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The
Yummy Mummy’s
Survival Guide
Liz Fraser
For Harry
OK, I know it’s not much, and you’ve read it already at least once, but it’s the gesture that counts. Maybe you could use it to stop the spare room door from banging when the window’s open? Oh, and while you’re in there, is there any chance you could have a quick look at my laptop—it’s gone funny again. Dinner at 6? Love you xx.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
A small note to begin with, just in case you wanted to know
What is a Yummy Mummy?
PART ONE Before It All Starts
PART TWO Pregnancy—The Early Days…
PART THREE The Middle Bit
PART FOUR Nearing the End
PART FIVE The Birth
PART SIX A Yummy Mummy is Born
PART SEVEN Your First Few Months
PART EIGHT The First Year
PART NINE You
PART TEN Baby Things
PART ELEVEN Life With Your Baby
PART TWELVE New Relationships
PART THIRTEEN Going Back to Work
And Finally…
Details of Stockists, Services, Manufacturers, Organisations
Index
Acknowledgements
About The Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
A small note to begin with, just in case you wanted to know
Here’s the only breathing exercise in this book: I am not a perfect mum (sharp intake of breath). In fact, I have never met a perfect mum (and another), and the chances are fairly high that you won’t turn out to be faultless in every way either (and, exhale). Despite our best efforts at self-improvement, domestic perfection and bum-firming, we are all real, faulty women, and we all come with a certain amount of rubbish-Mum-ness attached. And thank goodness for that, because otherwise it would all be hideously boring, and we’d have nothing to moan about.
My own route into motherhood was fast and furious: while my more sensible university peers went off to make money by getting fast-tracked into one glamorous, exciting career or another, I threw my science degree in the ‘I have no idea what to do with you’ bin, asked Mr Right to marry me (he said yes, thank goodness), and I found myself on my own fast-track to maternity clothes a year later, at the grand old age of 23.
Gulp.
And then the trouble started: the dreary, mumsy parenting books available to me left me, without exception, feeling like a highly unattractive, undesirable, lardy has-been, condemned to a life of grime, grudge and goo. According to these books, I would spend the rest of my days wearing shapeless, stained clothes and sharing vomit and poo stories with other lardy have-beens. My brain would be locked away in a secure vault to which I would be given the key some twenty or so years later.
Oh help! What had I done? Where were the beautiful, funny, appealing books about motherhood, which would treat me like a thinking woman complete with faults, worries and a shoe obsession, instead of like an impossibly perfect mother? Why couldn’t I find a stylish book about motherhood, which I wouldn’t have to hide behind a copy of In Style on my way to work, and which would tell me how my life would change in the coming year?
And that’s where the idea for this book started: I would write it myself.
Alas with a new baby, a sizeable streak of laziness and a Blockbuster video down the road, I didn’t get round to it, and it was soon forgotten, along with a million other ‘brilliant ideas’ I had dreamt up while making playdough sausages.
But now, eight years and three children later, I am coming under increasingly heavy fire from a barrage of questions about pregnancy and motherhood, launched at me by those same old friends, who are finally coming to join me down in the playground. They want honest, practical, relevant information about how to do the Yummy Mummy thing, and still keep their bodies, brains, wardrobes and lives in stylish order, and they seem to think I know…
In a bid to get some peace and quiet, I have written down everything I have learned about pregnancy and what you may experience in the first year of becoming a mother, in the most unpatronising, honest, unfrumpy way I can. Yummy Mummies have complicated, ever-changing lives, and we are required to glide seamlessly between different moods and personalities at the drop of this season’s must-have headgear. To reflect this, I’ve written this book in several different moods, which you can turn to as you need them. You will also find extracts from my diaries, which should cheer you up and offer plenty of reassurance, and there are also strings of pearls of maternal wisdom from gorgeous Yummy Mummies, to whom I aspire daily.
The only thing I ask of you, dear, gorgeous reader, is that you are able to laugh at yourself. The key to surviving motherhood is to have a wicked sense of humour, and never to take yourself too seriously. And that’s it. Enjoy it, take it with a pinch of salt where required, and I hope that some of this helps!
What is a Yummy Mummy?
It’s probably best that we get this rather crucial question answered before we go any further, just so that we are all on the same wavelength.
There are loads of different definitions being bandied about these days, so I shall give my own one here, and refer to it throughout the book when I talk about Yummy Mummies.
Yummy Mummy, n.
A mother, of any age, who does not identify with the traditional, dowdy image of motherhood. While she knows her Gap from her Gucci, she is just as happy with a charity shop bargain as an occasional, very necessary splurge, and doesn’t want to give up on trying to look lovely just because she is a mother.
A Yummy Mummy is a skilled all-rounder: she tries to keep fit and healthy, loves spending time with her children, knows it’s OK to break down and cry and (almost) never forgets to cleanse and moisturise. She can cook, amuse a baby and make work phone calls at the same time but, never one to take herself too seriously, she can laugh when it all goes wrong. A Yummy Mummy tries not to let being a good, loving mother utterly compromise her personal style and outside interests, and is always there to help her friends when they need her. Often juggling family and a job, she finds being both a mother and an independent woman very hard at times, but tries her best to make it work for her family, and for herself.
A Yummy Mummy is the ultimate modern woman.
PART ONE Before It All Starts
Prepare, Prepare: What You Should Definitely Do Before Getting Pregnant (or what you should have done months ago, but could start now)
Growing a baby is like any other form of DIY: preparation is key. How you react to this first section depends entirely on your current situation (and on your sense of humour). If you are not pregnant yet, and you bought this book because you are somewhat curious about what lies around the next Big Corner, or you hope you might get pregnant soon, this is very good news: you still have a few months to play with before the big OFF, and there’s plenty of opportunity to lay down some solid foundations.
If your bun is already rising in the oven, and you are merrily cruising down the road to Yummy Mummyhood, then some of what you read may sound a tad gloomy and depressing, and you’ll be kicking yourself every paragraph or so. (As maternal luck would have it, one of the manoeuvres pregnant women can still do is kick themselves. Where’s the justice?) Please try not to get too cross, and take heart from the fact that much of this preparation is never done by millions of perfectly gorgeous and healthy mothers every year.
