Good news, ladies! You are given free rein to poop yourself when in labor. You can even piss yourself if you feel like it. I highly recommend you take full advantage of this opportunity as it’s the only socially acceptable time to poop and pee all over your bed once you’ve made it past adolescense.

A pregnant client of mine in her third trimester just started taking birthing classes with her husband this week. I’ve been asking her ad nauseam practically since inception about the chance of pooping oneself during labor. Someone told her that when a woman’s water breaks, she has diarrhea as well to prepare/clear the passageways. While this may be true, that woman wasn’t revealing the whole truth. The truth is, as my client learned in her birthing class, that most women poop the bed. Doctors are trained to discreetly scoop up the poop and act as if it never happened. While the intention is clear, this practice is quite a disservice to women. The fear and embarrassment attached to crapping oneself in front of loved ones, established medical professionals and strangers is traumatic enough, let alone the act of squeezing a miniature homosapien out of the other hole in the process. Perhaps, labor would be a breeze if women were given permission to just let it all go – baby, poop, pee and all.