The Unmumsy Mum

by The Unmumsy Mum

  Life was good, and we were happy. We were settled.

  The following year, we tied the knot and started dabbling in that dangerous pastime I like to call Rightmove browsing. I’m sure it was all that talk of extra bedrooms and garages and friendly neighbours that prompted us to engage seriously for the first time in The Chat. There was only one chat to have by this stage, as we’d already gone down the pet route and rescued Floyd the Cat, who we treated very much like our baby.

  The next level in our adult lives awaited.

  I can’t pinpoint or remember the exact ‘Shall we have a baby, then?’ conversation, but I remember we agreed that I would come off the Pill and we would ‘see what happens’. There is nothing casual about ‘seeing what happens’. From the moment you are no longer not trying for a baby, you are very much trying for one.

  I’m not sure what the rush was. There was certainly no biological rush, as I was just twenty-three at this point. We had all the time in the world to start procreating, but something instinctive told us it was the right time. We may have been just a few months into married life but, by this stage, we were a full seven years into our relationship. I was just sixteen when we first got together (at a nightclub on an industrial estate: the romance of fairy tales – I know).

  All of a sudden, I became hyperaware of babies in buggies and pregnancy bumps on the bus. Despite my continued enjoyment of work, wine and uninterrupted Friday-night takeaways, more than anything else I wanted to be a mum.

  I guessed it would happen straight away.

  It didn’t happen straight away.

  In fact, ten months into the whole ‘I think I’m ovulating. Can you pause Top Gear and come upstairs, please?’ debacle, we’d become slightly disheartened with the bi-daily shagathons and leg-holding in the air (me, not James, who never once lay with his legs in the air for ten minutes to discourage gravity).

  Then, suddenly, we had other things to concentrate on because we’d just completed on the sale of our house and secured a new one with that extra bedroom and garage. Hurrah! It was a chaotic time, as we had only a couple of weeks off work to pack up, move house and prepare for a week’s holiday in Kos; a holiday I’d booked prior to knowing we’d be moving that month. So, in a state of mostly unpacked but not quite organised household disorder, we found ourselves getting ready to leave for a road trip to Cardiff airport. I ran myself a bath (to take care of the essential holiday hair removal) and, while I fannied around in the bedroom waiting for the tub to fill up, I just had this feeling that I was coming on my period: achy legs, slight tummy churn. You probably don’t need to know the workings of my menstrual cycle (you’ll undoubtedly know far too much about me as it is when you’ve finished reading this book), but I never really had regular periods, something we had been told might make it difficult for us to conceive, something which would have made it all the more sensible to pack tampons as a precaution for a week in a bikini.

  I don’t know whether the feeling was in some way different from the usual pre-menstrual rigmarole or whether I just wanted clearance to drink my body weight in dodgy Greek ouzo, but something prompted me to grab a pregnancy test out of my knicker drawer and wee on it. I shouted down to James, ‘I think I’m coming on my period, but I’ve done a test just in case, so I have the all-clear to drink wine.’

  James came back upstairs. I was totally naked by this point (about to get in the bath, as I say), hovering over said stick of fortune. ‘Well, what does it say?’ he asked.

  ‘There are two lines. It’s a plus. It says I’m pregnant. Fuck.’

  ‘Fuck,’ he echoed. ‘Are you sure? Do another one!’

  ‘I can’t! I don’t need another wee.’

  I then sat in the bath, trying to digest the possible parenthood news, while James went to get me a pint of water so I could flush out some more urine. I did two further tests.

  One test could be a fluke.

  Two tests: still questionable.

  Three tests: well, three tests showed irrefutably that I was with child.

  Holy mother of chuffing God, there was a baby in there.

  And we were about to whisk him or her off to Kos for a stay in what turned out to be the shittiest hotel we’d been to in all our years, with a shit ‘beach’ and shit food. Add to that an overall sense of shittiness brought about by knowing that not only had we rejected a villa in Tuscany but we were now also not enjoying our last holiday as a twosome.

  The saving grace of that holiday-which-was-a-bit-shit (have I told you how shit it was? I feel the need to reiterate this point, as it was James who said no to Tuscany, for cost-saving reasons) was that we were carrying around our baby secret. We were going to be parents, and we beamed from ear to ear.