For everyone else, like me, here are some things which, if you do them for about six months before you become pregnant, should reward you with an easier and healthier pregnancy, and will make life after the birth a lot less, errr, wobbly.
1. Get Fit
As the perfectly formed people at Nike tell us, JUST DO IT. Even bold, capitals, italics and a forceful-looking font don’t convey the importance of this Top Tip. Obviously, if you’ve never seen a pair of trainers before, then now is not a good time to start marathon running. But, being the self-respecting woman that you are, you probably look after your body well, and are reasonably fit already. This is excellent news, and a great position to start from.
Pregnancy plays the most havoc with your stomach, so if you can get your abs strong and toned before your pregnancy, you’ll carry the baby better and you will get back into shape much more easily. I do speak from experience here: I was least fit before my first baby, and have become fitter and stronger in between each of the others. (Something to do with a growing fear that I’ve been lucky so far, and everything is about to fall apart and flab out all over the place!) My body coped and recovered much better the stronger my tummy muscles were before I started expanding, and it made getting back into some decent clothes much easier. Pain, gain, blah, blah.
Babies get very heavy towards the end, and having strong legs helps with the whole ‘lugging yourself up flights of stairs’ problem. The same goes for your back: strong back muscles will make carrying the baby much easier and less painful.
Something else to start toning up is your pelvic floor muscles. Pelvic what? Ha! Now we’re really getting somewhere. Another of those ‘never heard of them before I was pregnant; will think of them for the rest of my life afterwards’ things, your pelvic floor muscles are the ones which allow you to stop weeing halfway through weeing, if you see what I mean. In a nutshell, they are completely trashed when you give birth, and unless you sit at your desk squeezing them in and holding for a count of three while your computer re-boots, you will never get on a trampoline again without incontinence pants. And Agent Provocateur don’t make those, in case you’re wondering…Strengthen your pelvic floors now, and you’ll be able to jog, jump and sneeze while your best undies stay Martini-dry.
2. Clean Yourself Out
If you’ve ever tried to detox then you’ll know what a joyous, exciting time you’re in for, but, equally, you will know how beneficial it can be. Your baby is going to grow inside you, and if you’re clogged up with toxins then your baby will probably clog up pretty soon too, because anything which is in your blood will get into your growing baby’s blood too. It takes a while to flush all the poisons out of your system, so starting the clean-up well before you become pregnant is a good idea.
Stop smoking. Yummy Mummies don’t smoke.
Cut down on coffee. Coffee may taste great and be served in rather nice cafés absolutely everywhere, but it’s still a strong stimulant, and there has been talk that it doesn’t do growing babies much good. This may be why many women feel sick at the very smell of coffee in the early weeks. Clever old biology. The same goes for tea, if you can bear to give that up as well, but as with all things, use your head: the odd cup is almost certainly fine, especially if it cheers you up.
Drink less alcohol. (Unless you drink tons, in which case, drink a lot less.) Pickled babies are not cool or Yummy at all.
Drugs. Don’t really need to say it, do I? You’re intelligent—you work it out.
Don’t panic if you haven’t done any of this, and you are several months down the line already: you are almost certainly in the majority, but starting now is better than not bothering at all.
3. Become a Health Freak
Your growing baby is entirely selfish, and will have no concern for your wellbeing at all. It will drain all the goodness out of your body, leaving you with the dregs, the cheeky young thing. Because pregnancy puts such a huge strain on your body, the healthier you are before you start, the better you will feel, the better your chances of having a healthy, strong baby, and the more quickly you’ll recover afterwards. And it’s after the baby is born that you need more reserves and stamina than ever…So, eat tons of fresh fruit and veg, up the iron intake (it makes you less tired), drink lots of water, get plenty of fresh air and all that other healthy stuff you know about already. You won’t regret it.
4. Take Folic Acid
‘Top Scientists’ have found very good evidence that taking 400mg of this stuff for the first three months of pregnancy can significantly reduce the risk of your baby developing spina bifida. They now recommend that you get your levels up before you’re pregnant, and that you take it throughout your pregnancy. Not a lot to ask really.
5. Take a Special Multivitamin
Only take a multivitamin which is specifically designed for pregnancy. Certain vitamins are potentially harmful to the foetus if levels get too high, and the pregnancy multivits have just the right amount of everything. Bless those Top Scientists.
Some Good News
One of the best things about getting pregnant for the first time is that it shocks you into being more healthy almost overnight, and once you’ve learned some new habits, and have managed to give up the three vodka and tonics and a kebab on the way home from work, you might just hang on to them for the rest of your life. It may feel like a brutal change of diet and lifestyle to start with, but there are great benefits. There’s a good reason why pregnant ladies are said to ‘glow’ halfway through the pregnancy—anyone who pays as much careful attention to eating well and avoiding all toxins would glow after a couple of months! See your clean-up act as the best beauty routine ever, and it might not feel so hard. In fact, for many of you it won’t be hard at all, as your new body just doesn’t feel like ingesting tons of toxins every day. Anyway, you’ll be back on the double tall lattes before your baby can say ‘Mummy, are you sure you wouldn’t rather have an organic peppermint tea?’
Common Concerns of Future Yummy Mummies
This section is for you if you have ever worried about what it might be like to become a MOTHER (in other words, if you’re just like every woman I’ve ever met). Oh, how we ladies love to worry! The list of concerns and questions all future Yummy Mummies carry around in their heads is breathtaking, and it makes one fret for the future of the human race: will anything make all you potentially fantastic mothers take the plunge and actually procreate? Will any reassuring words overcome your dread of turning into a fat, boring Frumpy Mummy, who fails miserably at every aspect of baby care, and who never sees the inside of a fancy restaurant again?
I seem to spend half of my free time pacifying freaked-out childless friends who are terrified of committing to their perceived life of drudgery, lard and frumpiness. ‘Hang on!’ I cry. ‘Are you saying I’m lardy and frumpy? Did I know what I was doing before I started? Do I know now?’ No, no and no.
