Colitis Took Hannah Witton’s Colon in an Emergency. She Put the Stoma on Camera.
A flare of the ulcerative colitis she has had since childhood put Hannah Witton in hospital for four weeks in January 2018 and took her colon; three months later she showed her ileostomy to the camera, and the video has been watched 2.4 million times. This month, pregnant for the second time with the stoma, she spent a morning on a tour of London's public toilets. She is a patient and a creator, not a clinician; this is her story in her own words, with the research beside it.
Hannah Witton is a YouTuber, author and creator in England who has had ulcerative colitis since she was seven. In January 2018 a flare put her in hospital for four weeks and, on January 14, surgeons removed her colon in an emergency operation, leaving her with an ileostomy she calls Mona. She showed the stoma on camera in April 2018 in a video that had 2.4 million views when we read it on October 19, 2026, filmed her first pregnancy with it week by week in 2022, and announced a second pregnancy in July 2026. Her main YouTube channel, @hannahwitton, had about 742,000 subscribers and her second channel, @morehannah, about 101,000 on October 19, 2026; her Instagram showed 215,324 followers on the editor's read the same day. She wrote Doing It (2017) and The Hormone Diaries (2019), ended her sex-education work at the end of 2023, and now coaches other creators. She is a patient and a creator, not a doctor, nurse or any kind of clinician.
The tour meets outside the station toilets at Waterloo and ends somewhere near Covent Garden, and for the best part of two hours it is, in the operator’s own words, “a whirlwind tour through the history of Britain’s public toilets.” On Thursday, October 15, 2026, Hannah Witton’s Instagram grid carried a joint post from it, written by the guide: “A very silly but very fun morning on this special Loo Tour for the lovely @hannahwitton,” it began. Witton is a YouTuber, author and creator in England who has had ulcerative colitis since she was seven, lost her colon to it in an emergency operation in January 2018, and has lived since with an ileostomy, a stoma she introduced to the camera three months after the surgery with the words “so here’s mine.” She is a patient and a creator, not a doctor, a nurse or any kind of clinician.
The moment is hers. She is pregnant for the second time, which she announced on her channel on July 16, 2026 (“I can’t believe I’m saying this… I’m PREGNANT!!”), and on Monday, October 12, she posted a reel that began: “Not even in the third trimester yet and already in this second pregnancy I’ve busted out the support belt.” The first pregnancy, in 2022, she filmed week by week under the title “Pregnancy Vs Stoma!” She is best known for more than a decade of sex and relationships education on YouTube, work she ended in 2023. This is the other story: the colon she lost, the stoma she named, and what she made ordinary for a very large audience by simply showing it.
The diagnosis: Diagnosed at seven, “healthy” for ten years, then a sudden turn
The first video is from June 27, 2017, titled “I have ulcerative colitis,” with an alternative title in the description: “My Poo Disease. I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis when I was 7 years old and here’s my story.” Under it she added a note only a patient would write: “It only just occurred to me after uploading that I completely missed out one of my main symptoms – blood and mucus in the diarrhoea. So there’s that.” Ulcerative colitis is one of the two main inflammatory bowel diseases; it inflames the lining of the large bowel, comes and goes in flares, and for a minority of patients ends in surgery. The years before hers she later described as a long quiet: “I felt ‘healthy’ for 10 years of my life before my sudden turn and need for surgery.”
The emergency: Four weeks in hospital, a colon removed, a stoma named Mona
“I’m back!” the description of her February 4, 2018 video begins. “I had a flare up of ulcerative colitis in December/January and had to have surgery that’s left me with #MonaTheStoma. Here’s the story.” The title was “I spent 4 weeks in hospital.” A year on she dated the operation exactly: “14th January 2019 marks one year since my life changing surgery to remove my large colon and have a ileostomy.” Her site puts it in one sentence: “In January 2018 I underwent emergency surgery to have my colon removed and now I live with a stoma (I poo into a bag).” An ileostomy brings the end of the small intestine out through the wall of the abdomen; the stool collects in a bag worn over it. She has called hers Mona, under the hashtag #MonaTheStoma, in every description since, and has not, in anything we read, explained the name.
