20 Things No-One Told Me About Becoming A New Mummy

1. There will be plenty of days when you won’t be able to shower or brush your teeth until you have back-up (until Sam gets home from work), instead you will be pooed on, sicked on and dribbled on. Yay for being clean!

2. Being a mum is the best diet ever! There’s no time to eat… that is unless you survive off cookies. They’re easy to grab on the go.. Don't judge me :-)

3. A hot dinner is very rare. Say hello to cold chicken kievs with a side serving of cold beans. Mmmmmmm my fave.

4. You will do ANYTHING to make your baby smile!

5. Changing nappies isn’t actually that bad. When you breathe through your mouth.

6. Even if you have an unlimited amount of bibs and burp cloths, you will always run out of bibs and burp cloths.

7. Babies get real life acne! But they still have the best, softest, yummiest skin in the world, so don't worry.

8. The first few weeks aren’t always the hardest. Weeks 9-12 were hardest for us, which are the weeks everyone tells you will be sooo much better.

9. Infacol will save your life, or in other words - make your baby burp. It's not always as simple as a quick pat on the back, so forget everything that films/TV shows like to tell you. Dammit.

10. Babies don’t always like to lie on their back… which means mum and dad get to stay up all night cuddling, rocking and holding the little darling - wahooooo!

11. You will sit and stare at your baby doing absolutely nothing for hours on end and not get bored.

12. You will miss your old life no matter how great your new one is. I miss spontaneous adventures and "just nipping out" so much!

13. You will have the best and weirdest conversations with your baby pretending they're saying slightly inappropriate things.

14. You will make up ridiculous songs and sing them a lot.

15. Dad jokes are real. Sam enjoys saying “just call me Steve Jobs” whilst he does jobs around the house, ho ho ho.

16. Babies can (and will) PROJECTILE poo.

17. Baby poo looks like MUSTARD.

18. You will have a ridiculous amount of conversations about poo.

19.  It can be SO hard to leave the house without another person (or ten) to help. And if you do just about manage it your baby will throw up/ poo/ scream JUST as you're about to walk out the door.

20. You will worry about  every single thing, even when the rational part of your brain tells you to chill out… “OH MY GOD SHE HAS SLEEP DUST IN HER EYE!”

1 thing everyone did tell me about being a new mummy

1. It's true what they say, it is all worth it.

See you soon!!

xx

Back In Business... My Labour & Delivery Story!

Hellooooooo strangers! I realise I’ve been absent for a crazy amount of time, not sure whether to say sorry in case no one noticed/ cared ha ha! But I haven’t lost the blogging bug so I’m going to try my hardest to make a comeback… woop woop.

I’m currently writing this one-handed while I feed the poop machine with my other hand, so it’s crazy to me that the last time I blogged was my 27 week pregnancy update! Oops ha ha. I now have a 13 week old little bubba called Eva…

…so although I have loads of blog ideas I should probably start with my labour and delivery story? I always love reading these anyway!

(another cheeky Eva pic because... why not?)

My Labour & Delivery Story

So it was the 26^th November and my last day at work before maternity leave, as although I wasn’t due until the 16^th December and only 37 weeks pregnant I decided to use my leftover holiday days and go early-ish to get some much needed rest and relaxation before bubba arrived… ha ha ha… it didn’t happen!

I got home from work all emosh from saying bye to my work buddies and being given lots of lovely gifts, and cooked a sweet and sour chicken meal for Sam and I (exciting stuff I know ha ha) and as I was cooking it I was getting some Braxton Hicks (fake contractions that don’t hurt too much). I didn’t think anything of it but decided to take my make-up off, tie up my hair in a gross bun and get in my PJs. As I was doing this I literally thought to myself “imagine if I went into labour just after doing this and I’ve gone from looking moderately OK to disgusting at a time when I definitely won’t be bothered to make myself look nice again but definitely will have loads of photos that will be looked at forever… ha ha ha just imagine!” STUPID ELLEN.

