When you first find out that you are pregnant there are any number of people wanting to impart their knowledge and experiences on you, from your mother to the lady who sits next to you on the jubilee line to Waterloo. Some advice will be helpful, some confusing and some just damn right strange! There are a few things that seem to slip between the cracks though, truths that are never told. So here are a few things that I have learnt so far...
You will probably not sleep for the last few months of your pregnancy, this could be due to any number of factors. Heartburn, jumping legs, an overexcited baby bouncing around in your belly or just the fact that you are so big and uncomfortable and fed up!
A hot bath will not help with your contractions, they are excruciating. The only thing that will help is drugs and lots of them. I have a lot of admiration for mothers that choose a natural childbirth and even more admiration for mothers that have no choice.
Yes there is a very high possibility that you will poo whist giving birth but trust me by the time you get to the pushing part you will no longer mind nor care. In fact by the time I got to that stage the hospital could have marched a brass band through my delivery suite and I wouldn't have batted an eyelid, I just wanted her out!!!
That once you have gone through 25 hours of labour everyone will leave you holding the baby to go home and sleep. Maternity wards are the noisy places on earth where resting is impossible. Even if you are luckily enough to have a sleepy baby, there will always be the woman in the next bed who is not so lucky. Book a private room if you can, it would be worth every single penny!
Explosive poo, nobody told me about this and yet it is a common occurrence! Take plenty of nappies, wipes, and spare clothes with you wherever you go because when it happens and trust me it will happen, it will be everywhere. Down their legs, up their back, across their stomach, you name it and it will have poo on it...yuck!
There isn't a stain removal product on earth that can get out the stains that are produced as a result of babies food going in or coming out, trust me I have tried pretty much all of them.
That a baby will be born with the ability to vomit, wee and poo simultaneously and all over you and that BT will choose that exact moment to call trying to sell you some long distance call plan or wanting your comments on their customer service. Another phone bites the dust!
That your baby will vomit directly into your mouth at least once in the first few months. That is an experience that will never leave you, no matter how hard you try to block it out!
There are many more that I could mention but my aim is not to frighten, merely prepare any potential mothers, pass on my useful knowledge and experiences! It's like a rite of passage, once you have had the life altering experience of pushing a person out of you nothing is sacred anymore and everything is up for discussion.
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