Wednesday 5 April 2017

Pregnancy's ugly side



Do those women really exist?? You know the ones, the really fit ones that have a better pregnancy body than me at my best when not pregnant.. She sports a beautiful tan all year round, has toned arms, no orange peel skin, you can see where her leg finishes and her ankle begins, her hair is perfect and of course she's glowing so much she does not need make up, and don't get me started on her wardrobe.. I was totally going to be her, every time I got pregnant, I was going to be different, I was going to be that sexy mofo and I wasn't going to have to get up at 6am every morning to achieve it, it was going to come naturally. A lot of things came naturally during pregnancy but not one of them were what's written above. 

Orange peel skin on my arms..yes! Skin pigmentation on my face..yes! Eczema on my knees and elbows..yes! Fat arms and ankles..double yes! Stretch marks..yes but not that many on my belly, mine decided to reside on my ass and thighs..bastards!! All of which I told myself I would work on after pregnancy, no big deal, a little bit of dedication to my body would be all it took. I'm on my third pregnancy now and I still tell myself that after this one that's it, I'm gonna have the body I've always dreamt of. To think I was like a rake when I was a teenager and ate like a horse, all I wanted was to gain a few pounds but couldn't. Then BOOM! I hit my 20's and the pounds rolled in.. just not the ones I would have hoped for.

I'm not one of those women that enjoy pregnancy all that much, in my first pregnancy I kind of felt I shouldn't admit that because I'm growing a baby inside me, and some women could only dream of that and people would think I was ungrateful. I definitely was not ungrateful and count my lucky stars every day but I couldn't keep up the 'loving being pregnant' charade for long. I know lots of woman that love pregnancy and I guess everyone has a different experience. Now ladies that haven't had their own experience on this yet.. don't let mine scare you, this is just one moany old cow's experience and will be much different to another not so moany cow.
My first pregnancy was the worst, so any pregnancy that followed was going to be a walk in the park and to be fair my second was pretty much just that. My third is becoming more like a wheelchair ride in the park if my pelvis keeps going the way it is. Oh momma, the pelvis pain is a biatch. I didn't really suffer with it in my other pregnancies but now it has me walking with legs spread, arse cocked out and a face like I just stepped in dog shit.
The first pregnancy really deserves it's own blog post, to be honest I've thought about doing it a few times but never had the bottle because I've never really spoke about it to anyone so going from that to telling everyone will take a bit of courage. Basically I had prenatal and post natal depression and probably only came to really understand it myself recently so I'll get to that blog in the future and tell my story. 

But more of what I didn't expect when expecting was migraines, sciatica, pelvis pain.. You hear you're going to be tired and may have morning sickness and or in a lot of cases all day sickness but there is so much more you learn the hard way. Not that you could do anything to prevent it but I personally found it helped to ground my unborn child until they turn 18 for the pain they put me through during pregnancy.. but each to their own.

Seriously though the stigma on pregnancy has changed a lot. I fell pregnant with my first this time 4 years ago and maybe it was because it was my first but I felt the midwives and doctors put the fear of god into me about what you should and should not be doing and shame on you if you weren't going to breastfeed. I didn't know any different so you go along with whatever they tell you because they are the professionals after all but in my next two pregnancies, breast feeding has not been mentioned to me once. After giving birth to Jesse my second baby, the midwives thought they might need to keep him over night in the extra care unit while I stay in the normal aftercare ward downstairs and so I asked what will that mean for me feeding him to which they responded "we will give him a bottle". Now if that was when I had Riley over 3 years ago it would have been a whole different ball game. I'm pretty sure they would have chained me to his bedside with my boob hanging over his nose just encase he fancied a sniff. They didn't have to take him after all so I went on to breastfeed as I had planned. I did so with both boys because I wanted to give it a go and turns out it worked for me. I know it does not for everyone which is sad for the women that really want to do it but their baby won't latch or they have inverted nipples and so on. Breastfeeding should be a choice made solely by the person who is choosing whether or not to do it and not by the pressure of anyone else around them that think they know better. If it's something you choose not to do or you simply cannot do it, please try not to be hard on yourself and don't think you will be missing out on a special bond because that is not the case. You and the baby you create and carried for nine months will bond just fine whatever choices you make on feeding them. 

