Читать книгу The Yummy Mummy’s Survival Guide - Liz Fraser - Страница 8

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.

Heather, mother of Alex, three, and Katie, six months

We went to a wedding when I was eight weeks pregnant, although I didn’t know at the time. I got hammered, and I put all the throwing up down to the ten glasses of champagne I had quaffed during the reception. When it turned out I was pregnant, I was convinced my baby would be a pickled onion rather than the healthy child she was. It was worrying, though.

Cheering Yourself Up

If you are feeling worried and scared about what is happening to you, and about the whole ‘becoming a parent’ thing, then read this bit as many times as you need to over the next nine months:

Becoming a mother is the best thing you will ever do. (Read that bit again a few more times now, if you like.)

Becoming a mother changes the way you feel about everything, and if you are not sure about it now, you will be absolutely sure about it, and know you have done the right thing, when the baby comes. You will manage just fine.

You will get your figure back, and you will look wonderful and sexy again.

Being a Yummy Mummy does not mean you change who you are, and you will still be able to go out, have a job, go shopping, travel and see your friends. A little less than before, but you can still do it.

You will get Mothers’ Day treats (yippee!).

You will be able to board flights first.

You get balloons when you go to restaurants with your baby.

Yummy Mummies are the luckiest people alive today, because being somebody’s mother is the happiest feeling in the world, and we still get to look fab and have a job. How good is that?

And, finally, with the ‘mush factor’ turned up to the max, just remember:

Your baby will grow up to be the best friend you’ll ever know, and you’ll have many, many years of happiness, laughter, love and fun to look forward to together. Your baby will make your life better in more ways than you can imagine now, and you will wonder how you could ever have worried about it all. Awwww, sweeet.

Anya Hindmarch, designer

Being a mother is very hard. You are getting up in the middle of the night, clearing up sick and giving most of your attention, love and resources to someone who is brand new in your life and hasn’t even earned it. It doesn’t really add up on paper but somehow it is the ultimate privilege to watch this little person grow and be allowed to enjoy steering them and teaching them everything you know.