How to touch your vagina after giving birth

What I learned is that it’s not something you should do….at any point, no matter what weird masochistic inclination might be nagging at you to check your shit out, I beg of you…don’t do it. It will haunt your dreams.

There are a few universal truths in life…paying your taxes blows, you will watch The Shawshank Redemption every time it’s on tv, and never ever touch your vag within 1 week after giving birth…possibly 2 if you’d like to avoid a panic attack that a small pudgy woodland creature has replaced your precious peach.

Here’s the deal….It’s 7:30 am, I’m 3 hours post-partum and despite my proclamations that I’ll have nunadis my midwife has completed another one of those dirty moves where she ‘massages’ my fundus. It has been recommended to me that perhaps a shower would be just the ticket. I slowly and gingerly slide my way off the bed and shuffle step on over to this 2 x 2 shower. It’s just lucky that I even fit in there, let’s be honest…those things are perfunctory at best…I couldn’t even wash my calf without knocking my forehead into wall. No relaxation to be had in that unit but I digress. All was going well…the water was warm, my arms and legs felt like my arms and legs. If I didn’t see the stream of blood swirling its way down the drain it may have been like any other shower.

Which is precisely the moment I lost my fucking mind and decided to see how the old gal was doing. ‘Why? Why? Sweet Jesus why?’ was screaming inside my head. And the simple fact of the matter is you can’t un-ring a bell. It’s like the foreign feel of it in my hand has been permanently burned onto it. It was gargantuan. It was a huge, swollen, nasty, sore mess and felt nothing like the peach I had known so intimately for all my life. I grieved for her and apologized profusely. She was despondent. So basically what I’m saying it just don’t….under any circumstances. Let me be the guinea pig…pun intended.

xo Kristin