When do moms poop?
9 women reveal their bathroom secrets (and SPOILER, this is about SO. MUCH. MORE. than bathroom habits)
The moms have spoken. I put the call out for women to share their answers to this question: “When do moms poop?” Here are 9 women who revealed their bathroom secrets. Their answers are real, raw, funny, and surprisingly profound…
“They don’t.”
“In our pants. Just kidding. (But am I?)”
“I told my husband last night that I sit on the toilet and poop while my son is in the bath and he was shook 🤣🤣 I was like what else am I supposed to do?!!”
“I remember when he was tiny and colicky I would literally poop with him strapped on me in the carrier because I was too afraid to even move him.”
“Yesterday, my baby was crying her head off so I put her in the carrier and pooped.”
“When Miss Rachel is on.”
“My body initiates a bowel movement as soon as my children are out of my care.”
“Moms poop with an audience, always. If you lock the door, WW3 erupts. Same goes for sex.”
“The timing of this question is impeccable as I just finished a reading of Peter Rabbit as I went 😂😂 And I actually made a mental note that we needed to switch up the potty book because it’s losing traction… the things we have to add to our to do lists…”
Naturally, the idea for this post came while I was on the toilet. My husband was quarantined with Covid after several weeks away from home for work. While texting my cousin about all the new mom worries (am I ruining my kid with screen time? how many naps are you down to?), I could hear my son rummaging through our medicine cabinet.
I will say, when you Google “when do moms poop,” you can find some funny videos, like this one.
, the OG motherhood/best friend next door blogger, wrote a series back in 2012 called Motherhood Mondays. In this post, she asked, Are you comfortable being naked in front of your kids? Were your parents? At the time, her son Toby was almost two, and he started pointing out body parts as she walked around naked.On days of solo parenting a toddler, I don’t have a choice on whether I’m naked or not: I must go to the bathroom with the door open. My son needs to be where I can see or hear him.
But after spending a week turning this seemingly silly question around in my mind and asking moms to share their responses with me (anonymously, of course), I started to see this pattern emerge.
Do you see the weight of the mental load of motherhood in all of these answers?
Maybe these questions have run through your mind: Can I hold it a little longer? Is my child safe? Did I eat or drink anything today? Can I strap the baby in a carrier or move the bouncer in the bathroom? How hard will she scream if I lock the door? Is the medicine cabinet locked? Are all the markers and sharp objects away? Has my kid had too much screen time already or can I put on one more episode? When will my husband be home? What’s my son’s favorite book right now? Which toy holds his attention for the longest? Which bathroom is clean? Did I remember to order more toilet paper?
A few years ago, this Reddit thread went viral and I’ve seen versions circulating on Instagram. When a mother of twins less than a year old notices her husband disappearing to the bathroom at strategic times when he should be changing a diaper or soothing a fussy newborn, she starts to notice that he takes his phone with him every time.
“Today I started a new rule. If he is in the bathroom for more than 10 minutes, I flip the wifi off.”
As you can imagine, he was furious. And so were readers.
Anyone else have vanishing husbands with incredible abilities to prolong private bowel movements? My husband has calculated how much money he makes per minute. He can tell you how much money he makes to poop.
(Insert eye roll.)
In Eve Rodsky’s book, Fair Play, she discusses the gendered division of labor. She gives readers definitions for mental load, second shift, emotional labor, and invisible work. In the case of the bathroom, we add “find a new bathroom book to read while I’m on the toilet” to our never-ending mental to-do list, it’s the second shift of cleaning the toilet and making sure there’s toilet paper in the bathrooms, it’s figuring out how to soothe a meltdown as the emotional labor piece of finding a moment when you can relieve yourself, and it’s the behind-the-scenes invisible work of making sure the toilet paper never runs out in your household.
interviewed Eve Rodsky about her work and this quote stood out to me: “And it's ridiculous to tell women to walk around the block or to take a bubble bath when truly the only boundary that is going to help us is a boundary around our time.”When I read the quotes at the top of this post from real mothers, I could laugh and I could cry.
What a load (pun fully intended) to worry about soothing your crying baby while “taking care of yourself,” which in this case involves surrendering to a bodily function that is necessary to remain alive and well.
Big hugs to all the moms out there wishing for a little peace and quiet. Or at least a few extra minutes to linger in the bathroom (the birthplace of all great ideas.)
“My body initiates a bowel movement as soon as my children are out of my care.” - truer words have never been written 😂😂
Meant to say it’s NOT the same for everyone. In other words I’m not saying everyone should go get a divorce. ;).