Posts Tagged "pregnancy"
Go-Go-Gadget Mother
I was recently asked by someone representing a big name toy and baby supplies company (yes I am totally bragging!! My first PR contact!) if I would like to contribute to a booklet for new parents on the essential items all parents need in preparation for the birth of their first baby.
And this got me thinking (and of course going yes! yes! yes! where do I sign!)
What DO you need when you’re having a baby?
And my answer came as something of a surprise.
Not much. In fact I struggled to think of many ‘must haves’ at all.
Now don’t get me wrong. I like stuff as much as the next person. But if you’d asked me that question before Kai was born I’d have been able to list off REAMS of items that I was sure were an absolute necessity to raising a healthy child and, most importantly, being a good mother. In fact, I was rather obsessed with having the right stuff.
I spent a long time before getting pregnant fantasising about having a baby. I’d imagine what it would be like to have a enormous bump, spending entire mornings with pillows stuffed up my jumper, admiring myself in the mirror and going ‘Oooh’ when I bent over (and eating lots of chocolate – oh wait, I did that anyway). Of course, in hindsight, I would have had a more realistic experience had I strapped a wriggling 8lb puppy to my tummy that liked to use my ribs as a kick board and head-butt my bladder, and stuffed a water balloon down my kegs that would leak slowly and at embarrassing moments, like when I laughed and sneezed. Oh and then just to REALLY get in the right frame of mind I would have to eat enough cheese to give me raging heartburn and come down off some hard drugs to give me that whole crazed mood-swing psychotic edge. I was a delight when I was pregnant I can tell you.
Anyway. When I did get pregnant I was beyond excited. This was it! Everything I had ever dreamed of! But what I hadn’t realised was that inbetween the getting pregnant bit (which was fun!) and the having your baby bit (not so fun!) there are 40 long weeks. 40 weeks!! That’s a long time. Once I had done with the puking stage (which lasted a good half of it) when I was too busy doing anything apart from trying to sit upright without hurling, I began to get a bit bored. Well, not bored so much. Antsy. I was fed up sitting around on my rapidly expanding ass. I wanted action.
So in typical Josie fashion I bought a file and some index dividers and some pretty paper. And then proceeded to read every baby magazine/book/online guide I could get my chicken-greased fingers on (the chicken is a GREAT pregnancy story – I’ll save that one for another day). And I made notes, and cut out pictures.
I planned god damn it. I planned my giant ass off.
Because I was determined to be a good mother. And reading all these magazines I quickly learned that good parenting = getting the right baby equipment. Obviously! Because bringing a baby into the world without a ready prepared co-ordinating nursery, room thermometer and ergonomic bath support? Well, that’s nothing short of neglect.
And then, after 40 long weeks and one day, Kai arrived. Beautiful, demanding, wide-awake Kai. Who from day one had very fixed views of the world and what he wanted from it. And that was a world in which fancy gadgets had very little place.
Here are the things that were especially useless:
1. The beautifully co-ordinated nursery – he still hasn’t slept in it for any length of time. It is currently surving a far more useful purpose as a place where we shove a lot of crap storage room and place to keep the ever increasing mountain of laundry.
2. The changing bag (that matched the pushchair of course!) – it survived 9 months before being ripped apart by Kai and having various baby-led weaning food-stuffs leak all over it whilst in transit. It was also far too small once I started needing to transport said foodstuffs and toys and sippy cups and spare clothes and sun cream and my bottle of gin (joking) and everything else. My advice? Go to TK Max and get a big, cheap messenger bag or a rucksack and throw everything in there. You’ll cry less when it gets wrecked.
3. The baby swing. Bought in desperation for our power-screaming colicy baby. It was very expensive. It had four speeds AND music. Of course he just screamed all the louder when you put him in it. Only, to music with a kind of rhythmic WAAaah WAAaah. It was quickly retired to the attic.
4. The bath support. We used it, oooh, three times? Then realised it was far less fiddly to just dunk him in there.
5. The Bumbo – Kai HATED it. And at four months old worked out how to catapult himself out over the back. Attic!
6. The very firm and unmouldable (and expensive) breastfeeding support pillow. Probably self-explanatory. When I lay Kai on it it put his mouth about four inches higher than my nipples. So when my back gave in I just used a pillow. A normal household multi-functional pillow. There’s a novel idea for you. Get this – it even comes with removable covers! That don’t cost extra!
And MOST importantly:
7. The baby books. None of them were written about Kai or seemed to bare any relation to the knowing, determined child I gave birth to. And worse, not only were they useless, they made ME feel useless. Life got a lot better once I relegated them to a high shelf and the charity shop.
So the lesson from this tale? Your baby really needs nothing but you. Your arms, your patience, your love. And most of all your permission to be as unique and unpredictible as they like. Yes it’s a soppy ending but it’s true, and a lesson I have learnt every day many times over.
NOT us... but you get the point.
Next time we’re just getting a new baby sling and that’s it. Oh and a vibrating baby bouncer (that one WAS a life saver), and we’ll re-use the co-sleeper crib but OF COURSE we’ll need a new mattress. And I want an electric breast pump next time.
Actually pass me that Mothercare catalogue? Oh and them post it notes, thanks.
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So over to you (cause I’m loving the comment love) - what was the most useless item that you purchased or were given for your first baby?