A Q&A followed a week later, “about all the things you’ve been curious about”; on March 7 a look inside her stoma care bag (“I’m really going to town on this new stoma content”); and on April 17, 2018, the video that did the most work. “I’ve had some questions about what a stoma actually is – so here’s mine,” the description reads, adding the definition she forgot to say on camera: “a stoma/ostomy is basically an artificial opening. Mine is specifically an ILEOSTOMY.” It had 2,419,072 views when we read it on October 19, 2026.
The year was not finished with her. “My second surgery in 5 months,” she wrote on July 3, 2018, under the title “I needed surgery again”; she has said nothing more about that operation in anything we read, and neither do we. That October she started a series called Surgery to 5k: “I want to get fit after my 2 surgeries this year (and with #MonaTheStoma), and run 5k!” By November 2019 it had stuck, in a sponsored video for an activewear brand: learning to exercise after surgery “has finally made me a gym person (who would’ve thought it).”
“I felt ‘healthy’ for 10 years of my life before my sudden turn and need for surgery. So do I feel like my life was better before? Sort of, yes.”
The decision: Temporary or permanent: she asked her audience first
On April 16, 2019 she posted “My Life Isn’t Better with a Stoma,” and the description is the least promotional sentence in the whole archive: “So do I feel like my life was better before? Sort of, yes.” On October 29, 2019 she put the biggest question to the people who had already answered it for themselves: “I currently have a temporary ileostomy (my #MonaTheStoma), and am figuring out whether to get a permanent stoma or go for a J Pouch, so I asked my audience about their experiences!” A J pouch is an internal reservoir a surgeon builds from the small intestine so a person can go without a bag; keeping the stoma means a further operation to make it permanent. Five weeks later, for Crohn’s and Colitis Awareness Week, she sat down with an IBD nurse to explain the difference between Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, with a link to Crohn’s & Colitis UK. By November 2020 she was marking “almost THREE YEARS” with the bag. Her site today says only that she lives with a stoma; we have not found her own account of the decision she was weighing in 2019, and we do not add one.
The pregnancy: “Can I get pregnant with a stoma?” She asked in 2019, then showed it
On September 24, 2019 she posted the question as a title, “Can I Get Pregnant/Have Kids with a Stoma?”: “Does having a stoma affect my fertility? Would my kids get IBD? I have SO many questions about getting pregnant with a stoma, so I try to find some answers!” On November 9, 2021 came the announcement: “I can’t believe I’m actually posting this video: I’m pregnant!!!!!!” and a first trimester that was, her word, “ROUGH.” Then, on March 15, 2022, the hour-long episode at the centre of her gut story, “Pregnancy Vs Stoma! (my experience pregnant with an ileostomy),” chaptered from 19 weeks to 32: “the whole journey so far in all its emotional up and down glory.” It had 588,135 views when we read it.
The birth story followed on August 9, 2022: “Four days of labour, one unplanned C-section, and one beautiful baby.” A month later came “Postpartum, C-Section Recovery & My Stoma,” with a chapter marked simply “Stoma” and the line “recovering from a c-section with a stoma.” Her site: “In 2022, I became a mum.” In July 2025 she posted that she was “18 months into trying for baby number 2 and still nothing”; her About page says she has been “sharing my experience trying to conceive for our (hopefully) second child.” On July 16, 2026, on her second channel: “I’m Pregnant!” and “I’m so, so grateful.” On September 24 she wrote that she was “25 weeks and counting” and documenting this pregnancy “much less than my first”; on October 12 the support belt; on October 15 a wardrobe sort for “autumn/winter pregnancy and postpartum.” We print nothing about this pregnancy beyond her own public words.
The audience: Two channels, two newsletters and a coaching business
The main channel, @hannahwitton, joined YouTube in September 2009 and had 742,000 subscribers, 517 videos and 122.8 million views when we read it on October 19, 2026; it now carries the name “Hannah (Sex & Relationships Education)” and holds the stoma archive. The second, @morehannah, now simply “Hannah Witton,” had 101,000 subscribers and 560 videos, and is where she posts today: “nerdy and conscious lifestyle content about being a freelance mum running a small business,” its About page says. Instagram showed 215,324 followers and 3,185 posts on the editor’s logged-out read the same day; her TikTok, 14,900 followers under a bio that reads “YouTuber, toddler mum, slow fashion lover & productivity nerd.” Her Substack, Between the Sheets, lists “over 17,000 subscribers.”
