Finding Out I Was Pregnant

September 2011. For the past few months I've been living in this house, returning to my own home only to pay rent and pick up my post.

Me, a couple of days before I found out I was pregnant

Living here is quite stressful; there are six children running around with very little in the way of discipline, guidance or boundaries. There is fighting, noise, swearing, squabbling, destruction and chaos. Having lived alone for most of my adult life, I'm finding it quite tough - but the rare moments of quiet, where one of the children is drawing with me or another reading a book with me, those are the moments I treasure. The moments that restore my sanity and patience.

One evening, I have an argument with one of the older children. I can't even tell you what it's about, but it really pisses me off, and I go into the bedroom to hide, lest I say something nasty to her. It ends with her laying on her bed crying, shouting "you're not my mum! I want my mum!" to which her father replies (shouting from the next room) "yeah well, she's not here is she - she left you." I feel awful for her, but I know I am not the person she wants to comfort her, and I don't want to make things worse.

The next morning on the way to work, he tells me I need to go and stay at my house for a few nights; I am clearly not able to cope with his children and he doesn't like for me to be nasty to them so I must go to my own house for a while, and calm down. I feel terrible; worse when I later find out that he has gone home that evening and told his children that I have left because of their terrible behaviour and might never come back.

That weekend, one of them has a birthday. Birthdays are the only times the whole family goes into town together, for breakfast at a cafe or pub. We arrange that I will meet them for the birthday breakfast, and then go home with them. We pass a lovely morning with the children, first having breakfast and then going to the library, a place they've never been before. When we go home, we stop at the children's grandmother's house and the birthday boy is given some money. I take the birthday boy back into town on his own to spend his money. He doesn't seem as chirpy and excited as you would expect for a 7 year old on his birthday; he seems miserable and I want to cheer him up.

When we get home, we find his father putting together the new bike he's bought for the boy's birthday. He is drunk and moody. He insists that I too should get drunk, and I am dispatched to the local shop to buy some wine. We pass a tense evening where his children try to stay out of his way. Once they are in bed, he starts to argue with me. I remember very little of the argument, except the feeling that I can't get a word in, and he won't just stop and listen to me. His younger daughter creeps down the stairs saying "Daddy, stop being mean to Vicky." She's sent back to bed, and we carry on arguing. Eventually he tells me he can't stand my outlandish behaviour and mood swings any more, and I must leave. We are splitting up. I say okay, I will pack my things in the morning and go. This is not good enough though; I must leave right now, in the middle of the night.

By this point we are in his bedroom. I am on the edge of the bed, head in hands, trying to think straight. He is behind me, leaning on the wall and talking constantly. He won't shut up. I'm trying to figure out how I can get all of my things out of his house and across town to my house in the middle of a Saturday night. He won't let me think; he won't stop telling me all the things I've ever done wrong. I pick up the nearest thing I can find, and throw it at him. He still won't stop. He tells me to call a taxi, but I can't bear the thought of a taxi driver helping me to carry my things while I cry uncontrollably. I call my mother. This is the first time in my entire adult life I have ever called upon my mother to help me in this sort of way, but I don't know what else to do.

When I put the phone down he tells me, "you fucking cunt, calling your mum and crying down the phone to her to make me look bad!" I try to ignore him, and start to pack my things. As I begin to put take my things downstairs, I realise that the older children are awake; they have heard everything. I give each of them a hug and tell them I love them, and then leave.

The next day my mother brings me back to collect the rest of my things. He is laying in his bed, staring at the ceiling. He doesn't acknowledge me or speak, the entire time I am there. The rest of the day is spent at home, crying uncontrollably. My sister brings me a tub of Ben & Jerry's and looks scared. Even mid breakdown, nobody ever saw me like this.

The next day is a Monday, and I have to go to work. I wake up with that horrible feeling you get when you've been crying forever: tight skin, dry eyes. My boobs hurt. My boobs never hurt. And in that moment, before I even get out of bed, I know.

I text him from work telling him I need to come and collect the rest of my things from his house that evening. I know there is still a pregnancy test there; he's been buying them as part of his Tesco order for months, and I've been doing one every week or so. I catch the bus to his house, gather up the rest of my things, and sit on the edge of his bed. I ask if we can try again; I'll try harder, I'll be nicer to the children, I'll get on top of the never-ending mountain of washing in the kitchen. I'll be better. He says he'll have to think about it. I stand up to leave, and remember the pregnancy test. I tell him I'd like to take it with me, just to make sure. He insists that I do the test right now, so I take it into the bathroom with me.

The line appears. My stomach sinks. I feel like I might fall over.

I walk back to his bedroom, as if through a tunnel. I don't register the clothes on the floor, the children fighting on the stairs, the dog laying across the landing. I close the door behind me and say "I'm pregnant." I show him the test.

"How do I know it's mine?"

"I've barely left your house for the last few months; you know I've not slept with anyone else; I wouldn't even have had time to."

"You were pretty fat when you got here; you might have been pregnant already and trying to pin it on me."

He gives me his bank card, instructing me to buy one of those tests that tells you how far gone you are, and to bring it to his house after work the next day.

I walk home in a daze, vaguely aware that it is dark and I am being irresponsible, walking along this poorly lit path on my own; after all, it's not just me any more is it, I need to look after my baby. It's the most surreal thought I think I've ever had.

The next day I buy the test and take it to his house. He comes into the bathroom with me and watches me pee on it. When it comes up with "3+ weeks" he accepts that the baby is his. I have no idea how my being 3+ weeks makes a difference, but it does and now it's ok and I can be his girlfriend again.

It's a good job I've been taking Pregnacare and Osteocare for the last two months, isn't it. I'm so lucky he started buying them for me. I'm such an idiot to have had a drink on Saturday night, though; I shouldn't have done that. What a fucking idiot. Now I might have damaged the baby and it'll be all my own fault. This thought hangs over me throughout my pregnancy.

Two Years

Seeing Kit this week has had me thinking a lot about the past two years.

This time two years ago, I was just preparing to move into this flat. I had just gotten back together with S's father for the last time. I thought I had seven weeks left of my pregnancy. 

Mentally, I was completely broken by the stress and strain of what had been going on throughout my pregnancy. I was totally under my ex's control, and he knew it. Having gotten someone else pregnant, and then found himself a new girlfriend in the last few weeks, he had made me beg him to take me back. I now believe both the pregnancy and the girlfriend were deliberately done in order to get me to tow the line, to put me in my place. And they worked. He knew I was petrified of becoming a mother alone. He had made sure from very early on that he pointed out to me every single thing that I would not be able to cope with.

