A parable about the importance of a daily BM

The shit no one tells you is, after giving birth, the idea of taking a shit is really scary. I thought since "shit" is in the title of the blog, I might as well start with it as a topic.

So shitting after having a baby's scary. Things are sore down there and it feels like taking a shit might just turn your vagina inside out. And no one wants their vagina's insies on the outsies. Plus, pushing a baby out feels a whole lot like pushing a poop out. Same muscles. In fact, most women poop during labor. Just the way it is. And if you're scared about that, don't be. You won't care. In fact, you'll probably be much more afraid of pooping after you have the baby than during. I know I was scared. My midwife told me it would be a few days in all likelihood before I had a BM. I hoped otherwise and told her it was likely I'd poop again soon. I'm one of the lucky ones. I poop constantly. Too much info? Tough shit. That's what this blog is for.

So I have this friend...

I know when people say that sometimes they mean themselves, but I have no shame/pride so if it happened to me, I'd just tell the story.

Anyways, I have this friend who had a baby a few years ago. We'll use her now to illustrate how women are often afraid of pooping after giving birth.



She had her baby in the hospital all American styles. Induction, epidural, nurses, doctors, the whole nine.

And one of the hurdles you have to hit before going home from the hospital is a successful dump. But this gal, she was afeared of letting one out. She is also a frequent pooper. A point that will further emphasize how scary the taking a poop can be shortly. That's my attempt at foreshadowing ya'll.

So she wants to go home. I think most people want out of a hospital. Its a little like jail that way. You kinda have no choice but to go in, but then you want out as quickly as possible.

Dang, I'm sidetracking the shit out of myself today. So yeah, she wants to go home. And she's all set with all the other hoops and loops and whatnots. So she just lies. She tells the nurse she already went. Here's how the conversation might have gone knowing this girl as I do.

"I pooped. Can I go home now?"
"Um, we kind of needed to see that."
"Well, its shit. I didn't think you'd want a framed picture of it so I sent it where I send all my other little turds- down the pipes. You're welcome to search them."

She can be a bit intimidating, that one. So they believed her and sent her home.

But she was scared to crap. So she held it. And held it. And held it.

One day, she finally couldn't hold it anymore. As I said, she was a frequent pooper. She had to go.

I should mention now that this day that she had to go... it was 3 weeks after having the baby. That's right, she didn't shit for 3 weeks!

So when she did. It filled the toilet. Literally. Filled.

No plunger was enough. She tried.

So when push came to filling-her-toilet-with-shit, she had to call her landlord. And explain to her landlord that the toilet was clogged. And go through the list of things she'd done to try to unclog her toilet. Then her landlord indeed agreed she would need to have a plumber come over and unclog her toilet. So she had to not only call the plumber but face his crack as he extracted 3 weeks worth of a frequent pooper's feces in order to unclog her toilet.

I hope she breastfed through the whole conversation.

The moral of the story- you tell me. I think its you better face your fears or bigger, scarier shit's gonna happen anyway.

Porky's or Why I'm Writing This

When I was a kid, my parents had this policy that you could ask anything and get an honest answer. It went hand in hand with another policy of theirs, which was you could use any word as long as you knew what it meant. They'd quiz you occasionally too, just to make sure you were paying attention.
"What's 'pissed off' mean, Karin?"
"It means perturbed."
I was a bit precocious.

My parents rarely used the parental copout/freakout/I-don't-want-to-talk-about-this card of "I'll tell you when you're older." So I probably would have learned about sex pretty early no matter what.

But as it turned out, I learned about sex from the movie Porky's.



I was 4 or 5. In 1984, movies were a big treat. You couldn't just watch pop one in the DVD player at any time. You had to see it at the theater, or you had to wait for it to come out on network television. Most mommies reading this were probably born after 1984 so I'm giving a reference to the times. Not like before TV times, (we weren't crowded around the radio listening to fireside chats, I'm not that much older than you all,) but before VCRs and DVDs.

The one exception was hotels. Hotels had pay-per-view and you could order movies. Which was exciting and fun and how my parents got my brother and I to get along for a couple of hours so they could go to dinner without us. They left us in the room with instructions that we could order a movie. We could watch whatever we wanted, EXCEPT NOT Porky's.

So, of course, we watched Porky's.

My brother and I did not often get along as kids. So when we conspired to keep this a secret from my parents, I was all in. I was NOT telling that we'd conspired to watch an R movie. I kept it a secret for quite a while. I'm not sure how long it really was. But in 5-year-old-land, it was a long time.

But then one day where-babies-come-from came up. And I said I knew where babies came from. My mom decided it was time for a quiz. This time I was not so successful in my precociousness.

"Ok, Karin. Tell me, where do babies come from. Tell me what you know."
I cried for fear of being in trouble. I wasn't. I told. Babies come from when two people take their clothes off and rub up against each other.

My mom had "the talk" with me then and there. She used proper terminology like "penis" and "vagina" and told me the whole deal.

Except...

She forgot to tell me you don't get pregnant every time. It was years before I found that part out. Which meant I was really confused as to why all these "accidents" happened.

The process of pregnancy and miscarriage and childbirth and parenting can be like that. You think you know, but then you find out something no one ever told you about. Like how most ladies poop during childbirth and how lots of ladies leak pee at the end of pregnancy. I'm happy to accept ideas for this blog along the lines of "Shit No One Tells You"