‘Childbirth… why would you do that to me?’ (Illustration: Minerva Freire)

We know millions of women do it every day. We know it’s totally normal. But we’re still allowed to give vaginal childbirth (some C-births will relate too) some virtual side-eye.

We read What To Expect When You’re Expecting and none of this was in there.

1 The day after you give birth it will feel like someone has been trapped in your vagina and fighting for hours to get out.

Oh wait. They have.

2 Your poor broken lady garden may never feel the same again.

It *might* recover after a few months. Or it might feel taut and weird a year later and mean you never want to have sex again.




3 It might never look the same again either.

Bumps? Odd dangly bits? Prepare to meet your new vagina.

4 Bits that were on the inside are now on the outside.

You were pushing for 35 hours and had a suction extraction. What do you expect?

5 You didn’t even feel the injection needle going in pre-stitches.

Usually you’d faint if someone pierced your labia with a needle but so much else had gone on down there what difference did it make?

6 It really is possible for the midwife to f*** up your stitches.

Yes, you too could be left with a fanny that looks like a cheap moccasin.

7 You don’t actually care if you did crap on the bed during the birth or not.

It wasn’t the most significant thing coming out of your body that day.

‘I was totally worth it though, right?’ (Picture: Jaroslaw Wojcik/Getty)

8 For months after birth, when you fart, the gas might come out the front instead of the back.

Yes, it is bubbling through from your bottom. It’s horrific and will lead to you Google ‘vaginal fistulas’ and ‘is my vagina broken’. It goes away eventually, promise.

9 Post-birth your vagina might smell totally different, and not in a good way.

WTF is that all about? Have we not suffered enough? This could of course be thanks to #8.

10 Every time you go to the toilet you’ll be terrified you’ll pop a stitch.

Yet every time you wipe you forget and pretty much tear them from your tender-as-hell skin.

A 50 step guide to sex after babies

11 Weeing on your stitches hurts really, really bad.

Stings like an absolute mo fo.

12 There will be blood like all the world’s periods have synchronised in your womb.

And it will go on for two weeks. Lovely. Like you have all the time in the world to deal with that.

13 And the hospital will give you a bag of gigantic pant mattresses they will tell you are sanitary towels.

As if Always Ultra had never been invented.

14 You will be told to wear your humungous sanitary towel in disposable knickers instead of normal knickers.

Do they do this to torture us?

15 Also it hurts to sit down. For 10 days.

Yup.



16 The newborn you hoped and expected to look just like you might look exactly like your mother in law.

And you have to pretend you think it’s cute.

17 You’ll soon completely forget how bad it all was

You just love your baby so much you want to do it all over again. Go you.

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