As my girlfriends start to have kids, I have become aware of all the bad, ugly, and totally disgusting parts of childbirth.

There’s so much more of a gruesome backstory behind that first happily smiling family shot you see on social media (hashtag blessed).

The thing is, most of my baby-rearing friends had no idea what to expect. Nobody told them about the tearing, the mid-labour pooping, or that they would be wearing diapers on the ride home along with their newborn baby.

Thankfully, though, women are starting to talk about the realities of labour (and post-labour).

Image: Facebook/Mommy Mumbles

Most recently, British blogger Bekki Pope (“Mommy Mumbles”) outlined the whole post-labour “magic” with refreshing honesty.

On August 24, she took to Facebook to share her list of “20 things to know the day after you push out a baby” – and she doesn’t hold anything back. Basically, any woman who is pregnant or wants to be at some point should read it.

Pope unapologetically and hilariously covers everything from your first trip to the bathroom post-delivery and your first shower (“it will look like a scene from Carrie,” she writes), to how weird the baby looks upon emergence from your vagina, to the physical toll the whole thing takes on your body.

“Your brain is angry, your eyes are angry, your tummy, your bladder, your bum. Your vagina isn’t angry. It’s f@&king livid,” she writes.

Her post has resonated with women worldwide as fellow moms share their own experiences and admit that they wish someone had given them the heads up beforehand.

At time of writing, it has been shared 79,040 times.

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