by Joyce Slaton posted in Mom Stories

So when I wrote this thing about my pregnant drooling and restless leg syndrome, I thought I might get some fun comments. But I never expected to get so many, articulately explaining problems that are so bizarre as to be sci fi. I simply had to revisit a few of them.
Christine's comment takes the (butt-shaped) cake: "I have turned the toilet seat in my house purple! This also happened with both pregnancies and it?s a butt-shaped purple mark. I can?t bleach it out either. We?ll just have to replace the seat after the baby is born. (Replaced it twice with my first and then realized it would keep happening.)" What on God's green earth" Yes. This happens to some pregnant women, they stain toilet seats, and sometimes sheets, pink, purple or blue, leaving a distinct butt-shaped or body-shaped mark. Oddly, this only seems to happen with porcelain toilet seats. Not plastic ones.
It's not totally unknown, either -- if you search online, you can find the condition discussed in such disparate sites as Chemistry Stack Exchange, Reddit, and The Straight Dope.
I mentioned this to two doctors I know. One of them started laughing and said "Really" Really"" before theorizing that it was "some kind of strange ph thing." The second doctor, who sees pregnant women in her practice, said she'd heard about the toilet seats from one of her patients, and then again from a colleague, but had no idea what might h...