However, I have learned quite a few things about what it feels like to become a Yummy Mummy, and I’ll do my best to ease at least some of the stress. Where I fail, watching anything with Paul Bettany in it should relieve any furrowed brows.
Here are some of the most common worries my friends seem to have, and some mildly helpful advice:
I don’t feel very maternal—maybe I’ll be an awful mother
This is a disaster. You will never be a good mother, and you should book in for a hysterectomy immediately. You probably shouldn’t have pets either. Or houseplants.
I’m lying, of course: very few women feel very maternal before they have a baby, and most go on to become fantastic mums. (Many don’t even feel that maternal after the birth, but it’s not something people like to talk about. I like to talk about it a lot, and so I do in Part Five).
It’s not even clear what feeling ‘maternal’ means, anyway. In a similar way to how much libido a woman has, so women have varying degrees of maternal urges, and there’s nothing to say that you should be consumed with the desire to foster every child on the planet before having a baby yourself.
‘Feeling Maternal’ could mean any, or none, of the following:
Realising that babies and children exist.
Being able to sit in the same room as a child without feeling annoyed or put off your food.
Finding children quite cute.
Saying ‘Ahhhhhhh’ when you watch a nappy advert.
Starting to cry at the mere mention that somebody you know, or even somebody you don’t know, has had a baby.
Buying baby clothes when you haven’t even found a prospective father yet (and this is a sure-fire way never to find one, unless you keep it very secret).
Genuinely liking the smell of newborn babies, rather than just saying you do.
Being able to wipe somebody else’s child’s snotty nose without retching (I still haven’t reached this point yet).
Wherever you sit on this scale before you have a baby, you will almost certainly sit somewhere else afterwards, and not necessarily at the more maternal end. I didn’t feel the overwhelming urge to have babies before I became pregnant for the first time, and I was quite able to pass babies in the street without drooling. In fact, I was barely aware of their existence until I was at least five months pregnant, and that was mainly because I was checking out groovy pram models.
Happily, something inside my brain changed the moment I held my first baby, and I have been unable to hear a baby crying or see a child in distress since without being overcome with the compulsion to cheer the poor thing up. It’s just Yummy Mummy Nature doing her bit, and luckily it works for the majority of women. I’ve also had periods of feeling very un-maternal, for reasons I’m yet to understand, but these pass and I get back to being sickeningly in love with all three of mine very quickly.
Don’t worry if you don’t think you feel maternal enough: either you will become more maternal when your baby arrives, or you will remain as you are and do a perfectly good job of looking after your baby anyway. Worrying about it now is pointless: you just have to wait and see what happens, and stop telling yourself that you’re not kitted out to be a mother. If you’ve got a heart, a womb, some self-respect and a sense of humour then you’re good to go.
I don’t want to get fat
This seems to be one of the biggest off-putters for my child-free friends. I can’t believe how many pre-pregnant, gorgeous women freak out about this. Why should you get fat? If you’re not fat now, and if you care about how you look, and if you don’t want to become fat, then why should pregnancy make you fat? It’s a bit like saying: ‘I really want to go to Antigua this summer, but I’m worried I’ll get sunburn.’ Pack some sunblock then, stay in the shade and wear a wide-brimmed hat. Bingo—no sunburn!
Seriously, though, worrying about becoming fat during pregnancy is normal, because it happens to quite a lot of previously slimline ladies. But the news is very good: if you are careful about what you eat, if you continue to exercise and if you don’t treat pregnancy as an excuse to eat all the pies, then you will almost certainly not get fat. A little rounder-of-hip perhaps, but not fat. (See You’re Eating for How Many? in Part Three.)
What about the rest of my body? Won’t it be ruined?
No, it won’t. Lots of bits of your body will change, not necessarily for the better, but with a lot of effort most of this is perfectly fixable. If you are really worried about what will happen to your lovely body when you become a Yummy Mummy, then here are some honest truths:
You might get stretch marks, but many large mothers don’t, many skinny, childless women (and men!) do, and there are ways of reducing the damage, should you be genetically challenged in this department.
Your breasts will first become much bigger, and then much, much smaller and less pert. There’s always surgery, or you could, or probably should, just learn to like them that way.
You might get varicose veins, but rarely after a first pregnancy, and your genetic makeup has more of a role to play than any growing baby does.
Your tummy will become more wobbly for a while, but this is absolutely curable with enough crunching and squeezing, if wobbly’s not your thing.
But: You get a child at the end of it all, and no amount of wobble or droop can outweigh the positives of having a baby. Some perspective, please!
What if I mess it all up?
This is a hard one to answer, because I suppose you might mess it all up; you might be the worst mother ever known; you might leave your new baby in a motorway filling station by mistake because you were busy trying to open a packet of M&Ms and got distracted; your marriage might fall apart because of the sudden droopiness of your boobs; and your children might hate you forever and turn to a life of drugs and crime. You might be forced to spend the rest of your life with ‘The Terrible Mother Who Messed It All Up’ tattooed across your forehead.
Or, you might just surprise yourself and cope very well. That’s the thrill of it—you have no idea how it is going to go, things change every minute and you just have to fly by the seat of your still-gorgeous pants and hope for the best. You may have to readjust what your idea of ‘the best’ is, to fit in with the realities of looking after a baby and keeping your sanity, but you are more than likely to do a fantastic job and not mess anything up at all.
What about my career?
This is a very tricky one, and, depending on what you do for a living, this could be more or less of a real worry for you.
Some types of work just don’t allow for Yummy Mummyhood at all, because they require your presence fourteen hours a day, 365 days a year (if, say, you are the Prime Minister), or because there are physical factors to take into consideration, like being an astronaut or something.
Assuming you are neither an astronaut nor the Prime Minister, then having a baby should not mean the end of your career, and any employer who suggests it does should be hung, drawn and quartered. Or something else which isn’t very nice. The only effect that becoming a mother will have on your career is that everything you do will be enormously more difficult and complicated forever: there will be logistical and practical hurdles involving childcare, illness and just getting out of the house on time, and every day will now carry a huge emotional burden.
