Before you read any further, this blog is a level 10 Too Much Information post. There are things in here that you will probably prefer you didn’t know about after reading it. I’ve warned you…

I was smug after giving birth to my daughter. I didn’t need stitches. I didn’t have any of those terrifyingly nasty tears that I had heard about (I’m sure that was down to the super-wise midwife I had with me for the birth). It hurt like hell to pee for a week but other than that, I had got away with it all, injury free! That was until the Hemorrhoid Fairy visited.

Two weeks after giving birth, I got the present of bum grapes and, to make it worse, it was just in time for Christmas. Let me tell you, if there’s anything that can come even slightly close to the pain of childbirth, I think it must be dealing with hemorrhoids when you’ve recently pushed a small human being out of your body and your German family are providing lots of delicious carbohydrate heavy food for you to eat all day long..

There was constipation. There was blood. There was fear. I actually became so afraid of the pain that came with even sitting on the toilet that I wasn’t able to pee for a day. Something had to be done.

I pushed all of my Britishness aside and asked my midwife what I could do about it. “I can laser them off for you but you’ll have to wait for a week or two”, she said. LASER THEM OFF? The idea was even more painful than the hemorrhoids themselves. And what about now? “Wait it out”, she said. “If you can’t pee by tomorrow then you should go to the clinic”.

In the UK, I’m fairly sure that we consider hemorrhoids to be a life or death situation so I decided to make an appointment at the clinic.

Well OF COURSE my regular, lovely, female doctor wasn’t the person I was able to see that week. OF COURSE it was the devastatingly handsome male doctor, who will probably now always think of me as Frau Hemorrhoid. The appointment lasted for about 30 seconds (thankfully he didn’t do an examination):

“Have you tried nasal spray?” he said. I must have looked extremely confused. “Some of my patients say nasal spray works wonders on hemorrhoids. Just don’t get confused and then use the bottle for your nose”. We both laughed awkwardly and I ran out of the office as quickly as I could.

He was right. Nasal spray works! Just not on the nose…