Will I be wrecked 'down there' after birth?

Will labour be painful? How will breastfeeding go? Is my baby going to be a good sleeper? They are all questions that first time mums-to-be find themselves wondering in the nine months they spend growing their baby. But not the woman who took to Reddit with her biggest pregnancy concern.

Posting on the site's  the mum-to-be wanted to know whether her vagina would be pleasing to the eye once it had played its part in delivering her child.

"Sorry for a rude question, but after birthing vaginally, does it all go back to how it was before?" she asked. "And I mean like (sorry again) tightness and looks, I get that if you've had stitches there will  be a scar. My cousin had a baby at 15, and being so young got teased things like 'your vagina is going to be wrecked'. But really? Is it? I can't exactly ask her. Thank you for any replies, I know this is sort of the least of my concerns, canvas prints but nonetheless a concern."

If the concerned woman was worried a group of strangers wouldn't be keen to share such personal information, she shouldn't have been. Plenty of people were willing to share their knowledge. And for the main part, the news was good.

One commenter assured the poster the vagina was a "remarkably resilient" part of the body. "If two babies over 8 plus pounds didn't  destroy mine, I think it's safe to say it'll heal. canvas printing online I also tore/had an episiotomy and no scarring at all". 

"People used to have 12 kids vaginally and somehow still managed to conceive number 13, so my guess is all things keep working as expected," pointed out another.

But the original poster wasn't convinced, asking "But how pleasing does a vagina look after birthing 12 children?"

Fortunately some were ready to give a detailed response about their own post-baby vagina's aesthetics.

"I am pg with #5. I think the differences over time are: Slightly wrinkly outer labia - likely because they have been swollen while pg. Whole pelvic floor is lower - like I can see the two inner walls of my vagina in certain positions - couldn't do this before kids," one experienced mum wrote.

A few helpful men chimed in to assure the poster that birthing a baby wouldn't ruin her sex life forever. 

"I have been with a woman who had 2 children and I can confirm her vagina did become an endless pit of teeth and lava," said one comedian. "Kidding, it looked fine. If anything it was tighter than before. Your vagina will not be wrecked, it won't look exactly the same but it won't look like uncooked oatmeal with raisins in it either. It will just look like a vagina."

Not all the news was good, of course. There were some who had stories of doctors stitching the wrong bits back together and their sex life never returning to anything near pleasurable as a result.

But there was one thing all mums could agree on when it came to keeping the post-birth vagina as good as new - the importance of pelvic floor exercises.

"Oh yeah, (pelvic floor exercises) have saved me numerous times when I've sneezed or coughed. (Not) always, but enough to totally make it worth it," explained one exercise devotee.

So squeeze ladies, squeeze.