before I went into labour because I know it was normal and I had diarrhea in early labour so there wasn't much in my bowels by the time it came to pushing. However I found I was involuntary pushing for ages (my total pushing time was around 2hrs before they began to start the ventouse procedure) and for some reason I spent a lot of that time really fixated on the thought that I was pooing myself! I remember literally pushing for ages going "I'm pooing myself I'm pooing myself" and feeling really upset and stressed about it! And the midwives were telling me no you're not, you're not don't worry. Then one time I said it and they didn't say anything in response and I knew I must have done that time! DH has confirmed I did but it was only a small amount and the midwives just quietly and speedily cleaned it up I guess. I don't know why it bothered me so much at the time though because I feel no embarrassment about it now or anything, I think I was just very anxious and struggling with the labour more generally (by the point of pushing I had been awake for the best part of 26hrs with only 4hrs sleep the night before that and I had no pain relief during the pushing stage) and my brain just latched on to the pooing thought .

@Justgettingbye

The water birth story below has confirmed why I didn't want a water birth

TBH I was shocked

None of the water birth videos I had watched beforehand had anything more than vaguely murky water. Not the ink-black soup I ended up with!

But for all those disgusted by my story, it was not disgusting for me. It was the best and gentler of all my birthings, I felt empowered and amazing, and I had a shower, too. And we were both healthy, no illness resulted.

Babdoc, that is a horrible comment. I hope you had more compassion and maturity when you were a practicing physician.

Yep, I pooed several times. Midwife cleaned some, my sister cleaned some too, nobody was bothered least of all me - too busy puking and pushing!

@applesandpears23 cross that whole entire list out

The blood, slime, placenta, poo soup must come as a bit of a shock!

I mean the baby has been swimming in pee, placenta, vernix, dead skin and laguno amniotic soup for the past few weeks! As well as meconium if they are full term or distressed.

In my third birth DH mentioned sheepishly afterwards that I had pooed on his t-shirt and shoes! He was a star and didn't react at all at the time. I was actually surprised there was anything left as my early labour had involved an extremely thorough extended clear out.

I think women should be offered the opportunity for a bit of privacy to do a poo if they want it

The problem is it tends to happen as the baby's head is literally coming down so most people aren't in any fit state to be moving into anywhere private and drawing attention to it by asking everyone to leave would potentially be worse? Also the HCPs need to keep an eye on the emergent baby.

I'm not in the UK and the nurse wanted to give me an enema but as I said I'd already been earlier in the day she decided it wasn't necessary and sure enough I didn't poo. I'm pregnant again and I'd refuse if it was recommended. DD had no qualms about pooing all over me when she was lifted onto my chest.

Interestingly it's thought that babies acquire their gut bacteria at birth which is why one of the current trends in c sections is to "seed" the baby's gut by rubbing its face and inside its mouth with a cloth that has been rubbed in the mother's vagina. I don't think a bit of poo is a bad thing for the baby.

I think women should be offered the opportunity for a bit of privacy to do a poo if they want it

Privacy? By the time a poo is being squished out you're beyond any sense of the urge to do one, or the ability to control it. And you could be so deeply in labour that you probably don't even care about privacy any more. Nothing captures your attention more fully than intense labour.

I was brought into hospital about 10 minutes before I pooed. The moment the paramedics got me off the trolley I started stripping my clothes off. The doorway to the birthing pool was behind me, and when I turned around to go to it, there was a crowd behind me: two paramedics, two midwives, at least one doctor and possibly a porter. Do you think I cared? No, I just barged through them, totally naked, desperate to get to the pool between contractions. It was about 10 metres to the pool and I had to stop for a contraction. Dh tells me they all followed me, trying to talk to me or check me or something, but I don't remember it at all. All I knew was I was getting into that pool. Like I said: total focus.

Babies born vaginally ingest a bit of their mother's poo, those bacteria 'colonise' the gut and give them a health advantage over babies born by C-section who are colonised by other bacteria in the hospital.

So a squeaky clean butt is not really an advantage. Babies squish everything on their way out, a bit of poo is par for the course.

I did in the water birth..I was aware of it but didn’t care at all. I would have honestly done it in the street without caring too much during the pushing stage! My husband told me they got it out with a net