You won't be able to hack breastfeeding. It hurts, and you won't manage. A couple of weeks, tops and then the baby will be on formula.

You won't cope with a baby. You can't even look after yourself.

You're so stressy over the slightest thing... just wait until that baby gets here and it's screaming all day and night!

Alongside this, there was the constant assertion that it was just a baby. I was only pregnant, it was no big deal. Having a baby is easy; just look at all of these losers around us, all of them doing just fine with their kids. It shouldn't be hard. It's the easiest thing in the world, anyone can do it.

I saved up my holiday entitlement from work, which allowed me to leave at around 32 weeks. The plan was that I would move into my flat, and then spend the rest of the time until the baby was born, decorating his kitchen. I'm not even joking; that was his plan for me. And I was just being difficult when I tentatively suggested I didn't want to be climbing up ladders to paint a ceiling when pregnant. At 34 weeks, I put my double bed together myself because he had told me I had to sleep at my house that night (I worked out much later that he had someone else coming round to sleep with him that night, so couldn't have me there). It didn't really occur to me that this was not something a relatively heavily pregnant woman should be doing; after all, it's just pregnancy. No big deal.

A strategically-cropped photo of "us"
- me trying desperately to look happy and comfortable

Around this time, a friend came to visit me. The friend I named S after. She is a very dear friend, who I've known for a long time. She lives a couple of hours' drive from me, but when I had my breakdown she visited regularly to check on me. She had seen me earlier in my pregnancy, when she had driven down and helped me remove my things from the ex's house one of the times we split up. At that point she had tried to gently tell me I was better off on my own, and I had half believed her. She had never met him before, but on this occasion she did. He had me invite her to his house, and got the children up early in the morning to clean the house from top to bottom with as much bleach as they could lay hands on. I was instructed to meet my friend at my house, show her around, whatever - he would let me know when I could bring her to his house to meet him. 

When we got there, the house stank of bleach and I was very conscious of the fact that although it was tidy by normal standards, by anyone else's standards it was a state. My friend was very polite about it. She met him briefly, but then he went out - a local girl had just had a baby and had a very hard time in labour so he went to visit her. My friend left shortly afterwards, and I looked after the children until the ex came home. The first thing he told me when he came home was "that baby is mine. It looks just like me" I questioned how it could have been, when the child must have been conceived after we had gotten together. His response was "yes, but I've already told you I was still sleeping with her when I first got with you..." 

Later that evening I texted my friend to ask her what she thought of my boyfriend. Her opinion was more important to me than most. Her response made me cry: "he seems nice enough, but I would have hoped for you to meet someone who took care of you, rather than the other way around." When he asked me what she'd thought of him, I lied. I'd learned by then that it was best not to give him reason to think I'd made him look bad.

If I had to pick words to describe myself this time two years ago, I would choose words like:

cowed

scared

defeated

diffident

alone

It's hard to explain to anyone how I got to that point, and also how I got back from it. When I talk about it, it feels like I'm talking about a different person. More than one person has expressed shock and surprise that I ever ended up like that. People who knew me before, and those who have met me since, cannot fathom how I allowed any of this to happen to me.

I am one of the lucky few: the minute I had my baby, and was able to comprehend that it was my job to keep her safe and happy, something clicked in my head. I knew deep down, even with all of the mind games and tricks that had been employed against me, that this was a dangerous situation for a baby. 

Someone called me inspirational the other day. People tell me I'm strong. I don't feel like I'm either of those things... but if I had to choose between those words, or the four above, to describe myself, I would come down closer to inspirational and strong than the others, any day. Even on a really bad day.

Incidentally: Yes, breastfeeding did hurt a bit to start with, but I did it until S was 17 months old. I look after both of us just fine, and she has never once screamed all day and night. In fact until she was teething, she barely cried at all.

Mental Health Care and Abusive Relationships

When I was pregnant, I came off the medication I had been on since my breakdown.

My GP wanted me to go back onto it once I'd reached 12 weeks, but I refused. (I still refuse). As a compromise, she suggested I see a counsellor instead.

I had been through the self-referral system with CMHT before; I hadn't really rated it when I had been floundering in the abyss of my mental health. I knew they couldn't help me; they knew I was beyond their help, and referred me to the next level of mental health care (which also didn't really help).

Any way, I agreed to go. The way this works is, you call a number which goes through to the overworked secretary of what seems to be several different departments. The phone often rings through to voicemail several times before you reach a real person, and if you leave a voicemail it is often lost in the ether. When you eventually get hold of said overworked secretary, you're about ready to admit defeat and open a vein. She takes her time locating the relevant diary, and then makes you an appointment in about 4 weeks' time to see someone at your doctor's surgery.

The idea is that you speak to the counsellor for 45 minutes or so, they give you some "homework" or something, you go on your merry way and make an appointment to see them again in two weeks. Except the system doesn't work, because once you leave the appointment, you have to go back through the rigmarole mentioned above, and usually end up waiting at least a month between appointments.

I knew all of this, but I didn't want my GP to make me start taking medication again. So I made the call. The appointment they gave me was with a man, which was less than ideal, but it was the only one available so I took it.

At my first appointment I told the man my situation, which was this: my partner had kicked me out in the middle of the night, but when I found out I was pregnant, we got back together. The "fact" it was entirely my fault we had ever split up in the first place was brought up at least once a week; I was to take full responsibility. Eventually I got sick of this, and broke it off. He then went out and slept with someone else (probably more than one person). We got back together shortly after, but I was having a hard time dealing with the fact he'd slept with someone else and refused to share a bed with him until he'd been tested. It was at this point I had my first appointment with the counsellor.

Bear in mind here, that I was in an abusive relationship. This man had slept with someone else in order to punish me for finishing with him. He was still telling me it had all been my fault; I had caused him to kick me out the first time, I had so callously and heartlessly dumped him the second time we split, I had driven him to sleep with someone else by not taking his calls, and now I was deliberately causing drama and trouble by not just going back to normal.

I told the counsellor this. I told him I wasn't sure of my own mind, and wasn't sure if perhaps it was all me, and I was just painting a particularly bad picture of him to the friends and family who were telling me I should just stay away from him.

The counsellor told me he had previously been a relationship counsellor. He told me it wasn't usually allowed, but did I want to bring my partner with me to my next session, and he would try and help us work through this. I asked my partner, and - surprisingly - he accepted.

A few weeks later, we went to see the counsellor together. We sat in a room with him, and he agreed with everything the ex said. At times I felt they were ganging up on me: if we were going to be together, I needed to accept responsibility for what had happened, suck it up and get back to normal.

