There are times during my pregnancy when I peed my pant, my excuse was always to smile at the enquiring looks of strangers and say “my water just broke” but my biggest fear was pooing during labour. I knew eating light foods and snacks will help energise you during labour, but what if I eat and end up pooing while thinking I’m pushing out the baby? My husband wouldn’t stop making fun of me if that happens. Anyway I made it through labour without pooing, but it’s quite common for women too poo while in the labour room.

Eating during labour will indeed energise you and better help you cope with the ordeal of labour, choose carbohydrates like bread, bananas, cereals or plain biscuits or crackers instead of surgary foods and don’t become heavily fed.

Although this may lead to pooing and urinating during labour, don’t panic! It’s normal after all they both use the same muscles. Moving around, going back and forth can help speed up delivery.

Forget dignity and any sense of what is proper, throw all that out the window when you are in labour, it’s common for babies to come out and for poo to follow. The nurse/doctor/midwife attending to you won’t bat an eyelid before she quickly cleans up since that wouldn’t be the first time such is happening.

And even if you poo or urinate while in labour, when your baby comes out, no one would remember that part. And if you really want to reassure yourself that it’s not so weird to poo hot poo during labour, ask other mothers. You’ll probably be told that it happens to most mothers, the knowledge that you are not alone in this may help you relax.

But in a bid to make sure you don’t poo during labour, you might be tempted o take laxatives, don’t do it! If you’re so embarrassed about pooing during labour, think about this, wouldn’t having diarrhoea during labour be worse?