I Just Need People to Not Market the Postpartum Sitz Bath as a Spa Experience

When I mention the spa, what do you think about? The aroma? The lights? Maybe the freshly laundered robes or the zen music? You know what's the exact opposite of that image? Healing from having pushed a baby through your vagina. Which is why I took a major pause when I saw this sitz bath decorated with flower petals for sale.

I'll admit, when the nurses in my delivery room mentioned they'd be bringing me a sitz bath to use to calm the inflammation from my perineal tears, I envisioned an actual bath. In a tub. It sounded lovely. "You'll feel better once you sit in it," someone told me. But when they dropped that opaque seat on top of the open toilet and told me to sit in it, I glared. Getting into it was brutal — I had to lower myself down the same way I did when using the bathroom, one cheek at a time. And the water, though it was temperate, was still a shock to my battered bottom. A nurse stood next to me in the doorway while I winced and suggested I continue to use it throughout my postpartum care. "It'll get better," she assured me.

Each time I filled the basin with lukewarm water and plopped myself into it, I cringed. The immediate sensation felt more like a sizzle, but I knew that if I just waited it out, the soothing nature of water would follow.

What's the connection between this postpartum scene and the earlier one from the spa? Absolutely nothing, unless you think the water that overflows through the vent of the sitz when you flop your ass in it is actually a waterfall feature. And that's my point. Can't we just call it what it is — a postpartum necessity — and not paint it as something else? I have absolutely no problem with the item itself — I used it daily and think it's an amazing piece of the postpartum recovery process.

I've never sold anything. I can't even pretend that I understand how difficult it might be to market something that's typically associated with pain. But hey, brands like Tylenol and Tucks have figured out a way to move products without swathing them in pink rosebuds, so do we have to associate a postpartum healing product with the spa?