With that being said, if you do decide to breast feed, let me give you a couple of tips that you may not be expecting. Again this is just my experience.
Day 3 is a bag of dicks!! By the end of it you will be frantically searching your hospital notes for the details of the Stork and a returns label but I assure you it gets better. Well it gets worse first but then it gets better. So day 3 works like this. Baby is getting used to being on the outside and is now ready for a proper feed, not the yellow drizzle they call colostrum, they want the white stuff and won't stop until they get it. Unfortunately all you got is the yellow drizzle but your new little bundle of wrinkles is just going to keep on sucking until that changes. So that's what happen ALL NIGHT LONG. 
Tip one: Keep swapping boobs. I didn't know to do this with my first born and as it was more comfortable to hold him on one side that's what I did and ended up with one Pamela Anderson size boob and one Keira Knightly size boob... great look as you can imagine. What I meant by 'it gets worse, then better' is that after all your baby's hard work at getting your milk to come through, you are now left with the burning pain of the devil on your burger sized bleeding cracked nipples. 
Tip two: For the next day or two hold your breath and curl your toes when your baby first latches on, and count.. just start counting. It will ease off by the time you hit 60 and by day 5 the pain is gone. If it's something you really want to do just know you need to persevere with that couple of days and it all gets a lot easier I promise.
Another tip on breastfeeding.. If you are going to leave your baby to go away for a night and plan on pumping during that night to keep the flow normal for when you get back to baby, DO IT. A full night sleep without having to get up to feed the baby is very tempting but when you don't pump and wake up drowning in your own breast milk feeling like someone has chained two kettle bells around your neck and left them hanging where your boobs should be then you realise, pumping for 10 minutes and going back to sleep is a much better option than the full night sleep... just saying!!

As for going pee pee after birth, take a bottle of luke warm water to the toilet with you and pour it over your foof as you go. It's simply the only way. If they offer you laxatives for your first poop, take the frickin laxatives!! The easier that bad boy comes out the better. 
I'm sure you will have heard of 'the baby blues' that come in the days after your baby is born. Don't be ashamed of them or try to hide them. In fact tell your partner about them before you even give birth because you can be sure he won't have had a clue about them. Let him know what to expect and not to worry or think you are going crazy, just tell him.. you're going to cry over dinner, half way through laughing at a joke, in the middle of the night and probably when he simply gives you a hug, just deal with it. Everyone goes through them, your body has been through so much change and your hormones will be everywhere so don't think it's anything less than normal. Have a big old cry and you will feel much better.
But as I was saying about there being a stigma on pregnancy and there after, I think society as a whole have become more lenient with the do's and don'ts of pregnancy, birth and parenting so the stigma has changed and evolved in so many ways in the past few years. It's not so scary anymore. People share their stories and have given up on pretence. I know I certainly have and it's the best feeling because it's one that's not so lonely. We are lucky to be part of this time and age. 

Now off I go for my 40th pee of the day.. peace out momma's xxx

Saturday 4 March 2017

Capture the memories.




My mornings consist of breakfast for the kids, coffee for me, a little play around while Cbeebies is on in the background. I tidy up, put on a wash, dress the boys all the while rocking my orange fluffy dressing gown, mascara stains under my eyes and 'baby hair' standing on end around my hairline. Then I will sort myself out. 
Usually Dave will have face timed us before I get to make myself anyway presentable and even after 10 years together where he has seen me give birth, he's held my hair back as I spew my guts up with one of my famous death hangovers, when it comes to the horrible lense that is face time I will cover half my face, and even during in depth conversations have the camera facing the kids rather than myself. When I do show myself I will be pulling very unattractive faces to poke fun at my tardiness rather than let my husband believe I think its anyway acceptable to look like this every morning he calls. He sees me this way when he is home but face time really does make you look fifty times worse than real life..or that's what I'm telling myself anyway. 

With that being said, the same goes for photographs. Even when I'm in full hair and make up I rarely get in a picture, I still don't feel worthy enough, there is always something about myself that will put me off. Shit, when did I become so hard on myself? I think it was when I had kids and my looks turned to shit, at least to me they did. 
So like all mums (unless you hate your kids and I'm sure you don't) your phone is filled with pictures of them. You don't have an ounce of storage left but you just can't bring yourself to delete one of them, even the one where they are picking their nose and crying their eyes out at the same time, it's not cute but you keep it anyway. 
This morning I looked through my phone and realised I don't have any family photos with me in them, apart from a couple of morning mascara selfies with the kids which usually get deleted straight away, there was two taken in the last year of me with my husband, and none of all of us together apart from one at Jesse's christening. I am always the one taking the pictures of the boys with their daddy. 

