TV rarely gets childbirth right. After Roe, the gory truth matters more than ever
"Bloody show" is a colorful term for the mixture of blood and mucus that indicates the cervix is preparing for labor.
It is one of the many strange, sticky bodily secretions you are likely to encounter for the first time when you become a parent: colostrum (yellowish early breast milk), meconium (baby's tar-like first bowel movement), vernix (the creamy white stuff often covering newborns when they're born — also known, nauseatingly, as "birthing custard").
I thought of the term again recently as I watched an episode of "This Is Going to Hurt," a darkly comic TV series following a team of stressed-out doctors and midwives in the obstetrics and gynecology ward of an under-resourced London hospital.
During a particularly chaotic shift, haughty chief consultant Mr. Lockhart (Alex Jennings) is showing off the facilities for a visiting politician and phalanx of reporters. He opens the door to a newly refurbished delivery room — which, unbeknownst to him, has just been used for a water birth — and discovers what looks like the aftermath of a bathtub dismemberment a la "The Sopranos." Blood cascades across the floor in front of a tub filled with rust-colored water.
