Things They Don't Tell You About.... pt 1

Nothing of note to report today (The Baby has been out having father-daughter bonding while I cleaned the kitchen), so this is a request from my pregnant friend.

Things They Don't Tell You About... Pregnancy

• So you've been feeling icky, you're late, so you peed on a stick. You are now the most excited and terrified person EVER. You phone the doctors. They don't care. You get an appointment for about 3 weeks time when the midwife is back off holiday. You trot along, full of the joys of carrying a child. She cares even less. Midwives see this all the time, they hate doing the clinics, and they will just piss on your parade and harrass you about breastfeeding.
• You never knew you could wee so much. Even in the beginning. I always understood why you would need the loo loads towards the end, after all, there is a tiny person standing on and kicking at your bladder. But at the beginning? Why? Why?! I don't think they know, actually. Maybe just because that is life.
• Cravings are not just "ooh, I quite fancy...". They are all-consuming. Whatever it is that you want to eat, you must have it, you must have it now, and there must be a lot of it. Thanks to my friend H for this one, as I must confess that I never really had any. Apart from once, I wanted a scone. We didn't have any, and Husband was at work with the car, so I couldn't go and get any. I started mentally scanning the contents of my kitchen cupboard to see if I could make some. Only the fact that it was 3am stopped me.
• There is almost nothing that pregancy cannot do to your body. Dry skin, greasy skin, excess hair, loss of hair, restless legs, heartburn, itches, sciatica, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, rhinitis, back pain, head pain, finger pain - you name it, pregnancy causes it. And there's nothing they can do about a good deal of it.
• "Mood swings" - the term doesn't even come close to describing it. Every now and again, you turn into a full-on crazy person. Again, thankfully I didn't suffer as badly as some people I know with this, but I did burst into tears once because the sun went in.
• It makes you stupid. Really really stupid. Words will fall out of your head. Sometimes they will be replaced by entirely the wrong ones. I introduced one of the teams at work to my maternity cover by saying "And this is Anna, Zoe and Richard". The person's name was not, in fact, Richard. It was Louise.
• You might go off tea and coffee. In hindsight, this is pretty interesting, as caffeine can be harmful to a foetus, so it is one of those wonderful examples of nature doing its thing. But at the time it just made me grumpy.
• People will talk to your bump, and not your face. You may be used to this feeling if you have fantastic breasts.
• Anyone who is pregnant, or who has ever been pregnant will suddenly be able to chat to you for hours about it.
• But that's ok, because you can talk right back. And talk, and talk. And talk.
• Feeling the baby kick for the first time is amazing. Feeling it kick for about the 907, 469, 875th time, when it is giant and does not have room to do such things, and you're in the middle of a meeting you are supposed to be taking minutes for, is less so.
• And it's really a bit freaky. It's not just "kicking". It's prodding, wriggling, hiccuping, sticking elbows into bits of you, shifting its whole weight from side to side, and generally making you feel like it's trying to get out, like in Alien.
• Pillows are your friends. When you've got a huge (moving) bump sticking on your front, along with a blocked nose, restless legs and heartburn, getting comfy in bed becomes an epic challenge. At one point I was taking 7 pillows to bed with me (3 under the head, one under the bump, one behind my back, one between my knees, and one between my feet). Not that it helped, I would just get myself comfy then I'd have to go to the loo again.
• Your other half is going to be wrong for nine months. You may think that's not much different to normal, but he is going to be really, really wrong. And that is going to make you really, really angry. My advice should probably be to try and remember that he's not trying to annoy you on purpose. But it might be easier to get him to be less annoying.

Coming soon - What They Don't Tell you About Childbirth, and Babies.

I have no idea who "they" are, by the way