She has written two books, Doing It (2017), which her site says won Book of the Year at the Summer in the City Awards that year, and The Hormone Diaries (2019), and hosted a podcast, Doing It!, from 2019 to 2023. “At the end of 2023, I decided to close that chapter of my career and move away from creating sex ed content,” her About page says; she remains, it adds, an ambassador for Brook, a sexual-health charity for young people. Since 2024 she has coached other creators, since 2025 written the Creator Talks newsletter, and this autumn her grid shows her judging two creator awards. The joint post she accepted from a loo-tour guide’s small account is a clue to how she treats her audience: as people she goes on days out with.
What the research actually measured: How common colitis is in the UK, how often it ends in surgery, what pregnancy with a stoma looks like
How common is it? A 2020 study of 11.3 million UK primary-care records counted 12,369 new diagnoses of ulcerative colitis between 2000 and 2018, an incidence of 15.7 per 100,000 person-years, and a point prevalence on December 31, 2018 of 397 per 100,000: about one person in 250 (our arithmetic). Incidence was stable in children under ten and in adults under 40, fell in the over-40s, and roughly doubled in 10- to 16-year-olds, from 13.1 to 25.4 per 100,000. How often does it end in surgery? A 2013 meta-analysis of population-based studies put the risk of surgery after a UC diagnosis at 4.9% at one year, 11.6% at five and 15.6% at ten, and found it falling over six decades. In England, 17,580 people had their colon removed for ulcerative colitis between 2003 and 2016; among 37,981 adults admitted to hospital as emergencies with the disease, 17% had a colectomy within a year and 21% within three. Planned colectomies fell 3.1% a year after 2008; emergency ones did not.
The closest thing to her pregnancy in the literature is a 2022 audit of 15 UK hospitals: 82 pregnancies in 77 women with a stoma for inflammatory bowel disease, 88% of them ileostomies. The 82 pregnancies ended in 80 live births; 73% of deliveries were by caesarean section, most of them planned; 19% of babies came before 37 weeks; and the stoma itself caused a significant problem, such as a prolapse or a hernia, in about a quarter of pregnancies. The authors asked for prospective studies that capture what patients themselves report. A Danish national cohort of every IBD pregnancy from 1997 to 2022, including 833 ulcerative colitis pregnancies after surgery, found that a functional ileostomy before pregnancy raised the odds of a caesarean more than eightfold (adjusted odds ratio 8.55) and of preterm birth about threefold (3.25); the authors note that up to 15% of women with Crohn’s or colitis have bowel surgery before a pregnancy. None of these numbers describe any one person, including her: her first child arrived after four days of labour and an unplanned caesarean, in her words, and that is all she has said.
The disclosure map: Where her interests sit
She earns from her audience directly: The Common Room on Patreon (“a sustainable creator business that allows for sick days, maternity leave, and just normal human stuff,” its page says), a Substack newsletter, creator coaching and Patreon-strategy consulting sold through her site, and the two books through ordinary retailers. Sponsored videos are labelled where we found them, and named here neutrally: an audiobook service in 2019, a skincare brand and an activewear brand in 2019, a website builder in 2024 and 2025. A 2020 description carried a discount code for a stoma-wear shop and a 2018 description linked a stoma-care company’s recovery exercises; her descriptions carry affiliate links for books, captions and music, all marked. Nothing we read sells a treatment, a supplement or a test, and nothing we read is anti-medication. She is a patient-creator, not a doctor, nurse, dietitian or any kind of clinician. Gut Health Times has no relationship with Hannah Witton, with Loo Tours, with Crohn’s & Colitis UK or with any brand named here. This profile is educational, is not medical advice, and was prepared without input from her.
How we checked this: Sources and method
Every quotation is from her own channels, read at source on October 19, 2026: the descriptions of 22 YouTube videos on her two channels (dates are the videos’ publication dates), her site’s About, Books and Contact pages, her Patreon and Substack pages, and her TikTok bio. Instagram captions are as read on her public grid by our editor the same day, and the loo-tour caption is the guide’s, not hers. YouTube and TikTok counts are the platforms’ own, read logged out; the Instagram count is the editor’s read. The tour is described from the operator’s own site. The five studies are cited by PubMed ID, each title matched before a number was taken, and “one in 250” is our arithmetic on the 2020 prevalence figure. Where her words stop, so do we: no diagnosis, no decision and no date she has not stated herself. This article is educational, describes what the cited sources say, and is not medical advice.