So bringing in my morbid side, I am someone that will always kiss and hug goodbye encase it's the last time. I will never leave or let you leave on bad terms encase its the last time. I will kiss my kids an extra kiss each night in case it's the last time. It's a fear I'm sure a lot of people have. But today I thought what if it actually was the last time, what if today something against my will had taken me from my family. Would my kids grow up to forget everything about me because I felt to ugly to get in a picture with them, so they never had one to treasure? What if today was the last time I see my husband, there would be very little of our precious memories stored on a camera of us together, growing up together, starting a family together. And what if it wasn't the last time, what if we all stayed around for a very long time and my kids grew older and moved out and started their own families, I myself wouldn't have any photos to look back on of me with my beautiful little bundles because I felt to ugly to get in a picture with them. 
I have one picture of just myself and my mother, one picture ever and it was on my wedding day, what if that was the last picture I got to take with her. No pictures of us just sitting together laughing at something silly or a picture over the Christmas dinner table, no memories captured. 

Having been living in England for the past 10 years I have missed out on a lot of memories being made within my family, birthdays, a few Christmas's, random nights out, new nieces and nephews coming into the world and this makes me sad. I don't want to waste anymore memories, I don't want to be the one watching the memories from behind the camera, I want to be in them. 

Becoming a mother made me forget myself, sit in the background and take in all that is beautiful around me but never letting myself be beautiful in it. I really did lose myself, I am a mother and a wife but my individuality disappeared when those roles came into play and that needs to change but only I can make that change so from today I am going to do just that. I don't mean I'm going to go around with my phone stuck to my hand all day taking selfies with every person I pass on the street but I am going to take photos and get in them. I'm going to print them and hang them on the wall. I'm not going to analyse every feature of my face and hide half of them because they showed my double chin. I'm going to embrace that double chin and my baby hair and every other part of me I criticise every day because if it was the last time, my children are not going to see any of those things, they are going to see their mother who in their eyes is beautiful no matter what. They will see the woman that brought them into the world and shared all these beautiful memories with them and captured them all to treasure forever, they will be grateful for that. I will be grateful for that. So don't waste any more time. Take a picture now and be in it, capture that memory and save it forever. Don't regret it being the last time.

P.S. These few pics show me today starting to get snap happy with my fambam xx



Saturday 11 February 2017

A little bit of the here and now


A little bit of the here and now



Sunday morning, I knew this was going to be a colourful week. I am the type of person who needs someone to blame as a coping mechanism if something goes wrong. It can never just be my fault at the time, it doesn't work that way. So this day it was my mother's fault. The clock in her kitchen was slow, she should have changed the battery, it is her fault I missed my flight back to London.
I ran into the airport with Jesse going at Lewis Hamilton speed in his buggy to be told the gate had closed five minutes ago. It depends what day you get me on, I may have argued with the lady that couldn't do anything about it, I may have cried but today I just said OK that's fine. That's probably why the lady seemed to feel bad for me, looked at Jesse, then at my protruding bump and gave me a sympathetic look. Nope that didn't get me on the flight, it just made me feel like raggedy Ann when I looked down to where she had been looking and seen I had a big dirty tyre mark across my bump while of course wearing white. I'm sure she was wondering how I managed to get run over by a pushchair but it must have happened in my fight to pull it out of the car boot in the rush to catch the flight. 
Anyway 100 Euros later we were booked on the evening flight to another airport that would bring my husband an extra 40 minutes drive to collect me right bang on the boys bedtime, cranky household all round this evening me thinks.. AND ITS ALL MY MOTHER'S FAULT!!

Monday went smoothly, got the kids to bed and just got comfy on the couch when Jesse started to cry, I lifted him out of his cot to be met with projectile vomit all down my front. He was hot and bothered and just not well bless him, he had caught the bug. I took him downstairs to calm him down and change his clothes when he vomited on me again, and again so we went back upstairs and I put him into my bed only for him to vomit again. It was going to be a long night. 
Five days later he has drank very little, eaten nothing and is now basically pissing out of his ass. He has been over the top clingy but you don't mind, your baby is sick, you just want to make him feel better.. for the first few days anyway. Now I'm losing my mind, he will not let me out of his sight and I'm just like, come on man this is getting old now, I'm pulling my hair out. 

Thank goodness Riley hasn't caught it from him, Everyday I'm waiting for him to throw up everywhere and yes on Wednesday morning he tells me he is really really sick and needs to see the doctor, when I ask him where the pain is, he tells me it is in his cheek so I think we're good on the bug front. Yesterday I was at work, he told Dave he was really sick again but it turns out he was just hungry. So apart from the fact he is going to be a major hypercondriac, he has so far escaped the dreaded bug.

On the plus and productive side of my week, I made a treacle cake for the first time which was a hit. Riley started to use the potty to take a dump yesterday so this is means to celebrate, no more secret shits under the table in his pants. And best of all, I became an Aunty again to a beautiful little girl, Daisy. 

Now it's Saturday night, I've managed to write this blog, Bridesmaids is on TV and I have a tub of Ben and Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie staring at me so I bid you a good night whatever it is you're doing after this long week with the kiddies.