  According to the BabyCenter pregnancy app we had downloaded on the way to the airport, I was already seven weeks pregnant. The absence of my period had not alerted us because that, in itself, was not unusual. I’d had no other symptoms and had therefore been drinking Pinot Grigio and not taking folic acid for the first seven weeks of our foetus’s existence, something I planned to rectify as soon as we got back to Blighty and I could ram-raid Boots for mum-to-be supplies.

  So there we were, in our ghetto sunshine hotel, discussing baby names and nurseries and telling ourselves we really shouldn’t get carried away until we’d confirmed everything was all right while at the same time getting completely carried away about our little potato. Finding out I was pregnant for the first time was pretty amazing. It was scary and daunting, too, but mostly it was amazing.

  I’ll forever hold an image in my mind of our tanned and excited faces in the car on the way back from Cardiff airport, scoffing M&S sandwiches and Percy Pigs (and Pals) from the service station. Smug about our little secret potato. We knew we were on the cusp of something pretty life-changing.

  The reality, of course, as we gaily chomped on Percy and his Pals, was that we knew nothing at all.

  Am I Glowing Yet?

  As you know, I am writing as the proud (though slightly overwhelmed) owner of two children. I have therefore spent eighteen months of my life incubating small people. (Total for both pregnancies, I mean; I don’t have anything approaching the 640-day gestation of an African elephant because, if I did, I would, quite frankly, never have coped. Can you imagine the pelvic pressure and gin withdrawal after 640 days?) Still, eighteen months equates to approximately 5 per cent of my life (to date) spent ‘with child’ and, when people ask me how I found my pregnancy adventure, I generally offer the same, uncomplicated response: ‘It was a bit crap.’

  I really tried to enjoy it. Mostly, I think, I felt compelled to treasure the experience because I was so mindful of pregnancy being a blessing, mindful that there are so many other couples who can’t conceive, or have lost a baby. I have always known that getting pregnant and carrying two healthy babies to full term makes us a remarkably lucky family.

  And there were bits I did enjoy. Like all the buzzy excitement surrounding the new addition, the magic of feeling the first kicks, and hearing the heartbeat at the midwife appointments. Discussing names (slightly less fun after we’d made the mistake of sharing name ideas with friends and family, who were surprisingly forthright about our shortlist); dragging James to antenatal classes (where we tried and failed to act like grown-ups during the demonstration of the doll moving down the birth canal); shopping for baby clothes; painting the nursery and framing my favourite quote from The Twits to add a bit of Roald Dahl wisdom to the walls.

  I marvelled at my body’s ability to grow a small person, twice.

  But treasure every moment I could not.

  I quickly tired of sticking my head down the loo to throw up after my evening meal. I became fed up with practically pissing myself every time I climbed the stairs or rolled over in bed because my bladder had been restricted to the size of a Borrower’s. I spent the last six weeks of pregnancy number two sleeping (or, rather, not sleeping) propped up on the sofa, unable to get comfy, watching reruns of The X-Fi
les. And, on top of the pregnancy incontinence and slightly sicky burps, I was fed up with hearing the same old shite, those same old myths and superstitions:

  ‘All that sickness suggests this one is definitely a girl!’ Clearly.

  ‘The first baby is never on time!’ He was on time.

  ‘As your first was on time, your second will be early!’ He was seven days late.

  ‘I can tell just by looking at the bump you’re having a big baby!’ Henry was 6lb 13oz.

  Above all, I was a bit pissed off and disillusioned about the pregnancy legend of The Glow.

  I wasn’t glowing.

  But it would come, right? Because I, for one, had bought into the legend and was excited about my impending glow. I just had to get through the sicky and awkward podgy-but-not-quite-preggers stage of the first trimester (the ‘shitemester’) and I’d be on the home straight to the promised land of shiny hair, radiant skin and a neat and tidy bump displayed proudly under attractive maternity dresses. It became a long-standing joke: ‘Am I glowing yet?’

  I never fucking glowed.

