Do you always discharge during childbirth ? This is a question that often comes to the minds of expectant mothers.

Virtually all expectant mothers who are expecting their first child or who, after a cesarean, are preparing for a VBAC - natural birth after cesarean, which I discussed here - ask themselves this question.

Since this is a widespread doubt linked to intimate and delicate aspects, I decided to delve deeper into the topic in the article that you can read on this page.

As you can see, I also included an index.

Thanks to it, if you are interested in a certain aspect of the topic, you can delve deeper into it by clicking on the title of the paragraph.

To better understand the stages of the pregnancy journey and experience it in a more serene and conscious way, I invite you to discover the multidisciplinary prenatal video course curated by Dr. Maria Chiara Alvisi, an independent midwife.

If, instead, you are looking for content dedicated to the development of your puppy, you can come and find me on the Instagram profile @drsilva.com_official .

As Dr. Alvisi points out at the beginning of this video , to answer the question “ Does one always have a discharge during childbirth? ” in a technical and complete manner, it is necessary to take a leap back in time to about 20 years ago.

Until the beginning of the third millennium, give or take a year, it was customary to give an enema to women who arrived at the hospital in labor .

The idea, clearly, was to clear the bowels before the puppy was born.

Fortunately, things have changed nowadays.

In fact, already in 1985 , with the 15 recommendations for birth developed during the work of a conference held in Fortaleza, the WHO had spoken of this practice as an unnecessary routine step.

Not only is it not pleasant, it is not even useful.

How come?

Doctor Alvisi explains it well in the video mentioned above, in which she underlines that, with the passage through the birth canal, the newborn rests posteriorly on the intestine .

If the latter is full, it empties it mechanically.

The process just described, which is always explained to women who ask their midwife if they always have discharge during childbirth , is linked to the so-called Ferguson reflex .

This positive feedback reflex, i.e. the response that helps to strengthen the stimulus, is caused by the movements of the fetus and impacts both the walls of the uterus and the rectal ampulla.

The consequence? The onset of an urge to defecate.

We have therefore understood that yes, it is very likely that, during the expulsive phase , the pushing phase, a woman will poop during childbirth.

Please note: this is not a rule written in stone !

You don't always have a bowel movement during labor because if a woman goes into labor with an empty bowel - which can happen, since the bowel, in the preparation phase for labor, can activate several times during the day and have a bowel movement - it doesn't necessarily mean that she will poop during labor.