I remember leaving the appointment, and walking down the street, reeling. The ex was talking to me, but I wasn't hearing; I was walking along thinking, "oh no, I really am a terrible person; I really have been painting an awful, one-sided picture of this man to all of my friends, and now they hate him and it's all my fault!" I felt so guilty about the whole thing, I bought the ex dinner before we went home.

I really felt that since the counselling session was for me and not my partner, the counsellor should at least have tried to be on my "side" for some of it.

When I went to the next session, the counsellor asked me how things had been after the previous one. I told him I felt like they had ganged up on me, and that really it wasn't what I'd needed. The counsellor told me he had been aware of that at the time, but was also very aware that if he agreed with me too much, it might seem that we were ganging up on the ex, and that might make the situation worse for me once we left the session. I wasn't really sure that was a feasible excuse, to be honest.

I didn't go back after that session; I didn't see any point. By agreeing with everything the ex said, he had re-enforced his actions. He had made his behaviour acceptable in the eyes of "the authorities" and more importantly, he had contributed in a large way to the mind games the ex was playing with me. I really couldn't trust my own mind; a mental health professional had shown that to be the case, after all. More than once over the course of my pregnancy, the events of that day were brought back to me - "you counsellor told you about this... remember what your counsellor said..."

A few times since S was born, when I've been having a hard time with things, the GP has suggested I go back to counselling. She's handed me leaflets, and  I've smiled and put them in my handbag knowing I will never call that stupid number. I can't rely on that service to do anything to help me, and I feel that that man's actions were actually detrimental to my mental health and wellbeing. I have no idea if he still works there, and I don't want to find out.

Single Parents: Why The Fuss?

I've made a few posts lately, some quite ranty, about being a single parent and the bad reputation we seem to have.

But why do I care so much? Why be bothered about the social stigma, why be bothered what people think? Why not just get my head down, and get on with my life?

Sometimes I wonder why I care so much. And then, the other day, it hit me.

When I first got pregnant, I split up with S's father before I was even 8 weeks pregnant. I remember having my booking appointment with my midwife, and literally just crying all the way through it. I knew it was a bad relationship; I knew I should stay away. The midwife agreed with me, and so did my family and friends.

But I believed my child should have two parents. I believed I should try as hard as possible to maintain at the very least a civil relationship with him, so that S was not disadvantaged in any way. I believed the two-parent model was the best, and that my unborn child needed a father.

I didn't want to be a single mother. Besides the belief I was completely incapable of raising a child alone, I didn't want to be one of those people. I didn't want to be the stereotype everyone sees when they hear those words: Single Mother.

That stigma, that belief about single parents and the way society would look at me, the way I would look at myself, is part of what kept me going back. I returned to a poisonous, dangerous, abusive relationship so many times during my pregnancy, I can't even give you an estimate of the number. 

I was kicked out, banished so many times. I would leave of my own accord as many times again. I went weeks without returning calls or reading texts. I tried hard to stay away, because I knew I had a duty to keep myself and my child safe. And because, on a more fundamental level, I just plain could not cope with all the pain and drama. My pregnancy was so traumatic, I've still not been able to write about it - and anyone who has read the things I have written about will realise just how bad it must have been for me, then.

But for every time I thought "I really need to stay away," there was another thought to contradict it: "no, you need to try and make this work..."

I'm not saying that social stigma was what caused me to stay in an abusive relationship; I can't blame that on anyone else but him and me. But perhaps, if that stigma, the Daily Mail, the benefits scum, the council estate chic and all the rest of it had not been so prominent, I might have done a little better at staying away.

I know this is just a little blog but I feel I need to do as much as I can to help break down that stigma, and to make things easier for all single parents. So that maybe the next time something like this happens, the question of whether to leave an abusive relationship will not include worrying over what society will think of you.

Why I'm Not Celebrating the Royal Birth

Everyone loves a good birth, right? Especially a royal baby?

Well, no. Not everyone.

S at one day old

The arrival of a royal baby means the media is full of speculation: what was the labour like? How is Kate feeling? When will they leave hospital? Where will the baby sleep? Will Kate breastfeed? Who will do the night feeds? As a parent, I can't help but be reminded of my own experience.

Those of you who've been reading for a while will know that I had a fairly traumatic experience, both during my pregnancy and when S was born. (one of these days I will write the story of my pregnancy, but funnily enough, while I've written all about the birth, I don't feel ready to talk about what happened before it)

As time goes on, and I become more and more resigned to the fact S will most probably be an only child, and I will most probably not have another baby, I find it difficult not to be bitterly disappointed about my experience.

Quite early on in my pregnancy, I bumped into one of my mum's friends in a shop. We talked about my being pregnant, and as we parted she said, "enjoy yourself; you'll never have your first pregnancy again!"

I didn't enjoy my pregnancy. It was filled with fear and tension and stress and the constant feeling that everything was just wrong. I didn't enjoy my experience of S being born; I didn't enjoy the first few months of her life. Throughout all of that time, I would look around me at other women in my position, and find it very hard not to be consumed with jealousy. You might think I'm being childish or deliberately maudlin here, but just for a moment, stop and think what it must feel like to be in induced, premature labour, and still afraid of demanding too much attention from the man who is supposed to love you.

I have several friends who had babies shortly after I had S. Many of them were first time mums like me. I found it so hard not to be jealous of them with their new babies, when they were so happy and secure and contented with their partners and their little family. S and I were on our own, alone and distinctly lacking in security. I felt so guilty for her, for the life I had brought her into, and I felt sick to my stomach that my only experience of pregnancy and new motherhood had been tainted so badly by the situation we were in.

I'm really not into the whole navel-gazing, feeling sorry for myself business. I tried that approach to life for years, and all it ever got me was further into a stinking pit of despair. I don't want to wallow in that feeling. For the most part, I just avoid thinking about it and try to focus on the positives. And there are some massive positives, as I've mentioned before. Being a single parent is definitely the best choice for me. But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't have liked to have someone taking care of me when I was pregnant, someone asking if I was ok, someone putting me first from time to time, someone supporting S and I in those first few months, when everything was so new and strange and difficult. Someone to fetch me a glass of water on those evenings when I was stuck the couch, cluster-feeding a tiny, hungry baby while the room darkened around me. 

I'm glad that most of my friends had good experiences with their babies. I wouldn't wish it on anyone to have such a hard time in life. But that doesn't mean I don't find it hard to be constantly bombarded with stories of the most anticipated, privileged birth of this generation. 

My Birth Story, Part 1

S was due on 13th May, 2012.

