‘Why does no one tell you?’ Mum admits she stunk of rotting meat after birth & here’s why it ‘hung in the air for weeks’
Becoming a mum can be a shock to the system – but one woman has confessed she wasn’t prepared for one particularly stinky post-birth bodily change.
Sarah Biggars-Stewart revealed that after having her baby, she smelled of onions and rotting meat – with the unpleasant whiff lingering for weeks.
“Nobody warned me about the postpartum stink,” she raged. “I’m sitting here thinking that my vagina has the plague – and you’re telling me this is normal.”
The mum-of-two’s issue was partly down to how hormones oestrogen and progesterone change after birth, causing the sweat glands to go into overdrive and also trigger night sweats.
This leads to women feeling extra smelly, especially when combined with the pheromones released to help bond with your baby.
Post-birth bleeding, which can last for weeks afterwards, is also a factor in the unusual female fragrance, with doctors warning it can smell metallic, stale and musty.
“I was warned about your underarms smelling like onions, which is true,” said Sarah.
“But not one of you warned me about the stank that comes out of you with the afterbirth and the lochia, which is the bleeding after you give birth.”
She went into more detail, explaining: “Take that coppery bloody smell you have with a period – add an earthy smell and then layer in a kind of sweet, rotting smell.
“I know that sounds grotesque, because it is grotesque. It really didn’t matter what I did because the smell followed me for weeks.
“I’d use the bathroom and the smell would hang in the air, to the point where I would tell my husband: ‘Don’t go in there, because it smells like a rotting animal carcass on a spring day.’
Taking to her TikTok account @thebiggersthebetter, Sarah said: “It’s true that if you smell something really heinous, you should talk to your doctor.
“But when I told my midwife at my six week appointment, she was like: ‘Nope, that’s just the smell of afterbirth. Yeah, it can get pretty gnarly.’
“And I’m sitting here like: ‘Why wouldn’t you have warned me?’ It is something that necessitates warning.
“I’m sitting over here thinking my vagina has the plague – and you’re telling me this is normal.”
Other women were quick to share their own horror at the postpartum smell.
One said: “I always say it smells like a mouse/rat that’s been in a trap and you didn’t know until you smelt it in your house.”
Another confessed: “Also the milk smell. I felt like I smelt like rotten milk because no matter how many showers I took, I leaked milk and would smell all over again.”
Sarah told her followers: “So now I’m telling you. Your underarms will stink, the crease between your boobs will stink and your hoo-haa will stink.
“And most women will come back and do it again. Incredible!”
In a second video, the skincare brand founder from Atlanta, Georgia, reassured other women that despite having ‘freaked you out’, there were important biological reasons behind this smelly problem.
“Let’s talk about the pits sweat first,” she said.
“This is actually happening because of your hormones and it is a sign to your baby that you are Mom and they should hone into that general area to feed.
“The biggest one is the lochia.
“The reason it is so bad is that, unlike a period when you are just shedding 30 days’ worth of build up of uterine lining, you are now shedding nine months of an actual uterine lining and supportive tissues for the baby.
“There is a dinner plate-sized wound where your placenta detached that has to heal. There’s scabs, there’s fluids, there’s double the amount of blood in your body. Where’s it going to go?
“The reason it smells like a decaying animal is because it is tissues from an animal that are decaying. I’m so sorry, but it’s the truth.”