  Instead, I found I was vomity, sweaty and permanently tired. My skin was grey and slightly zitty – less English rose glow and more hungover pubescent-teenager shine. The ‘bump’ I had looked forward to sporting under a Topshop tea dress developed into more of a tyre of pregnant chubb around my middle, spreading slowly to unsuspecting areas like my arms. And chins. In many ways, I quite liked my preggers body – I put on over three stone with each pregnancy, and there is something quite liberating about thinking, Sod it, what difference is another slice of carrot cake going to make?

  But glowing I was not. Though I should note that I have met some quite glowy mums-to-be in Topshop tea dresses, so I can’t deny that it happens. It just didn’t happen in the 5 per cent of my lifetime I have spent pregnant. (I’m not at all bitter.)

  There were, however, two things I’d heard about pregnancy – two quirks, if you will (things I had generally dismissed as ‘a load of old tosh’) – that I can in fact verify as true, having experienced them first-hand.

  The first was nesting.

  ‘Nesting’, as a term, is quite misleading, I think, because it conjures up images of decluttering, decorating and making sure things are just so. The nesting I found myself absorbed in was much less about decluttering and more about disinfecting. Of ridding the house of all dust, grime and odours and leaving behind the soft scents of Cif Cream (Original) and Windowlene.

  I could not get enough of cleaning products. They just smelt so good. The Cillit Bang advert where ‘Barry Scott’ obliterates shower scum before declaring, ‘Bang! And the dirt is gone!’ was practically a turn-on at one point.

  At the height of my cleaning obsession (which was far worse with Jude), I was spraying and scrubbing my kitchen worktops at least three times a day – and that was the most ordinary of my cleaning activities. Skirting-board bleaching, cupboard disinfecting, pulling the fridge out to clean behind it, door washing, wall cleaning – I once washed the external walls and downstairs outside windows with Flash power spray before instructing my father-in-law to do the same to the upstairs windows while he was up a ladder clearing the guttering. I also asked James to pull the TV stand out twice in the same week because I hadn’t managed to blitz all the dust the first time and I couldn’t relax until I had blitzed all of the bloody dust.

  Nobody argued with me when I was eight months pregnant, because they had clocked my crazed look and feared I would climb a ladder/attempt to move a 42-inch TV on my own. They were right to be slightly fearful. There were spells of comedy, but I had become a nightmare to live with. One time, I paused our Friday-night film to strip the cushion covers and put them straight in the wash. Because you just can’t bring new life into a house with unwashed cushion covers. Another time, James put some leftover lasagne – which was ever so slightly leaking out of its dish – into my newly disinfected fridge. ‘Lasagne-gate’, we named that particular meltdown, because I cried for half an hour before getting the surface cleaner back out. Poor James.

  Obviously, I can see now that shedding tears over lasagne residue was highly irrational – I was being ridiculous. But it felt very rational at the time. In fact, it was one of the most instinctive and compulsive feelings I’ve ever had – I needed to clean the nest.

  It wasn’t until a couple of weeks after the birth that I could walk down the cleaning aisle in Tesco without attempting to sniff-test how citrus fresh the products were. (Barry doesn’t do it for me sexually any more, just so we’re clear.)

  The second pregnancy-related quirk I was hit with was cravings. Less so in my first pregnancy – unless you count McChicken Sandwich Meals, and I’ve been craving those for the best part of twenty-nine years. But certainly in the latter part of my second pregnancy I developed quite a hardcore craving for ice. Not icy drinks or ice lollies but ice cubes. Popped straight from the freezer tray into my mouth and crunched one by one as if they were peanut M&M’s. For every tray I demolished I would freeze another so I would never run out. Because running out would have been catastrophic to my emotional wellbeing. Apparently, ice-cube crunching can be symptomatic of iron deficiency and is very common in pregnancy. Whatever it was that compelled me to crunch up to fifty ice cubes a day, it was bloody odd. Just the thought of it makes my teeth hurt.

  So my pregnancy adventure was nothing if not interesting.

  (And a blessing.)

  (And just a little bit crap.)