On Easter weekend then, at the beginning of April, I wasn't expecting much excitement past eating my body weight in chocolate. I'd had a bad cough, and not slept much. On the Saturday afternoon I sat on the bed with the ex to watch a TV show on iPlayer. I ended up falling asleep. The ex went to cook dinner, and brought me a plate of food. I felt like death though, and couldn't force down more than a couple of mouth-fulls before going back to sleep. This was the wrong thing to do, and sparked one of our many non-rows where I was told "you're being a dick again." I was playing control games by refusing to eat the food he'd cooked for me. He went and slept downstairs, leaving me in a blind panic. What if he kicked me out (again) in the morning? I had just moved into a flat where I didn't even have curtains yet. Or a cooker. I had only just unpacked enough of my stuff to allow me to spend a night there. What if he abandoned me again? I'd only just got him back after the last scare, where he'd gone and found a new girlfriend. I knew he'd got another girl pregnant too; what if he just ditched me and my baby, and replaced us with them? What would I do? How would I cope? I begged him to come to bed, but he refused to even look at me. I lay in bed panicking about what would happen next.

I woke up at 5am to go to the toilet. When I came back to bed, as I lay back I felt something leak out. "You stupid cow," I said to myself, "you've not been doing your pelvic floors, and now it's too late and you've peed yourself in someone else's bed!" I went back to the bathroom to make sure my bladder really was empty. When I came back though, the same thing happened. I went back and forth to the bathroom a few times before it dawned on me - this is not pee. Shit! I didn't know what to do, so I crept downstairs. "babe..."

"what?"

"I'm leaking, and it's not pee."

"go back to bed, there's nothing you can do."

I did as I was told; I didn't know what else to do.

At around 9am he came up the stairs and told me, "if you're that worried about it, call the midwife." By this point I was getting pains in my stomach. I didn't know what contractions felt like, but this felt like period pains, every few minutes. I called the midwife, expecting her to tell me it was perfectly normal, and not to worry. The midwife told me to call the hospital. I called the ward, expecting them to tell me it was nothing to worry about. I wanted to be told there was nothing to worry about. But they told me I should come to the hospital, and I began to cry. I was told off for crying. I told him we needed to go to the hospital. He told me to have a bath first. I didn't want a bath, I wanted to go to the hospital. I was in labour, five weeks early with my first child. I had no idea what was going on, and I was petrified. But I did as I was told, and took a bath. He came into the bathroom with me, sat with his back against the door and watched me. He told me I should take my time, stay in there at least an hour. I usually had to spend at least an hour in the bath. He usually washed my back and stomach for me; I had a rash from pregnancy that he believed was caused by my not washing properly so he scrubbed me with antibacterial washing up liquid to get me clean. Today I was spared that though. I washed and got out as quickly as possible, and went downstairs.

He still made no effort to find someone to look after his six children, despite my pleading with him. I sat at the kitchen table, ordered to eat some breakfast. I tried to force down a pear while chaos raged around me. It was Easter day and he was sending his children off around the estate to deliver eggs to family and friends, organising who was to have which egg. In the end I told him not to worry; I would call my sister and ask her to take me to the hospital. This got his attention: my sister wasn't to take me; his sister was going to take both of us. I asked him to please call her then, but he didn't. It was gone midday before we left for the hospital.

In the hospital they took blood from my wrist and put a cannula in. It hurt, and I had to take off the watch my dad gave me for my 21st birthday. The ex put it in his pocket and I was petrified he wouldn't let me have it back. They gave me some codeine; I'm not sure whether that was to stop the contractions or help with my coughing, but it did both. They put monitors on my belly to track the baby's heart beat and my contractions. Both kept moving though, so they weren't really very useful. A male doctor came to examine me, and as he bent down I had a coughing fit and lots of water gushed everywhere. I was mortified; something I got over fairly quickly over the next 36 hours.

My contractions had stopped, and the midwife wasn't sure what they were going to do with me, they were waiting for a doctor to come round. The ex was annoyed; he'd got a babysitter, and he wanted this baby out. He actually said it in that way too. To him this trip to the hospital had been like a trip to the supermarket to pick up a tin of beans.

He asked the midwife if we could go for a little walk and they said that was fine. I put my coat on, and off we went. My local hospital is on a hill, and the grounds are... hilly. I was exhausted from not sleeping, petrified I was going to lose my baby, and suffering with a fairly bad chest infection, coughing and spluttering all over the place. He decided we should walk around the grounds, quickly, to get the contractions going again. So off we went, him always 2 paces ahead of me and impatient with my stopping and begging for rest. I stopped and sat on a wall for a few minutes, coughing up all sorts into the gutter. He stopped a few feet up the road and turned around, exacerbated. Eventually, we went to the hospital cafe and he bought me a sandwich and some pear drops. I felt too sick to eat but knew I couldn't waste the food he'd bought so I forced the sandwich down and walked carefully back to the ward. 

On shows like One Born Every Minute you see the woman laying in a bed while the man sits on a chair next to her, holding her hand and telling her everything will be fine. That didn't happen. He paced around the room, sometimes stopping to lean against the far wall and stare at me as if he hoped to re-start my contractions by staring alone. He left soon after we got back to the ward, telling me he couldn't leave the children with the babysitter any longer. The next day was Monday, and he was scheduled to work. He told me he would go to work in the morning, and if I was still here when he finished at 2:30, he'd come to see me afterwards. I said ok, because I knew I had to be ok with it, but I cried when he had gone. I'd never spent a night in hospital before; I was scared and I didn't know what was going to happen. I texted a friend to let her know I was in the hospital. She asked who was with me and I said nobody. She told me she would come and spend the night with me until the ex came back; I shouldn't go through this alone. I balked at this; if he came back and found her here, he would be angry at me for showing him up, making him look like a bad boyfriend. I told her not to worry, I was fine on my own and the contractions had stopped; I would just go to sleep. 

The doctor came in at 10pm and told me that because my waters had gone there was too much risk of infection to let me go home, so if my contractions didn't start again overnight they would induce me in the morning. I was relieved; I was too scared to go home now my waters had gone. I was scared to stay and have the baby too though. They gave me more codeine, and I fell asleep.

The story continues here...

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What a Difference a Year Makes.

Today is one year since I had my 20 week scan. I remember the date, because it's also the ex's eldest son's birthday, and that's still written in my diary.