If you do go back to work, three things will be different:
You will have to work harder than everybody else to prove that you are not a waste of company time and money.
You will feel guilty because you are not with your baby.
Your career progression will probably slow down.
If you can handle all of that, and can accept having to take a step back—or sideways—for a while, then some of the worry will be eased.
The real rub is that you, like most other women these days, have probably decided to think about having a baby at exactly the point in your career when things could really take off. You have worked hard throughout your twenties to reach a certain rung on the career ladder, and the last thing you want to do is jump off the ladder, only to be begrudgingly allowed back on somewhere near the bottom again.
This is fair enough. But a Yummy Mummy knows that having a baby is something important that she wants to do in her life, and she will find a way to make it work for her, somehow.
It all comes down to one question: which is more important to you—furthering your career now, or having a family now? Only you can answer that, and deep down you know the answer already. In this country we can, at last, have a career and a young family without drowning in other people’s scorn and too bloody right. But this long-overdue progress can’t solve the central issue: you can’t do both of them 100% of the time or give them both 100% of your energy and care. You just have to decide where the balance lies for you.
The only thing which is not OK is doing something you are not happy with because you feel pressured, worried or guilty, or because somebody forces you to. You do what you gotta do, and all will be wonderful.
I’m just not that organised!
No you’re not, and why should you be? I wasn’t, no mum I ever met was always as frighteningly organised as she is now, but by some as-yet-unexplained process you will become highly skilled at getting a hundred times more stuff done in a much more efficient and effective way than you can at the moment. You’ll still forget half of what you need to remember, but you will become more organised.
Chrissie Rucker, founder of The White Company
Don’t worry if you are not a very organised person yet—I was never organised at all, but having a baby changes all of that. You learn very quickly how to keep on top of things, and you develop your own system of doing things which works for you.
Isn’t it selfish to be a Yummy Mummy?
No.
Real Yummy Mummies dedicate huge amounts of their time and emotional energy to loving and caring for their children—but always reserve some time to make themselves feel special too, which generally involves bottles of sweet-smelling lotions and gorgeous things to hang in their wardrobes.
Real Yummy Mummies would rather spend time with their children than anything else—but realise that spending no time away from them is very unhealthy and can lead to lifeless hair and a deeply wrinkled brow.
If you are simply too selfish to look after your children properly then you are a Rotten Mummy, not a Yummy Mummy, and you don’t need a book, just a good telling off.
I’m too embarrassed about people poking around ‘down there’
Not much I can say to this one, except ‘Oh grow up.’ Doctors have seen it all before, and they really don’t (or shouldn’t) get a kick out of examining your cervix. Your vagina looks like the millions of other vaginas your midwife has already inspected, and there’s almost nothing which can embarrass them.
That said, there does seem to be an unfeasible amount of prodding, poking and measuring involved throughout pregnancy, and also well after the birth, and even the least prudish and most patient of you will be pushed to the limit. I never got used it, and I still hate being asked to ‘lie down on the bed and bend your knees up’. Except by my husband. Unfortunately it’s just part of being a woman, and the only way to deal with it is to stop thinking of yourself as a person and throw yourself into the glamorous role of ‘car going in for a service’. If you can be an Aston Martin rather than a Ford Mondeo that will also help.
I’m scared of all the pain
This is a very good sign. It shows you are a normal, healthy, sensible woman who knows that squeezing a hard object the size of a basketball through your very small and delicate parts will hurt like hell. It also shows that you have put some considerable thought into the ‘motherhood’ issue, and have already reached the critical stumbling block. Good. Now you progress past this point by realising the following:
Giving birth is the most painful thing you should ever experience. It is agonisingly, excruciating, faint-inducingly painful.
Once you have done it, no other pain will ever seem as bad (until you do it again).
Doesn’t the fact that some women go through it more than once show it can’t be that bad? Actually it is that bad, but Mother Nature has solved this by ensuring that…
You will forget how awful childbirth is almost immediately.
Not all women find childbirth terribly painful.
The drugs work. No pain; lots of gain.
Put it in perspective: when the result of this pain is your own baby, who will grow into a child, an adult and then the bearer of your grandchildren, and will fill your life with more joy and love than you can imagine yet, what’s twelve hours of pain, really? I would go through a month of pain to get the children I have now. Ahhhhh.
The pain stops abruptly once the baby is out. Most discomforts and pains linger on for ages and gradually just peter out. Not childbirth: it’s excruciating one minute, and then it’s completely gone the next. And that feels fantastic!
Going through childbirth gives you the automatic and unquestionable right to have the tapless end of the bath, never take the bins out and have a foot tickle every night for the rest of your life. If he does question this right, suggest you shave his testicles with a cheese-grater, and see how fast he moves.
What if things go wrong between me and my partner?
Not the most optimistic way to approach motherhood, but if you will examine every depressing possibility then I guess I would agree that having a baby puts a vast amount of strain on the relationship you have with your husband, or partner, or whatever we’re calling him or her. Whatever your relationship is now, it will be completely different once you have a baby, and even well before that moment actually comes. The only way of succeeding is to TALK about EVERYTHING and to know where you stand before you get too far down a road you’re not happy with. There is more about this in New Relationships in Part Eleven, but, until then, perhaps telling your partner about your concerns is a good idea, as is setting out to make it work instead of preparing for it to fail.
I’m too old/ I’m too young
Well at least you can’t be worrying about both of these!
There is no ‘good time’ to have a baby—what suits some people doesn’t suit others. I did it very young, which means I had tons of energy (never underestimate how important this is), my body didn’t suffer very much, by the time I was thirty I had all my child-bearing days all over with, (I think, but I still have all the baby clothes in the attic) and I will be able to wear my daughters’ far more fashionable clothes very soon. BUT, I missed out on my carefree, childless twenties, I didn’t manage to get my career going as I might have liked, my husband and I had very few years alone together, and I now have to do the career and kids things at the same time.
