12 Things no one warns you about pregnancy and child birth…

12 Things no one warns you about pregnancy and child birth…

1.       The moment you find out you’re expecting may not be that magical… Friday the 13^th, I found out I was expecting my first son. I was teasing my friend in the pub after work who feared she was pregnant, so we went off to Asda to get a test. It was a two pack, she did the first one and it was negative. We decided they must be faulty, so she got me to do the other one and it was positive. Deciding the whole batch must be faulty as there was no way I could be pregnant and her not be…. Surely! This was all going on in the Asda toilets! How naïve teenagers are! So, we travelled to Sainsbury's in hopes they were more reliable. Opting for Clearblue tests as they were the ones always on the adverts, we thought we could not go wrong. Same thing happened again, hers was negative and mine was positive. The penny started to drop. Finding out your pregnant in a public toilet…so classy!

2.       No amount of bio oil will save you from stretch marks… If you’re going to get them, nothing will stop them. I have found from experience, if your mother got them, you’re more likely too. Bio oil will become a nostalgic smell you look back on years later, but it is not magic. Let’s face it, your bump is growing slowly for 9 months, rubbing lotion on. Then during labour and birth, that baby is going down, your bump stretches into whole new shapes, stretch marks appear in all sorts of places. Your lady garden, your thighs, your waist, your tummy, the only saving grace is they do fade.

3.       Your nipples spray milk like a shower head…. This had to be one of the biggest surprises to me. I was expecting one random hole where the milk came out in one straight line, turns out its more like a shower head spray affect. Also, I found when pregnant the second time around, my milk came in earlier. It was suggested to help myself go into labour, to ‘tweak’ the nipple. I underestimated my supply when I tested this, I ended up shooting Nathan in the eye with my breast milk like a water gun. He has never let me forget it!

4.       You behave in irrational ways, but that’s ok… I had a freckle on my bump, obviously my bump was growing and stretching. So did the freckle. However, I got myself so worked up that it was growing because I had cancer I went to hospital to get it checked out. They gently advised me it was just a freckle, they were lovely about it, but they must have thought ‘crazy pregnant girl!’

5.       It’s possible to be allergic to pregnancy hormones… Everyone knows the typical morning sickness, sore boobs and frequent need to urinate that happens when you fall pregnant. Some suffer more than others. However, when I was pregnant with Jack, my reaction was so severe, my skin blistered all down my legs and back. My eyes swelled shut and I suffered badly with panic attacks.

6.       The stinging and ripping of your lady shoot is probably the worst part… It’s hard to describe the feeling of contractions other than someone twisting your stomach tightly, and more intense over time. It’s a pain you sort of learn to adjust too over the labour, don’t get me wrong, it’s painful, its immense.  Then there is the pushing which isn’t too bad until the head is coming down the birth canal. I had no pain relief with Jack, so I felt everything! Every time I pushed, I could feel the tearing and the stinging… its making my eyes water now.

7.       Your boobs will turn into rocks a few days later if you do not breast feed… I woke up to a ‘Jordan’ chest on about day 5, I was amazed. They were like rocks and massive. Sadly, they only lasted a day. I say sadly, they were so sore, when I laid on my back, I felt like I was being crushed. But it was tolerable just to look down and think…wow!!

8.       If you do not choose to breast feed, don’t be surprised if the midwife starts milking you… With my first son, I chose to bottle feed as I lived at home with my parents and three siblings, there was not a lot of privacy. However, on a routine midwife visit, she decides to force breast feeding on me. Whacks my right boob out and starts milking me into a baby bottle lid to stimulate the milk supply again. It was one of the most surreal and mortifying experiences of my life!

9.       No two labours are the same despite the rumours… My first son, I was in labour for 60 hours even with a drip to speed it up. I nearly died! He was 9lb 6 and got stuck. After Add to dictionary (which I had), there is a rule that you are not allowed to get of the bed, however, the midwives decided gravity may help. They got the birthing stool out of the birthing pool and balanced it onto the bed, I sat on the birthing stool, my head somewhere near the ceiling, as he finally arrived at 23.59pm. If that clock was a minute slow, he has the wrong birth date! My uterus did not contract, I tore badly, there was blood everywhere. All I remember is a lot of people rushing around and me panicking that I was going to die. A very loud Irish midwife shouting at me ‘stay awake, you’re not going to die on my ward’, thank fully I lived to tell the tale. I was bedbound for days and felt like my insides had been rearranged and suffered nightmares for a long time after about the whole experience. My second labour, I was petrified, I don’t think I realised just how much until after he was born and my first thought was not amazement but relief that it was over. My second labour lasted 45 minutes. I felt fab afterwards and was in total shock that this baby arrived so easily. No drama and no surgeons.

10.   Babies poop inside you… both my boys have been ‘meconium babies’, where they poop inside you and swallow their own waste. They struggle feeding and must have their airways cleared. Jack was born not breathing because of this and took a while to start! But he soon got his rhythm!

11.   Gas and air will have you talking gibberish… After a lot of gas and air in my 60-hour labour with Nathan, I decided I was going to call him Theodore after the chipmunk because he had chunky cheeks. I also asked the surgeon mending my lady shoot to make sure he ‘fixed my piles while he was down there’. (oh, yes! Heavily pregnant ladies get piles…its great!) Thank fully my mum apologised on my behalf and refused to allow me to name my baby after a chipmunk.

12.   Pelvic floor muscles go to pot…. But they do recover! I don’t know if it was the size of Nathan, or the labour but I lost all control of my ability to hold my wee! I had to run and hope for the best. I didn’t get out much until things started to mend and I could practice pelvic floor muscles. I remember a midwife telling me to do them everywhere I go. I still find myself stood at the bus stop, tensing, waiting for the bus!

Please share your weirdest or most unexpected experience of labour and childbirth!

Also, to end with a funny story from my boys, keeping up with the supermarket dramas of earlier in the blog. Mummies of little boys will understand how hard it is to use public toilets when your little one does not want to go into the ladies’ toilets. We often use the disabled toilets…. naughty I know. The other day, in Asda Jack and I were in the disabled toilet and Nathan had waited outside. Jack has his wee and washing his hands, and I have a wee too. Unfortunately, I was menstruating to which Jack noticed. He opens the door screaming to Nathan, while I am still sat on the toilet in full view that “Mummy’s fanny’s bleeding, call the ambulance, its bleeding everywhere.” Mortified!

Love J X