S&I at 23 weeks

It's strange to think about how much has changed since then. The day itself was not pleasant for me. I'd not been getting on with S's father at all, but agreed he could come to the scan. He arrived late, tried to figure out the sex of the baby on the monitor even though we'd agreed we wouldn't find out, and talked over the lady when she tried to explain things. We'd been arguing in the weeks leading up to it, and I think he'd only started being pleasant so that I'd allow him to come. We'd not seen each other for a while, and I found that I couldn't bring myself to even look at him. I felt incredibly sad that for most women the 20 week scan is an immensely happy thing, holding hands with their partner and looking forward to meeting their baby. I had none of that. While I was glad the scan showed a healthy, normal baby (and so relieved, after all the stress and worry I'd been going through), the day was mainly filled with sadness for me. I had hoped that when I had a baby it would be born into a happy, loving relationship; that we would be a family. Now it was becoming clear to me that there were problems with my relationship that could not be fixed, and I was bringing a child into a very difficult situation. I felt powerless to do anything about it, though. I was sad and tired and beaten down by it all. After the scan he handed me a wad of cash before getting a lift back to town from his ex, who had waited for him in the car park. Thankfully, I had brought my sister with me, so I wasn't alone for the experience. I was dismayed that he had chosen his ex, of all people, to give him a lift; especially when my sister had offered him a lift with us, and the buses run every ten minutes. Looking back, it was clearly a decision taken purposefully to put me in my place - something that became a theme of our "relationship" after that point. It is very telling of my mental state that, although I was cross about him bringing his ex to the scan, I only managed to be angry for about 2 days before just giving in and playing nice. Things were easier if I didn't rock the boat.

Not long after the scan, I went and stayed in Oxfordshire with friends for Christmas. It was an almost stress-free, peaceful Christmas, like being on holiday from my life. I felt like I'd run away to hide from it all, and was petrified of returning to my life and the myriad problems I felt ill-equipped to deal with. While I was away, the ex was texting me and being perfectly nice and reasonable, kept telling me he wished I was there, that Christmas wasn't the same without me. I found out afterwards that their Christmas consisted of going to his mother-in-law's house, where the adults got very drunk very early, and didn't cook a Christmas dinner, while the children presumably did their best to stay out of the way. This was my fault, obviously. If I'd been there we would have had a perfect family Christmas. The fact I went away for Christmas, took his unborn baby away from him for Christmas, was something I was still being chastised for in April.

As it was, my Christmas last year was surreal. Whenever I visit my friends in Oxfordshire, I feel like I've been teleported to a different planet where the usual problems don't matter. One night there, and all of a sudden my shoulders go back down to shoulder level rather than being bunched up about my ears. To be there over Christmas was a dream. Everything was so laid back; we watched movies with our feet up on the reclining sofa whilst eating party food, visited family, went to the cinema on Boxing Day. Christmas dinner was something everyone played a part in preparing, in between watching the Grinch and listening to carols. I almost forgot what a mess my life was in, and what I would be returning to the day after Boxing Day.

Now, looking back at that time, it feels like I'm talking about someone else. It all seems so strange, to have been in such an awful position, to have been so scared and felt so alone and confused. I felt like that a lot during my pregnancy and the first few months of S's life; it was a very trying time for me.

This Christmas though, my life could not be more different. S and I were invited to Oxfordshire again for Christmas, and I was very tempted to accept the invitation; except I don't think my mother would ever have spoken to me again! Instead, S and I are entertaining my mother and sister A for Christmas dinner. I have all the things I didn't have this time last year. I have the world's most beautiful, amazing daughter (biased? Me?) who will have no understanding of what Christmas is, but will no doubt enjoy unwrapping presents and being spoilt rotten by friends and family alike. I have an awesome, supportive boyfriend who will happily allow S to spend an hour clawing at his face if it'll make her happy. I have a home that, thanks to my fantastic brother (whose praises I will never stop singing), is now the sort of place I want to invite people to visit. We're having people over to visit throughout the festive period, and although that means I'll need to actually tidy up at some point, I'm really looking forward to it. I have the most wonderful, supportive friends around me who have proved their worth time and time again.

S&I last week

If you'd told me last Christmas, "don't worry, next Christmas will be a lot better." I would not have believed you. Stuck in the middle of it all, I could see no way out and felt thoroughly miserable about it all. I had nowhere to live, a turbulent relationship with the father of my unborn child, little support, no money. I spent most of my time around the festive period alone in my room in a shared house, drinking soup and wondering what the hell I was going to do. Now there is rarely a day I don't see someone I love and am happy to have around. My evenings are spent with HYM or wondering how the hell I'm going to wrap all these presents before Christmas morning (or how the hell I'm going to get S to actually go to sleep). I still have no money, but who needs money when you have what I have. Money can't buy this.

And now I've made you all gag at the sick-inducing schmaltz of it all, I'm off to cuddle my little girl and my handsome young man. Merry Christmas!

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Things They Don't Tell You About Motherhood.

Following on from my last two posts on things you’re not told about pregnancy and childbirth, this post is all about the things they don’t warn you about afterwards: both immediately after the birth, and generally in motherhood.

This is what "utterly shell shocked" looks like.

In the hospital:

• Babies tend to sleep a lot for their first 24 hours, and don’t really need any feeding or much of anything else. Take advantage and get your head down.
• One major thing a few people said to me was that you don’t automatically feel a heady rush of love for your baby as soon as it is born. That can take days, weeks, even months. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad mother. Rachel Cusk wrote a good book about this sort of thing called A Life's Work.
• Something nobody can ever prepare you for, and a lot of people don’t mention, is the complete and utter shock. Personally, I was shell-shocked for a good couple of months after S was born, and thought I must have something wrong with me. Turns out, the only thing wrong was that I’d just given birth five weeks early and was in shock. Who knew. Certainly not her father, but that’s a whole other blog post.
• The longer you spend on the postnatal ward, the more different opinions you will hear presented to you as fact. It is worth remembering here that midwives and health visitors are mere mortals the same as everyone else and ultimately in the end, it’s your baby, and you know best. Unless you’re planning to hang baby out the window by his toes, in which case listen to the midwives.
• The postnatal ward is often very busy and horribly understaffed. This can mean that if you need help with something, you need to assert yourself to get it. Don’t be afraid to push your buzzer to get a maternity assistant or midwife to help you with something.
• When you go to the ward, you hear all the babies screaming and think there is no chance you will get any rest here. My experience, and that of several people I've spoken to, is that you suddenly develop an ability to fall asleep very quickly, and to sleep through all the noise and the lights being on, but the minute your baby stirs, you wake up.
• While you are on the ward, don’t feel that your baby must spend all non-feeding or changing time in its little plastic fish bowl. Certainly when I was in hospital, I initially felt a bit like “you’ve played with it, now put it away.” It took me a while to realise S was my baby, and I could just sit and hold her if I wanted to. In fact, after one of the NICU nurses told me it would be beneficial for S to be stripped to her nappy and put down my top, I had her like that as much as possible for as long as possible. I’m sure that did a lot to help both of us through a fairly difficult time. (Also it’s pretty funny when the ward staff come in to check on you and look down into the fish bowl before squeaking, “where’s your baby?!”)