Older mums have the advantages of enjoying a successful career first, often having more money, being more self-confident and sure of what they want and wanting the time away from work to enjoy being a mum. BUT, it is harder to get pregnant as you get older (tick-tock, tick-tock); you will find the exhaustion harder to cope with; your body will probably suffer more and be harder to get back into shape; you will find all those years of independence and smart, child-free living very hard to leave behind; and you may find it harder to get back to work at the same level in your late thirties or early forties.
Both ways are good and both are bad. I would just urge as many women as possible to remember the biological clock. Science is great and everything, and there have been some huge advances in fertility treatments, but the wobbly bottom line is that, in the same way that 8 inch stilettos are not designed for rock climbing, so we are not designed to have babies in our fifties. We can still do it, but it’s a heck of a lot harder. Just wanted to get that off my pert-ish chest.
PART TWO Pregnancy—The Early Days…
On your marks, get set…what?
Here’s where our little journey into Yummy Mummyhood kicks off, and I start waffling about nipples, hormones, pelvic floor muscles and elasticated waists. Once we’ve started, there’s no turning back (which is one of the key concepts to grasp when you’re going to have a baby), so if you need a little Dutch Courage, go get it now, while you still can.
Ready now? Let’s go.
The first few weeks of your pregnancy can be the most exhilarating, debilitating, confusing and terrifying weeks you have ever experienced. Yippee. With your emotions bouncing around like Zebedee on speed, your body starting to do the most peculiar and unpleasant things, and your list of worries growing as fast as your certainty that this was a Good Plan is shrinking, you can be left wondering whether you really are only pregnant, or whether you have been transported to a parallel, less pleasant universe.
Things will get a lot easier, so if you can just get through the initial shock, everything will be cool…
Getting Pregnant—A Brief Biology Re-cap What’s the best way to conceive?
Have sex.
That really is all there is to be said on the matter, and anyone who gets themselves bogged down with sexual positions, moon phases, eating certain fertility-boosting foods, the right music, positive mental vibes or other mumbo-jumbo is wasting a lot of shagging energy. In my humble opinion. If you have sex, you might become pregnant and that’s the end of it. Having difficulty conceiving is no laughing matter at all, and it’s one of life’s cruellest tests. Unfortunately life is how it is, and some people are just more fertile than others. How you decide to go about raising your chances is up to you, and there is a lot of detailed information out there on the subject. For now, here are some tips which might help you out a little:
The more you worry about it, the less likely you are to get pregnant. I don’t know why it is, but this really seems to be true. Look at all the women who try for years with no luck, and the second they adopt a baby they find themselves expecting twins. Those who want a baby can try desperately for ages in vain, while the reckless, highly fertile singleton who just fancies a quickie in the stationery cupboard is pregnant in less time than it would have taken to actually get the printer cartridge she pretended to be fetching. It’s unbelievable and very unfair, but the mind is a powerful thing. So, if you can, try not to be desperate for a baby, and you might find yourself knocked up in no time. Well, a few minutes maybe.
Forget predictor kits. These are supposed to tell you when the most likely time to conceive is, but they feel like a big con to me. The manufacturers are preying on our nervous, befuddled disposition and our desperate need for anything which seems like it might help. I took several of these tests, for exactly that reason, but I always felt that I knew, from my own cycle length and finger-counting, when the most likely time to conceive was, and that I was just paying a lot of money for some confirmation of this. Again, it’s a very costly way of being told something you probably know anyway. Shagging frequently is cheaper and much more fun, and makes the event a lot less like a military operation.
Don’t have sex for a few days before your most fertile spell. I know this sounds very cruel, but I have heard that saving up a bit more sperm and then delivering it all in one go (so to speak) can boost your chances of getting one determined little bugger who makes it all the way.
Try to enjoy it. We’ve all done it, or know someone who has: we’ve looked at the calendar, checked our watches and run downstairs shouting, ‘Switch the footie off—we have to have sex NOW!’ This is not very sexy, and the moment having sex becomes nothing more than an exercise in getting pregnant is the moment it stops being fun. Once this has happened, it’s hard to go back.
Don’t tell anybody you are trying to get pregnant. A fatal mistake, because once the pressure is on, the likelihood of conceiving will drop through the floor. Act like all those sensible celebrities who ‘have no plans to start a family just yet’, but who have decorated the nursery and already own six pairs of baby Nikes. This is also a good protective measure for your partner, because if you do having trouble conceiving, everybody will assume there’s something wrong with his John Thomas, and that can’t boost a man’s self-esteem.
The Thin Blue Line: That Moment
I love a good ‘apparently’ as much as the next Yummy Mummy, but this one really takes the Farley’s Rusk. Apparently, some women can go to full term without ever noticing they are pregnant. Apparently, they just feel a bit bloated, and then one day they go to the loo, experience an ‘odd’ sensation and wham! a fully developed baby drops into the bowl. Apparently.
To counteract this strange group of women who house a black hole in their abdomen is another unlikely type who, apparently, know they are pregnant the second a sperm arrives, gasping, at an ovum. These same ladies can usually tell you the sex, weight and IQ of the unborn child as well.
For the rest of us (who also don’t believe that a swan can break your arm or that you can really think yourself slim), learning that we are pregnant is life-changing news, confirmed by a strip of blue ink about a centimetre long and a millimetre wide which smells of wee. Cruelly, this line is almost impossible to see if you are desperate for a baby, and is impossible to miss if you’re hoping that you’re just a bit late because of the recent extra stress at work.
Taking a pregnancy test isn’t like waiting for the lottery result, or standing on the scales after a week’s skiing and fondue-eating. It’s a huge deal. If you’ve ever stood in the loo with a thong around your ankles, holding a white plastic pen-like object to the light and straining your eyes in the desperate hope for a trace, any trace at all, of something which could possibly pass for a blue or even a blue-ish streak while time stands still and your bottom freezes, then you’ll understand what I mean. I remember asking my husband after several negative tests if he was absolutely sure he couldn’t see anything there, and he suggested I go and have my eyes checked instead of my hormone levels.
