My most embarrassing moment . . . I had to think on it  . . . I’m so prone to the awkward that I miss the embarrassing. I thought about the time I bled through my white shorts in the Walmarts and my mom made me walk around with her purse covering my ass . . . The time I put my lunch ticket in my awesome Kangaroo shoes and then couldn’t get it out . . . but these moments were so far in the past that they don’t really make me feel all squirmy anymore.

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Then I realized it.

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The room was dark – my body had been so constantly pulsing in pain that the change to pushing was an awesome relief. The midwife was at my feet, I was curled up the waist with my head pressed into Scout’s chest, his arms around me, my chin tucked to my chest. I pushed with the contraction and out it came. The first blissfully easy bowel movement in the last 24 weeks. I was sure it wasn’t a petite little leftover, nay, this was a good 8 inch, firm yet soft piece of shit I had just pushed out IN FRONT OF MY HUSBAND.

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(Husband and I had, up to that point, a digestive tract disclosing free relationship – farts, poop, dutch ovens were NOT a feature of what we shared with each other. One of the best things about this man was that he would throw toilet paper in the toilet to muffle the sound of PEE. Love that.)

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I kept my head down and my eyes closed, pretending this had not actually happened. I assumed the poo was cleared away by the time the midwife told me roll to my side. I paused, she didn’t move. “Uh, could you, uh . . .” (oh please I don’t want to say it out loud.) Then I felt the gauze pad reach up and pinch the remaining poo off my butt.

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Where it was clinging to my hemorrhoid.

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I’ve heard that the whole pooping on the table thing happens in delivery. I’ve also heard that by that point you don’t even care. Bull. I totally gave a shit about giving a shit on the table.