Your body:

• When you are pregnant, your abdominal muscles can sometimes split in order to allow your belly to expand. You know sometimes you see women with a little lump above their belly button? That's a little hernia. A lot of the time, you give birth and your muscles knit themselves back together and everything is peachy. Sometimes they don't knit back together quite so quickly, and you can find yourself in a position, 3 months post partum, with a gap as wide as 4 fingers between your muscles. That tends to hurt when you lift things. You will probably need physio to sort it out, otherwise it will just get worse and worse. There are some truly horrific photos on the internet of women who can fit their entire fist between their abdominals. Not pretty.
• Once you've given birth, your uterus sets about shrinking itself back down to how it used to be before. It feels like period pains. If you breastfeed, the first few times you feed your baby will cause your uterus to contract more and it will hurt. It hurts for some more than for others. For me, the first few times I fed S I wondered whether perhaps part of the placenta was still in there and needed to come out.
• Listen to the midwives. Do your pelvic floor exercises. You can never do too many.
• Even if you have had a C-section rather than natural birth, you will still get lochia. What is lochia, I hear you ask (I heard myself ask it in the hospital) – it’s another thing nobody tells you about beforehand. It’s bleeding. There will be a lot of it, and it will go on for a long time. You can buy maternity pads specifically for this job; they are big and unattractive, but they do the job and are more heavy duty than your standard pad. Also, one thing I wish I’d thought of in hospital – in an emergency, a nappy can double as a maternity pad (obviously not done up!)
• Remember in the pregnancy post, where I said your pelvis can go a bit squiffy? Well sometimes after you've given birth, it sticks itself back together a bit crookedly, and you get a pain between your legs when you do random things like take a step to the left too quickly or kick something. You can go to a physio and get it put right, though - but while they're fixing it, it can feel a lot like they're just trying to break your pelvis.
• When your milk comes in, it feels like someone has sneaked in and injected concrete into your boobs. They swell about 6 cup sizes, and feel solid, hot and painful. It eases eventually. Also one very important point here: even if you have decided not to breastfeed, your milk will still come in. It’s important that you don’t try to express any off in an attempt to alleviate the pain, as that will just make your body think someone is drinking the milk, and it needs to produce more.
• Be prepared for your hair to start falling out. Not going bald, just all the hair your body kept hold of while you were pregnant will start to deposit itself all over your house. And wrap itself around your baby’s fingers. It’s normal. Don’t worry about it unless you genuinely do start to look a bit thin on top. And try to check baby’s fingers for a build-up every day or so.
• While you were pregnant your body had to amend your metabolic rate to allow for the fact you needed more calories. Once the baby is born, your body resets itself, and tries to figure out how many calories you need to live on a day to day basis. In some people, this can change dramatically. I am one of the lucky ones, and when my body reset itself I ended up losing weight. For a lot of people, it can go the other way, and they find it very hard to lose their pregnancy weight.
• Related to the previous point: your body might well go back to the same weight it was before, but it will most probably never be the same shape. Your fat redistributes itself in different places, and a lot of women find they are never again comfortable in their pre-pregnancy clothes. A few people have commented that their body didn’t go back to feeling like their own for quite some time, especially if they were breastfeeding.
• When it comes to losing pregnancy weight, try not to bend under pressure. One mantra I learned from a Davina McCall dvd is: “9 months on, 9 months off.” Don’t even go near your pre-pregnancy clothes before your baby is 9 months old. It will just depress you.
• Whether you breastfeed or not, it’s the pregnancy hormones that will ruin your boobs. And when I say ruin… imagine two battered Tesco carrier bags, half-filled with wet sand.

Other stuff:

• If you decide not to breastfeed, be prepared to feel judged. If not in hospital, certainly when you are out and about. There is a lot of pressure to breastfeed these days, and people do seem to sit in judgement of a woman producing a bottle of formula from her changing bag. I’ve known people who would avoid feeding their baby a bottle in public because they felt they were being stared at. Then again, if you flop your boobs out to feed your baby, they also stare – you can’t really win with this one I’m afraid.
• People you don’t know will stop in the street and chat to you about your child as if they’ve known you for years. They will also offer advice. Lots of it. You will be judged for everything you do, everything you don’t do, and everything you consider doing. People who don’t even know you will tell you exactly what you are doing wrong.
• Once you have your baby, and have gotten over the initial trauma, you find you have a ridiculous level of empathy you never realised existed, for all other women going through pregnancy and childbirth.
• Motherhood also makes you stupidly paranoid. You’ve probably sat and watched TV shows about women who worry too much about their children and wrap them in cotton wool and thought, “oh how terrible, I’d never do that” – but when you have your own, it’s really, really difficult not to. I check S to ensure she is breathing approximately 50 times every single night. And then there’s the paranoia over whether they are warm enough, cool enough, crying because they’re in pain or just because they’re a baby, are you giving them too much medicine or not enough, should you call the doctor or is it just a little cold. When your baby is actually ill – even if it’s only a bit of a temperature or a cold, it is terrifying in a way you cannot imagine until it happens. Nothing prepares you for the horrible thoughts that rush through your brain when your baby does something as simple as sleep a little longer or a little deeper than you expected.
• Always check the back of your top (and your shoulders, and your sides, and your knees) for milky sick before leaving the house. Similarly, try to avoid wearing black. Your best option is a top with a pattern that will disguise the sick patches because by day 3, you will be so over changing your clothes every time you get puked on.
• It sounds strange, but for me becoming a mother has given me a mental strength I didn’t think was possible. I push myself more when exercising now; where previously I might have stopped because it hurt, now I know it really doesn’t hurt, and I can deal with a lot more. This also transfers into everyday life: things that would have stopped me in my tracks and ground me down don’t tend to bother me so much. Don’t get me wrong, I still get upset, but I bounce back a lot more quickly and have a much stronger faith in myself and my abilities. After all, I have successfully grown and given birth to a human being with arms and legs and eyes and a head and everything. Turns out I’m pretty awesome. (I am aware that sounds really daft, but just you wait until you are staring your progeny in the face. You’ll understand it then)
• Think you’re tired now? Pah! You do not know what tired is. Come back when your baby is 2 months old and we’ll discuss it then. You will get to a point where you are able to function almost perfectly normally on as little as 2 disjointed hours of sleep a night. You will consider it a “good” night if you only wake up four times. You will become intimately familiar with the overnight TV schedules, and you will forget the word for “cheese.” Try to think of it as character building. Once you just accept that a good, 8-hour night’s sleep is a thing of the past, you will feel better. And you will still be capable of playing peek-a-boo and laughing with your baby as if you’re perfectly well rested.
• Are you squeamish? Not any more, you’re not. Once your baby has been sick on you a few hundred times, and you’ve dealt with your first couple of poonamis, you just sort of become immune to it.
• Babies get baby acne. Your baby has been in your belly, a sterile environment, for 9 months. Now all of a sudden she’s out here in the big wide world and exposed to all these germs and air and things. As far as I know, all babies go through a week or so where they get lots of little spots on their faces. I didn’t know this though, until it happened to S and the health visitor told me not to worry about it. Don’t be tempted to pick the spots though (who would?) as babies’ skin scars very easily and it could cause lasting damage. They clear up on their own after a week or so.
• You will have at least one moment in your child’s first few months where you just want to scream at them, “what is the matter! Why are you crying! Tell me how to fix this damn you!!” it doesn’t make you a terrible person, it makes you a human. Just so long as you don’t actually scream at them. Usually just having the thought is enough to make you check yourself, and then they invariably look at you or smile, or do something cute, and you forget there was ever a problem.
• Before you have a child, you know in a sort of abstract way that your life will change, but nothing prepares you for the utter carnage that is your first few weeks at home with a newborn. There is no point in my even trying to tell you how different things will be, because you will not comprehend it until it happens. When it does, think back to this post and remember how I tried to warn you.