Before taking a pregnancy test, there are some tell-tale signs of possible pregnancy to look out for, but not everyone gets any of these, so don’t worry if you feel perfectly normal—you may well be pregnant, but just be one of the very lucky few who are in for an easy ride…here’s hoping!
Missed period. Duh. No, really?
Extreme tiredness. I really do mean extreme here: it’s not just ‘more tired than normal’, but an overwhelming, unbeatable exhaustion unlike any other, which leaves you falling asleep in meetings, feeling like a lead weight and crawling into bed at 7.30. It does pass though!
Weeing between ad-breaks. If you can’t make it until the next commercial break for a trip to the loo, go back and check your dates again.
Tender breasts and nipples. Not necessarily sore, but much more sensitive than normal, in a bad way. Fondling is not welcomed, and going bra-less is impossible.
Feeling bloated. As most of us feel like this at some point in the month it’s not such a good indicator, but if it’s much more than usual and combined with tenderness in your abdomen, then there could be a teeny, weeny bun in there.
Feeling or being sick. (Unless you drank two bottles of wine the night before, in which case it’s just a bad hangover.) This sickness is not restricted to the morning, so if you’re talking to God on the big white telephone every evening, something might be afoot.
If you’ve experienced any, all or none of these things and you think you might be pregnant, it’s probably time for a test to confirm things. Pregnancy tests are unbelievably accurate, and can detect the tiniest increases in hormone levels, so they are a very good way of getting an answer. But, before you rush to Boots, here are some survival tips for taking pregnancy tests:
Don’t do too many. They are very expensive, and you usually have to take several, because it’s the wrong time of the month, you drop it in the toilet (I’ve done that four times!) or you just refuse to believe the result. I’ve spent a small fortune on them over my three pregnancies, and, looking back, I wasted a lot of money. If you can, try to wait a few days between tests (the packet should tell you exactly how many), and if you still have any doubts ask for a free test from your kind GP.
Get it over with. Waiting for the best moment to do a test is futile: you will be so wound up with nerves that you’ll mess it up and have to do another one. Get up, wee, look, and then cry either way.
Don’t worry about doing it right. If you are, you are: whether you’ve had a glass of water first, or have drunk too much coffee, or weed on it for eight seconds instead of five, if you’re pregnant the test will be positive. Almost definitely. But do get confirmation if you want to be sure.
When that moment happens, and the little window signals the end of your life as you know it, you cannot predict how you will react. Some of my friends fainted (a tad over-dramatic I’d say), others cried or laughed or screamed with delight (or woe—they’re never quite clear on why they screamed…). I tended to be quite quiet, which always surprised me, as I imagined I would at least whoop a little. Perhaps it was just the fact that I was still naked from the waist down.
Tired, Tired, Tired
We’ve all been tired. We’ve been tired after partying too hard, working too hard or making babies too hard.
When you are pregnant, however, you will experience a new kind of tiredness—actually a kind of total, numbing exhaustion—which is so intense and overpowering that you might mistake it for certain, impending death. This sudden, debilitating tiredness was always my first clue that I was pregnant, and every time it left me baffled: how can something so tiny reduce a grown woman to a useless heap? When you’re seven months down the line and hauling about a considerable amount of bulk around with you, feeling exhausted will seem perfectly understandable. But not in the first few weeks! There’s nothing there! You can’t see anything, feel anything, or, worse still, tell anyone yet, so you have to suffer in complete silence.
Survival Tips
Lie. If you are not ready to tell anyone yet, then you will need to have some fantastic ‘Oh, yeah, I was at another amazing party last night’ stories lined up if you are to explain why the bags under your eyes are bigger than the ones you come back carrying after an extended lunch-break, and why you are suddenly falling asleep at your desk several times before morning coffee (which you are suddenly not drinking…)
Don’t fight it. This is not the kind of tiredness that can be outdone by regular double-espressos. During pregnancy, your body is very good at letting you know what’s needed, and the intensity of tiredness in the early stages can only mean that you should get as much sleep as possible. I went to sleep well before anything decent was on telly for the whole of this miserable period, and it was a very wise move, if very boring. Maybe Nature is just preparing you for the decades of sleepless nights to come…
Indulge in some pampering. Falling asleep because you’re tired is one thing, but dozing off because you are so relaxed that your legs can’t move any more is quite another. Treat yourself, and these weeks will glide by in an aromatherapeutic haze. Ahhhhhhh.
Take some exercise. Not only is this a stage when you still can, but it’s also a good way of feeling energised, looking better as the blood gets into your grey cheeks at last, and forgetting how rough you may be feeling. Don’t do anything super-strenuous or new: your body is a bit confused, so stick to what it can already handle.
Remind yourself daily that it won’t last long. This early tiredness usually passes within a month or so, so get the rest you need, and look forward to better times around the corner.
Breaking the News
1. To the father (who I shall assume is also your partner)
This is the fun part. As the holder of some earth-shattering news, you are in a position of considerable power. So what do you do? Tell him straight away? Over the phone? After work? By text? (Never by text. It’s absolutely not the done thing).
I developed my own little routine for breaking my exciting news: I kept it to myself all day, while the enormity of it sank in, and I then took my husband to a bar after work, ordered him a double whiskey and myself a gin and tonic, and told him straight out. The first time he was surprised and delighted, the second time he looked less surprised but equally delighted, and when it came to announcement number three, in the very same bar, he just asked me when it was due before the drinks had arrived. Spoilsport.
2. To your parents
This is a lot less fun, or at least it was for me, and I’ve heard similar stories of disappointment from other friends. Telling your parents you are expecting should be a perfect, bonding, happy-families kind of moment, where time slows down, everything goes a little out of focus and somebody starts to play the harp. In reality, breaking the news to the future grandparents can leave you feeling somewhat short-changed.
I’ve heard of responses ranging from ‘Oh at last. We were beginning to wonder’, to ‘Already! But it’s only been three years’, and even the astounding, but absolutely true, ‘Are you very sure? Hold on, I have to drain the potatoes. Can I call you back after dinner?’