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Read MoreNow and Then – Part 1
7.00am
Flashback: I have been lying awake for two hours. Rather considerably bigger and fatter yet rather considerably less the woman I am today (in more ways than one). 40 weeks and 1 day pregnant. The size of an average sized whale (which I don’t know the dimensions of for sure but I imagine is rather large). No longer able to put on my own socks without assistance, or roll over in bed without making unattractive grunting noises and taking ten minutes to rearrange my huge nest of various shaped pillows. I have probably just hauled myself back in bed from taking my 32nd trip to the toilet of the night. I am lying here wondering if this squeezing sensation in my pelvis is the real deal and not another cruel bout of false contractions. Well they’ve been every 15 minutes like clockwork and if I had to describe the pain I would probably be using the word ‘wave’. Ooomph there’s another one. No, this is definitely different. Ow. Maybe I should wake Ant…
Flashforward: I sit and watch Kai smearing his hair with banana and laughing hysterically at the ceiling. I love you my odd child. How incredibly blissfully restful boring and empty my life must have been before you.
7.30am
Flashback:I wake up Ant and tell him that, although I don’t want him to panic, I think this may be it. He jumps up gleefully to phone work and tell them he’s not coming in today. Dosser – any excuse for a day off is a cause for celebration in Ant’s eyes. Haha enjoy it my dear, it’s the last ‘day off’ you’re going to get for a while. Say about 18 years.
Flashforward:I emerge from the shower to find Ant holding Kai like an unexploded bomb. “He smells”, declares Ant when asked what is wrong. Yes I imagine he probably does smell since he has just evacuated about a week’s worth of poo from his behind. Thank you for bringing this to my attention honey. Here, you pin him down/distract him by putting things on your head and and I’ll try and clean him up quick before he crawls off and covers himself/the bed/me in excrement. I suddenly fear I may have got the short end of the straw, or the messy end anyway. Do you remember when we used to have romantic long lie-ins and DIDN”T know what it felt like to be up to your arms in crap? No, neither do I.
11am
Flashback:Contractions coming good and regular now, 5-6 minutes apart and strong enough to take my full attention. It hurts but weirdly I find myself quite enjoying it all! When not breathing and rolling about on my birthing ball (which, I’ve decided is just a space hopper without the handles and the weird face – could have saved some money there, we have one in the loft), I dutifully consult the LABOUR section of my Pregnancy File, a self-compiled recepticle of knoweldge, complete with different coloured index tabs headed in my best writing. I had been pregnant for nine long months and I had been determined to be prepared. Notes had been made, checklists written. In different coloured pens and with drawings and everything.
Breathing. Check. Moving About and Staying Upright. Check.
In between contractions I also unpack and repack my hospital bag that has been sat ready for at least a month so is slightly dusty, checking on the essential items carefully planned and packed in advance.
Cooling face spray. Check. MP3 player with pre-prepared playlist of labour songs. Check. Snacks for Ant. Massage Oil. Check Check.
I phone the labour ward and they tell me I’m doing great, that that if I feel ok to keep going at home to do so, and phone again when I get to 4-5 minutes contractions. No problem Midwife lady! I’m fine! Ok it hurts a bit but I’ve been waiting for this moment for nine long months and god dammit I’m going to do it well – all is under control. I have my file!! Over-achiever? Me? Nooo…. but if I was then I would DEFINITELY get an A+.
Flashforward: Me and my best friend Helen buy the biggest chocolate cake we can find to take to our Breastfeeding Support Group to celebrate the birthday of our boys (who were born on the same day) and a whole year of successful breastfeeding despite many difficulties along the way. We feel this is extra symbolic in that chocolate is probably the only thing to have kept us both alive this last year and able to keep up with the demands of our respective milk monsters.
3.00pm
Flashback:Ok, this is REALLY hurting now. Ow. I lie bent over my footstool with a hot water balanced on my back and watch Bill Bailey DVDs to take my mind of things but it’s getting kind of hard to stay serene and calm. My breathing is getting kind of huffy. I may be starting to moan a little. I dutifully make a note of every contraction and am getting a bit discouraged to see that they’re STILL 5-6 minutes apart, shouldn’t they be getting closer together by now?
We take a walk, pausing every 5-6 minutes for my to clutch Ant and sway and do my moany sound. Poor neighbours, I must be quite a sight. It rains and we get completely drenched and decide to go home.
I’m a bit fed up now. And I think Ant is getting bored. Look he’s given up rubbing my back to go play Football Manager…
Flashforward: Me and Kai snuggle up for nap. His head is pushed as far into my armpit as he can make it go. I look at the size of that head. Bloody hell that’s a big head. I try not to think about where that head forcibly appeared a bit later, exactly one year ago. It certainly wasn’t my armpit.
4.30pm
Flashback: I don’t believe this. My contractions have stopped. I haven’t had anything for half and hour now. No. No No NO NO NOOOOO THIS IS NOT HOW IT’S SUPPOSED TO GO!!! Surely this couldn’y have all been false labour? I had endured 12 hours of pretty intense contractions. Was it all for nothing? Was I going to have to do it all again in another few days? DAMMIT I HAD MOVED ABOUT AND BREATHED AND BEEN SERENE (mostly) AND EVERYTHING!!! Sobbing, I phone the Labour ward again, exhausted and defeated, and demand to know what the hell is going on and why why why have they stopped. A kind but slightly patronising midwife tells me I’m probably just experiencing mild (mild?? MILD???!) practise contractions and that this wasn’t established labour yet. Go take some paracetamol and have an early night she tells me.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
I sob and sob. My whole world has fallen apart. I am officially going to be pregnant forever. But, oh, OWW! that was another contraction, sob sob, god dammit stop playing with me baby!!!! Are you coming out or not?? Pretty soon the contractions are back to every 5 minutes but after the midwife’s assessment I have lost all confidence in them now and figure we might well be here for days yet.
That’s it. I want my mum.
Flashforward: Nothing particularly interesting happened…. sorry. Kai whinged. I think I ate some Orios?