This post is very long, and I’ve probably still missed off an awful lot of things that would be useful for a new mum to know. If you have anything to add, please feel free to do so.

While I was writing these posts, I came across a lot of information about breastfeeding. So much, in fact, that there will be another post tomorrow about all the things they don’t tell you about breastfeeding.


This post is part of a group of Things They Don't Tell You About... posts. The others are:

Things They Don't Tell You About Pregnancy
Things They Don't Tell You About Childbirth
Things They Don't Tell You About Breastfeeding
Things They Don't Tell You About Babies

Thank you for reading! If you have enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends using the buttons below!

Things They Don't Tell You About Childbirth

Following on from yesterday’s post, I have been compiling a list of things “they” don’t tell you about childbirth. If you are of a nervous disposition, or a man, you may wish to skip this blog post. The world won’t think any less of you for it.

• One Born Every Minute is a good show, but they only air about 10% of the births they film - the producers openly admit that the majority of births on a day-to-day basis are too boring to bother with. When they put their show together, they're looking to make entertaining TV, not a realistic portrayal of what most births look like.

• They don’t always tell you what’s going on. Sometimes they make notes and busy themselves around you, and you’ve no clue what they’re doing.

• Sometimes if you’re overdue and the doctors are impatient for you to give birth, for whatever reason, they will call you in for a “sweep.” There’s no nice way of putting this: they put their hand inside of you and sweep their fingers across the opening of your uterus, in the hope they will irritate it into doing something.

• Labour hurts, but it’s bearable. Being induced hurts more, but it’s also bearable. For the most part. That said, always try to avoid being induced if you possibly can. It’s the difference between a gradual build up into a lot of pain, and the sudden onset of a lot of pain.

• One thing I wasn't prepared for was the amount of blood when my waters broke, both at the time and in the hours between that and giving birth. I was expecting, well, water. But there was a lot of blood. It wasn't very pretty.

• When your waters break, it’s not like someone just empties a bottle of water and it’s over. There are “front” waters and “back” waters and all sorts of other things, which basically means you might have a massive gush, but you’re also likely to just have a constant trickle for a good few hours. Also, your waters might not break at all. Sometimes the midwife/doctor will break them for you when it becomes clear they’re not going on their own. Some babies are born "in the caul" - where the amniotic sac has not been broken during birth. This is very rare though.

• One thing I didn’t realise, is that they put you in a room with one of those gym balls and a bed, and just sort of leave you to it. I mean, you can be left in that room for a couple of hours at a time between visits. Turns out it might be the biggest thing going on in your life, but to them it’s just another day at the office. Look on the bright side: if they're not hanging around, they aren’t worried about you!

• There tends to be a lot of pressure not to have pain relief. I’ve heard women comparing notes, boasting how far they got before they had any pain relief. Everyone is different; everyone’s pain threshold is different. When your child is 18, nobody will remember whether you had every drug available to you or not.

• That said, a couple of people have told me they have suffered ongoing back problems from having an epidural.

• Furthermore, I have been told bad things about Pethidine: specifically, that it is not an adequate pain killer, it makes the baby drowsy for the next day or so, and that often women who have been given it don’t remember holding their baby for the first time. I have no personal experience of it though, and everyone is different with these things. My advice if you're considering it, would be to ask someone whose opinion you trust: your midwife, a friend, the GP.

• When you get to the bit between "ouch these contractions quite hurt" and "owwwww push push push" you are sometimes sick. Perhaps people already know this, but I didn't, and as I sat on the toilet whilst puking into a bowl the midwife was holding, and having a rather painful contraction, I thought perhaps there was something wrong. The midwife laughed and said, "no, it's just labour." Nice.

• Not pushing is harder than pushing. A lot harder. I remember a stage in my labour where they lay me on my side and told me to “just not push” for a while. My response was “I don’t understand how to not push, my body is just doing it!”

• After about the fifth time, you just accept that the midwife can just fit her hand in there without assistance, and that it's probably a good thing, considering what is to come. You lose all ladylike modesty and just nod when a new person comes into the room and wants to have a root around up there.

• When the baby’s head is coming out, it stings your wee hole. You have to just suck it up, and carry on pushing – but that area can sting and feel bruised for weeks afterwards.

• One friend said to me, “don’t eat anything solid for the last few days of pregnancy, unless the baby is not the only thing you want to push out!” It’s true; while your body is busy trying to push a baby out of one hole, sometimes it pushes other things out of other holes. Just keep reminding yourself that midwives deal with this all day, every day, and won’t think you’re disgusting. They probably won’t even mention it.

• After you give birth to the baby, you have to give birth to the placenta. And there's not much to look forward to where that one is concerned. Unless you are interested to see what has been providing sustenance for your baby for the past 9 months. Mine looked like a great big tray of fresh liver, and the people in the room did indeed spend a fair amount of time admiring it.

• There is a way to put a "clip" on the baby's head, while it is still inside of you, so that they can monitor its heart beat. I have no idea how, and it freaked me out more than slightly, but when they are born you can't tell it was ever there. Magic.

• Sometimes, because they have been squeezed out along the birth canal, babies can have a fairly funny-shaped head. This is why babies’ skull bones are not fused together until they are a little older. Trust me: they go back to normal head-shape eventually.