No doubt your own parents and in-laws will be as beside themselves with excitement as you are, but it’s good to be prepared for a less-than-ideal reaction. Perhaps the idea of becoming grandparents is too much to take in, and they just say whatever pops into their heads first. Or perhaps they really are that tactless.
3. To your friends
Oooooh, lots and lots of fun. Friends are so great at this kind of thing because, being friends, they know exactly what they should say to make you feel fantastic, and they deliver every time. This kind of news is usually cause for a party and lots of gorgeous presents, so pick a time when your diary is looking free.
When Should We Tell?
Because the first few months of pregnancy can be a bit risky, and miscarriages are most common within the first twelve weeks, you might want to try and hold off breaking the news until you have passed this milestone. Another advantage of holding off as long as possible is that friends don’t get bored of the whole thing by the time you’re only halfway there. Nine months is a heck of a long time for someone to be excited about something which only affects them at a distance. Waiting until you first start to show (usually at around four months) means that before they know it you’re into the final stage and ready to go. Much more exciting.
That said, if you tell your friends and family the moment you know, they will be able to help you through this difficult, vomitty, sore-boobs, random-tears stage, and if things do go sadly wrong after all that, as they do sometimes, you will have a lot of much-needed support.
Work: Mum’s the Word? When to Tell, What to Expect
How you play your cards when it comes to spilling the beans to your employer is up to you. Maybe you have a fantastic relationship with them, and they are super family-friendly, in which case you’ll probably walk away with a bunch of flowers and your first pair of baby booties. If, on the other hand, you are instrumental in a huge company buyout, which is due to complete three weeks before your due date, then you should expect less jubilation.
I had one bad experience of this, which happened during the final round of auditions for a career-making presenting job. I was newly pregnant for the second time, and I decided that the honourable thing to do was to let them know, because Saturday morning kids’ TV wasn’t, and still isn’t, exactly awash with pregnant presenters. When I didn’t get the job I spent the next few months fuming at the injustice, and quite convinced that I missed out because of my expanding waistline. (I now realise it was because I was rubbish, but it was hard to see that at the time!)
Once bitten, twice very devious, and the next time I was in a similar position I decided to keep schtum. I still didn’t get the gig, but at least this time I knew it was because I wasn’t right for the job, and not because I was gestating. There are, however, some legal and practical guidelines to be aware of:
You cannot be dismissed (sacked, fired, booted out, shown the door) for being pregnant.
To qualify for statutory maternity pay you must tell your employer that you are pregnant by the fifteenth week before you are due, and tell them when you intend to take your maternity leave.
You don’t have to tell your boss that you are pregnant (but he or she will probably notice eventually).
You can take time off for antenatal appointments and classes without missing out on any pay…
You don’t have to tell a potential employer at a job interview, and if you do, they can’t discriminate against you. (Even though they probably will, but will claim it’s because you are overqualified, underqualified, or some other nonsense like that.)
The details of your maternity rights are far too dull for this beautiful book, but if you want all the useful facts then go to www.tiger.gov.uk.
Olivia, mother of Clemmie, eight months
I had to take a bunch of journalists on a flight to Scotland at nine weeks pregnant, and I couldn’t let on that I felt like throwing up the whole time. I had to concentrate so hard on overcoming the constant feeling of nausea, and I sucked Murray Mints the entire day. Twelve hours later, after I’d dispensed with the press packs and waved everyone a jolly goodbye, I dashed back to the car and immediately threw up.
Hello Boys! Some Physical Changes You (and Others) Might Notice
The starting gun will still be smoking when your body starts to change all over the place, and the rate at which this happens can be alarming. One of the good side-effects of pregnancy is that your breasts get bigger: even if you have practically no breasts at all you will develop something worthy of a decent ‘Phwoooaaar!’ if you happen to pass a building site. This is just one of the changes you’ll notice within weeks of fertilisation, along with the following:
Your boobs become tender and harder (oh great) before getting noticeably bigger (great!).
The skin around your nipples gets darker (this part is called the areola, if you really want to know).
You might get light-headed easily.
It gets harder to pull your abdomen in successfully and pretend you have a washboard stomach: it’s like having permanently bad premenstrual fluid retention, except this time it doesn’t go away—it just gets worse.
You have trouble sleeping, despite being exhausted.
You start having very complicated, frantic dreams, in which you already have a baby but you keep doing all sorts of dreadful things to it, such as dropping it off the top floor of Selfridges, leaving it at a bus stop, forgetting you put it in the bath while you went out for a meal, only to find…well, it’s not pretty, but it’s just a normal reaction to your huge news.
You might start to feel sick, or even be sick (see Morning Sickness below).
Morning Sickness: If Only it Were That Simple…
What a misnomer! Firstly, as millions of women every year discover, it does not only occur in the morning, and secondly, it does not always involve being sick. The (presumably male) genius who came up with the term ‘morning sickness’ should have spent a month or two in our house during the first trimester of my pregnancies, and then maybe we’d have had something more realistic to work with: 24-Hour Nausea, Early Evening Retch, or Twelve-Week Hell, for example.
From what I’ve read, this ‘feeling really sick’, which you are very likely to experience to some degree in the first few months, seems to have something to do with hormones, as usual, and the reasons it seems worse in the morning are, apparently:
The levels of these wretched hormones are higher in the morning.
Your stomach is empty, so you feel sicker.
It’s Nature’s clever way of saying ‘Put that third pain au chocolat down! You’re about to start expanding wildly, so just suck on a lemon drop instead.’
I suffered from evening sickness, which confounds all these theories. I was fine all day until about three or four in the afternoon, and from then on it was just a case of surviving until my husband came back from work (he had to negotiate shorter hours just to get me through those weeks). I would immediately collapse into bed and try to fall asleep, just so that I could forget how awful I was feeling. Oh, happy days.
