“What I wish I knew about enemas in my last pregnancy…”

By Dee Zibara, founder and creator of FlowFit, a qualified Nutritionist and Integrative Personal Trainer

Until a little while ago I bet you thought the same thing as me: there’s no way enemas are safe during pregnancy.

Like me, you were probably in the camp that believe ‘overly-cautious while pregnant’ is always best. But I bet that same thinking also limited your options when it came to dealing with challenging symptoms preventing you from actually enjoying your pregnancy.

I’m a women’s health specialist, a nutritionist and a personal trainer. To say I’m someone who knows a lot about health is an understatement, but you might be surprised to learn how cautious I’ve been with natural health practices during pregnancy.

In my last pregnancy I simply suffered.

I waited out nine months of nausea and reflux before discovering the state my gut and detoxification system were in when I was diagnosed with mould illness and candida overgrowth shortly after giving birth.

You can certainly say the mum guilt started early.

But this time around I thought differently. I’m not going to slowly deteriorate after nine months. My body is clever and as long as I don’t do anything extreme, helping my body clear toxic junk out safely is what I know I need to do.

Nine months is already a long time. Add breastfeeding (which could be years) and I know that I simply can’t wait it out again.

So I thought, what if I gave some new options a chance? Could I actually feel okay – even GOOD – during this pregnancy?

If I do, there’s one thing I need to overcome. The thing that contributes most to my nausea, which is what I thought was my biggest issue. Constipation.

As someone who’s found amazing health benefits from colonics (to start with) and then self- administered enemas (particularly coffee enemas), I felt confident in what I was doing enough to do it from home by myself. Trust me, it’s nowhere near as scary as you think. Enemas are an ancient practice and they’re still around thousands of years later for a reason.

And for me, someone who would have been happy with a single minute of relief from my nauseating first eight weeks, I’m so glad I found them.

Now, I’d never professionally recommend you do anything you weren’t comfortable with in your own pregnancy. But I wanted to share my experience, as well as some benefits of enemas, so that you might explore them for symptom relief too.

And just to be clear, I use a high-quality kit by Happy Bum Co and ensure I sanitise my kit before and after every use.

Three common myths about enemas during pregnancy

MYTH 1: Enemas can cause uterine contractions and therefore miscarriage or premature birth

This is a common concern that has been echoed throughout the medical community for a long time. However, no matter how much I looked, there was no available research I could find on this at all.

It’s left me wondering: is this an old wives’ tale?

What has been heavily documented is that severe constipation can create issues like anal fissures and haemorrhoids. Avoiding constipation is a core part of taking care of yourself during pregnancy.

MYTH 2: Enemas wash away your good gut microbes

This can be true actually, but doing a regular number two does the same thing.

And I would argue that if you experience gastrointestinal symptoms in the first place, I highly doubt your good gut bacteria is flourishing anyway. Pregnancy is always a good test of where the body is at!

As a nutritionist who has worked a lot with the gut, this simplistic view misses the fact that gut health should be a measure of the efficiency of the entire ecosystem, and not looking in isolation at one aspect. I would also recommend a spore-based probiotic for this reason, or using something like a probiotic enema.

MYTH 3: Enemas can only be used in extreme constipation situations

I’m here to say that my moderate constipation was enough to throw my whole body out of whack. The thing that has really helped my constipation (along with magnesium supplementation) is water enemas.

They’ve stimulated a release for me when nothing else worked. And if you’re experiencing both nausea and constipation like I had been, it’s very unlikely they’re two separate problems.

I hope this helps you, Mumma.