• When it’s all finished, and you’re holding your little bundle of joy, don’t be alarmed to look up and realise the room looks like a crime scene. Birth is messy. A lot more messy than any TV show, even One Born Every Minute, would ever have you believe.

• Once you’ve given birth, if there are any tears or stitches involved, a warm salt bath can apparently be amazingly soothing for them. I’ve no personal experience of this, but several people have told me.

• If you end up having to have an emergency C-Section, I’m told there is little more terrifying in life. By the time they decide a C-Section is the only course of action, the baby can often be in distress, and this means they don’t always have time to explain to you what is going on. I have also spoken to someone who works in theatres though, who quoted me a ridiculously short time for how long it took them from the woman being on the labour ward to them having her in theatre and the baby out. She was very pleased with that one, and rightly so too.

• No matter what anyone tells you is right or wrong, possible or impossible, every single pregnancy and birth are different. Nobody can tell you that your experience was easier or worse than theirs, or that you should have done this or that differently. If they try to, walk away.

• One thing I found interesting while researching this post is that all women in the EU have the right to choose where and how they give birth. That doesn’t just mean the option to have a home birth, but about what goes on in a hospital birth too, whether they want a C-Section etc. You can find out more from Freedom for Birth here. 

This post is part of a group of Things They Don't Tell You About... posts. The others are:

Things They Don't Tell You About Pregnancy
Things They Don't Tell You About Breastfeeding
Things They Don't Tell You About Motherhood
Things They Don't Tell You About Babies

Thank you for reading! If you have enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends using the buttons below!

Things They Don't Tell You About Pregnancy

The list of things "they" don't tell you about pregnancy, childhood and motherhood is possibly the longest list in history. I'm fairly sure that if a lot of those things were taught in schools, we wouldn't have a teenage pregnancy epidemic because teenage girls would be too grossed out at the thought of such delights as piles, accidental peeing and being covered head to toe in milky vomit.

This started off as a bit of a jokey post, but as I wrote it, and asked friends for their input, it became clear that actually there are a good few things it would be really handy to know about. In fact, the list of “things” got so long, it’s too big for one post so I’ve broken it down into three. Today’s post therefore is a list of things that might be handy to know about pregnancy:

• Relaxin: it’s a hormone that does what it says on the tin: it sets about making your bones and joints more flexible, so as to allow your pelvis to widen for the baby to come out. Sometimes it does this a little too enthusiastically, and your pelvis goes a bit wobbly. For me, this meant wearing a large, white, elasticated belt around my hips whenever I was walking any distance. For others, it means quite a lot more pain and discomfort, possibly even crutches or a wheelchair. Ever seen anyone on a soap dealing with this? No, of course not. It’s not glamorous enough, just bloody annoying.
• As well as causing all the hip problems, relaxin also causes all your other joints to relax. This can cause the bones and muscles in your feet to spread out, and your feet to grow. It can also mean your oesophagus relaxes, and you get acid reflux. A lot.
• Shhh… don’t tell anyone, but the pregnancy glow is a big, fat, ugly myth. I spent the first 6 months of my pregnancy waiting for it to kick in, before realising it probably wasn’t coming.
• Bleeding and leaking fluid: sometimes, this just happens. When it does, it freaks you out and causes massive panic. Then you speak to the people in the know and they invariably say "oh yeah, don't worry about that!" (NB. if you are pregnant and have this, still speak to the people in the know. Don't take my word for anything; I'm far from an expert in these things)
• You can no longer trust your own mind. I don't know about anyone else, but my hormones were largely all over the shop from one day to the next, and I found in the end that I just didn't really trust myself to make any proper decisions.
• That said, any time you are even vaguely emotional, people will pull a “knowing” face and blame it on your hormones – even if you are angry or upset for a valid reason.
• Say goodbye to a decent night's sleep. I've not slept more than about 4 hours at a time since the middle of my pregnancy. The good news is, you just get used to it after a while. And then when you’ve had the baby and you don’t need to pee every five minutes, you get up with the baby instead. And then sometimes, the baby is asleep but you just wake up because you’re used to it.
• Your immune system is lower while you are pregnant, which means you are more prone to coughs and colds. And there is hardly any medication you can take for them. It’s basically just paracetamol. If in doubt, assume you can’t take it. Buy lots of tissues.
• When you are pregnant, people think it’s ok to just come up and touch your belly. Even people you don’t know terribly well. It’s also open season on commenting on your size.
• If you go overdue, the world and his wife will have only one greeting each time they see you: “not had it yet then?” Which is exactly what you don’t need to hear, when it’s the first thing you think every time you wake up, and you’d really rather have had it by now yourself.
• A lot of women really don’t enjoy pregnancy, for whatever reason. It doesn’t make them bad people. Society dictates that we should all be perfectly calm and happy and glowing throughout, and people get confused when that’s not the case. Quite often their confusion manifests itself in assumptions about your suitability as a mother. Ignore them, they are idiots.
• One thing a friend said to me fairly early on: if it can go wrong in your body, now’s the time it will go wrong. Prepare for everything to cease usual functioning.
• A lot of pregnant women have bleeding gums. And not just “oh what’s that on my toothbrush there” but proper massacre in the sink, as one lady put it.
• You will become very forgetful. Baby Brain is real. And it only gets worse. My daughter is now 6 months old and I regularly miss something on a dvd I’m watching because I forgot to pay attention; I rewind it to watch again, only to find I’ve forgotten to pay attention again. Eventually I just give up!
• Babies get hiccups before they are born. It feels weird.
• For me, pregnancy improved my body image to no end. Having spent my entire adult life worrying about wearing clothes that might be too tight and show my gut, I now relished the fact I was supposed to have a big belly, and wore lots of figure-hugging tops.
• Your belly will most probably get pretty hairy. It’s normal.
• Personally, I had some very strange dreams while I was pregnant. The one that really springs to mind was one night when I dreamed the baby was kicking, and managed to split my stomach and kick its way right out of me. Very disturbing.
• Early on in pregnancy, my GP told me that she was sure pregnancy hormones just kick in and make you go all chilled out and happy at a certain point. I thought she was mental, but suddenly, when I got to 23 weeks, I found that I could not find a shit to give about a lot of things. Even facing the horrible stresses I faced, I was still relatively calm. If I hadn’t been under such ridiculous stress, I could quite probably have been comatose.

I've probably missed a fair few points here; feel free to leave comments below with your own experiences.

This post is part of a group of Things They Don't Tell You About... posts. The others are:

Things They Don't Tell You About Childbirth

Things They Don't Tell You About Breastfeeding
Things They Don't Tell You About Motherhood
Things They Don't Tell You About Babies

Thank you for reading! If you have enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends using the buttons below!