The other misleading thing about ‘morning sickness’ is that it sounds as though you are actually going to be sick. If only. In fact, one of the things I found hardest to bear was that I wasn’t sick. Ever. I always felt that if I could only be sick, I would somehow feel relieved and better, but I never was. It was just hour after hour of feeling sick, like terrible sea-sickness, except that, being pregnant, I didn’t want to take any anti-sickness tablets, because of the potential health risks. I even made myself sick a couple of times, just to get some relief, and although I did feel better for a while afterwards, it wasn’t for long and it’s probably not a very good idea.
Common Concerns
I’m just being pathetic
No you’re not. Feeling nauseous and being sick for week after week is physically and mentally crippling, and for many of my friends it was the worst part of the whole pregnancy. For some it was even worse than the actual birth part, so don’t ever kid yourself that you should just pull your socks up and stop being such a whinger: you’re pregnant, so whinge away! Anyone who hasn’t eaten properly for six weeks, feels as though they are on the high seas with Ellen MacArthur, and is trying to come to terms with the mind-blowing fact that there’s a human being growing inside her is entitled, and absolutely bound, to feel well below par and to want some sympathy. Morning sickness is not just a mildly unpleasant inconvenience—it can be almost unbearable, so give yourself a break and spend some extra time trying to look after yourself.
I’m not eating enough because I feel so sick. Is it bad for the baby?
Miraculously, if you are managing to eat and drink anything at all, your baby will carry on as if nothing is wrong. That’s where your reserves come in handy: the baby takes all the nutrients it needs from what you have stored up over the last few years, and it can survive very well off those while you walk around like a nauseous zombie for a few months. But if you can’t keep any food or liquid down then you must get medical help. There is a condition called Hyperemesis Gravidarum which causes this sort of complete food rejection, and you can get more information at www.hyperemesis.org. A small number of women end up in hospital for a while if the sickness gets really bad, so keep an eye on things.
So what can I do to make it better?
Short of spending a night (or several) with Gael Garcia Bernal or receiving a lifetime’s supply of Crème de la Mer products, I really have no idea, because there are as many supposed remedies for the condition as there are positions for getting yourself knocked up in the first place. As that is so obviously not the answer you were after, here are some suggestions from myYummy Mummy friends which are all supposed to help:
Eat more ginger—crystallised, or in tea or capsules—or slowly nibble ginger biscuits.
Eat small amounts regularly, so your stomach never becomes empty.
Sip water frequently.
Get more sleep and rest.
Cut out coffee and alcohol.
Only turn left, except on Wednesdays when there is a full moon (no, not that one).
Smell fresh mint.
Get as much fresh air as possible.
Press your pressure points: 11/2 inches from your wrist on the underneath of your forearm, in the centre. Try it—it just might work!
Take extra vitamin B6, or eat more nuts, bananas, avocados and whole grains, which contain it.
Try yeasty foods, such as Marmite, bagels, dry fruits and beer (sparingly!).
Eat more iron-rich foods, such as beef, sardines, eggs and leafy greens.
I tried all of these to almost no avail. The things which made me feel a little better were brushing my teeth about fifteen times a day, smelling fresh coffee and drinking diet lemonade.
Sonia, mother of Freya, two, and Louis, eight months
It sounds mad, but I had to drink a can of ice-cold Coke the minute I woke up, and I was absolutely fine all day after that. After about eight weeks all the symptoms disappeared, but I still have my morning fix!
I’ve recently discovered all kinds of ‘natural’ remedies available on the Web, which all have glowing reports from absolutely-not-nauseous at-all-any-more mothers. These include naturally coloured lollipops, glamorously named ‘Preggy Pops’ (wouldn’t you just love to have sat in on that meeting?), wristbands that apply pressure to your wrists and apparently relieve nausea that way, and even specially compiled recordings of soothing sea noises for pregnant ears. This last idea seems somewhat insulting to our intelligence: pregnancy may leave you a bit befuddled for a while, but surely it doesn’t render you gullible enough to shell out a tenner for some whale songs and wave noises in the belief that they will ease the queasiness? I suppose if the nausea gets completely unbearable then you will probably be ready to try almost anything. Even whale songs will seem worth a try. Do not, however, take any anti-sickness pills without asking your doctor. There are many available, and not all are suitable during pregnancy.
One final thing you should be prepared for, as I wasn’t the first time, is that it doesn’t last for 12 weeks and then stop. Or, at least, it might, but it almost certainly won’t. Everyone I have talked to has had a different experience. Things always settled down for me at around this time, but for every textbook case there’s one lucky lady who never gets sick at all, and another one who throws up three times a day for nine months. C’est la vie!
Oh, and it does tend to get a little bit worse with multiple babies and with each successive pregnancy, so count yourself lucky you’re not on baby number six yet!
More Worries
More? How much can one woman worry about?
I’m afraid sections dealing with worries, concerns, fears and feelings of utter doom and gloom will crop up time and time again throughout this book. This is not because I am the world’s greatest pessimist, or because I am trying to wind you up into a panic, but because you will experience many of these worries over the course of becoming a Yummy Mummy, and I couldn’t possibly fit them all into one part. Anyway, if I did manage, you would take one look at it and run to the nearest department store for some cosmetics or footwear-related escapism, never to emerge. Fun, but very expensive, and anyway, denial is not very helpful at all, no matter how high its heels are. Better to tackle the issues head-on, and be prepared.
Most of my worries in the early months of my pregnancies focused on all the evils I had done to my body in the past, rather than what awaited it in the immediate future. Could a baby grow inside a body which was previously best known for its pint-downing ability? What about that magic mushroom I was offered in Indonesia ten years ago? Maybe just being in the same tent had an effect on my brain, which would surely be passed on. And what about the genes from the rest of my unsuitable family? Mum used to smoke, my dad’s great-great-great-grandmother had a heart attack, my husband used to live next to an asbestos factory, there’s a phone mast at the end of our road, and I don’t drink green tea. Oh God, oh God! This baby is doomed to grow into a hallucinating piss-head, with heart trouble and a carcinogen-filled brain. What have I done? As far as I can make out from other Yummy Mummies, this sort of irrational panicking is perfectly normal.
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