What do your lady bits look like after vaginal birth?

[kebabbits]

Is it just ME or is anyone else a bit shocked by the appearance of their bits after giving birth vaginally?

I mean all I seem to see is the internal muscles - I'm sure there used to be more external skin there.

Should I just stop looking?!

(I'm not using my normal nickname on this thread, no chance!)

My midwife told me about perineal massage but by the end of my pregnancy I literally couldn't REACH the relevant areas.

epi-no

This is supposed to help pre-stretch the birth canal and stop tearing / episiotomies

Good god I don't look!! A woman in hospital after I'd given birth to ds said "Have you looked at your stitches yet? Mine are bright blue"

I just about fainted! I'm not squeamish, but I felt like a bus had hit me in the nether regions!!

Oh dear, this brings back memories, I remember it feeling like when you are sewing and pull the thread too hard and it all bunches up!-thats what my stitches felt like after the birth, and it took about 4 months to go back to "normal"-or as normal as it ever will be!
I think Id prefer going through labour again and again rather than the pain I had with the stitches for weeks on end

Eeeeeek !

Right, that's it I'm having c/s !

don't know what they looked like but i remember going in the bath about 1hr after ds was born and when I went to wash my bits I paniced and asked dh to have a lok as they felt as if they were about 4 inches bigger and thicker than normal. Dh said they are fine sweetheart. Later that morning he confessed that it looked like someone had given me a ggod kicking there. But I did have very bad bruising as well even 2 days after it was all black and blue. But well worth it I say for my DS. I was so proud that I had managed to deliver him myself that I didn't really care about it as he was a VBAC.