  * * *

  ‘When I was pregnant, I visited Toys R Us for the first time. This is the conversation I heard from a family coming out as I went in:

  ‘“I want a Minion!”

  ‘“You’re not having a Minion.”

  ‘“But I want a Minion! Waaaahhh!”

  ‘“You didn’t even know what a bloody Minion was before you went in there!”

  ‘I will never forget this.’

  Marie, Exeter

  * * *

  I Am Pushing!

  Childbirth fascinates me. Despite having been slightly traumatised sixteen years ago when I witnessed Sarah-Lou give birth on Corrie, I had more recently become a big fan of One Born Every Minute, and I was looking forward to having my own birth story to tell. I was also looking forward to bidding farewell to the surface spraying, vomiting and ice crunching.

  Labour is a proper rite of passage into motherhood, isn’t it? Whichever way the baby comes out (via the sunroof or down the lady-garden slide), it’s the point at which you gain entry to The Club. I couldn’t wait to earn my ‘I’ve Given Birth’ badge, and I planned to wear it proudly to baby groups, where I would exchange knowing nods with other mums who had birthed tiny (and on occasion not-so-tiny) humans from their bodies.

  I now have two stories to share and, when people ask me, ‘How was the birth?’ or ‘Was it really awful?’ I give my honest assessment, which is this: it entirely depends on which birth you’re asking me about, because I’m fairly certain the same woman did not give birth to my two children.

  If I had written this chapter directly after the birth of Henry, it would have been a pretty positive one. If I had written this chapter directly after the birth of Jude, it would have been a very short one (probably just ‘Holy shit!’). This leaves me with an interesting quandary. What should I share with you in this chapter? How should I pitch it when I am not even sure I have made sense of my feelings yet?

  So I have settled on simply sharing the two births as I remember them and reflecting honestly on a few of the thoughts I’ve had since. Here we go, then.

  The Birth of Henry

  After a false start bang on his due date (13 February), I went into labour properly on Valentine’s Day. It all started pretty calmly, with James monitoring the regularity of my contractions using the contraction-timer app on his iPhone as I sat bouncing on the exercise ball in front of Lorraine. (I bloody love Lorraine; she’s been there through many an important life moment, and it seems only right that she was party to
the onset of my first labour.) We engaged in endless chats about whether we’d packed everything in the hospital bag (me and James, I mean, not me and Lorraine). I’d unpacked and repacked the bag at least ten times because something I’d read on the internet said I needed two packs of maternity pads, and that couldn’t be right, surely? Then I had ‘the show’, which, despite sounding quite fun (and making me want to do jazz hands) was, in reality, gross. Just to be sure it was indeed Showtime, I ended up showing it to James, who was, understandably, disgusted. During that same hour (I think Jeremy Kyle was on by this point), my waters broke. It was all pretty textbook.

  It didn’t stay textbook for long, though, and I started vomiting quite badly. Cue James directing said vomit away from the new sofas and, in return, me giving him the death stare for worrying about the sofa fabric when I was preparing to expel three kilograms of baby out of my fandango. To add to the excitement, I could tell by looking at the colour of what was coming out of my fandango that something wasn’t right.

  ‘I think the baby’s shat in my waters – they mentioned something about this at those classes!’

  I therefore wasn’t at all surprised when, after waddling into the midwife-led birthing unit (the one we’d carefully selected for the least clinical and most naturally empowering birth experience that wasn’t our home), we were packed straight off to the hospital.

  Alongside the baby’s in utero dirty protest, my blood pressure was rocketing and, by the time I had my first examination at the Royal Devon & Exeter, the situation was confirmed: I had pre-eclampsia.

  Shit.

  Pre-eclampsia is some serious business which explains why there was a multitude of important people in the room whose brows were furrowed at all times. Apart from the contractions, which had intensified beyond the point of being able to chat comfortably to James about the choice of snacks he’d packed in his hospital bag (ha!), I was actually feeling all right. I was finding it more tolerable than I’d expected and, following a gloriously pain-free couple of hours (thanks to an epidural) and after my mistaken intuition that I was about to poo myself, baby Henry arrived naturally without too much fuss. If I had been filmed for an episode of OBEM, I would have been quite proud.