So about 10 minutes later at around 9pm the Braxton Hicks turned into more period-like pains and actually started to hurt quite a bit. Sam half-joked about me being in labour and I told him “obviously not - I’m only 37 weeks” as I had convinced myself bubba was going to be late and make me be in hospital over Christmas. STUPID ELLEN.

The period pains quickly became worse and I was switching between lying in bed making cow noises while Sam secretly timed how far apart the pains were (5-6 minutes) and sitting on the loo convinced I needed a wee every 2 minutes. This went on for around an hour I think until Sam informed me (while relaxing watching the football, the cheeky poo brain) that Google reckons I’m in in the VERY early stages of labour as I could talk through the contractions and that these pains could last up to 2 weeks. To which I replied “2 weeks?! I’m not doing this for 2 farting weeks!!!” Or something along those lines ha ha. So I forced him to ring the midwifes, who basically said that because my waters hadn’t broke, I hadn’t had a bloody show – lovely, or any other labour signs, that there was nothing they could do yet. So I then forced Sam to ring my mum who said to go in as it sounded like it could be labour, so I forced him to ring the midwifes again and basically tell them I’m coming in. I managed to put on some leggings, tie my hair in a plait and hop in a taxi. I also somehow managed to keep the cow noises at bay in the taxi and to not release my wrath on Sam when he told the driver he didn’t think I was in labour ha ha! (He claims he did this so Mr taxi man wouldn’t be worried about blood and guts going on his nice taxi..pssshhhh.)

So a mere 2 hours after the pain started, at 11pm, we got to the hospital where it all kicked off. As the midwife examined me through my cries of “I can’t do this! Please help me!” …cringe… my waters broke among the other lovely labour signs that happen. But praise the Lord I was 4cm dilated and allowed the drugs – wahoo! I had Diamorphine injected in my leg which was AMAZING and was taken to the delivery room.

This is where it gets a bit blurry due to the lovely drugs, but I think I pretty much slept/ felt like I was sleeping in between contractions, which still really frikking hurt, until not long later when the midwife came back in the room and I declared “I feel like I need to poo!” … oh the cringe, the cringe… so she examined me and I was somehow 10cm dilated and ready to push – so crazy! Sam was amazing the whole time watching everything and obeying my demands of “don’t touch me” and “I need water” to which he panicked and brought 4 bottles ha ha which I had one whole sip of! Oops.

I started pushing and was totally crap, it really stung so I kept stopping before I did a good amount and I was doing really embarrassing screaming! Haaa. So the midwife suggested that I put my screaming energy towards pushing instead, to which I weirdly replied “I’m sorry I know I’m not doing very well, I’ll try better next time” ha ha ha!

And I did, wahoo. I silently pushed and it only took a few of these great pushes before her head was out – OUCH by the way – and I had to do the small pushes to get bubba totally out. And at 12:50am on Wednesday 27^th November, only 4 hours after the labour pains had begun, my little munchkin Eva entered the world at 6 pounds 11 ounces! N’awwww. She was so cute and lovely and all perfect. But I decided to continue to cringe myself and asked “Is she small?” “Does she have 5 fingers and 5 toes?” … why do I do these things? Ha ha.

After all the excitement was over it dawned on Sam and I that because we hadn’t expected to be in real life labour, and once we had realised we assumed it would take many hours so Sam would be able to pop home at some point… we hadn’t brought the hospital bag(s). I’m a heavy packer!

So while I lay naked, covered in blood, holding my new baby and staring thirst-strickenly at the 4 bottles of water that were JUST out of my reach for an hour and a half, Sam went back and got everything. He came back with his Dad who tried to come in before I shouted “Don’t let Eddie in, I’m naked!” Haaaa. And then I hobbled into the shower, introduced Eva to her Grandad, drank some water and was wheeled through to the maternity ward where I stayed for the next few days.

Sam was forced to leave really quickly so I was all alone with a new baby which was pretty scary, and although I don’t remember much because of the lovely drugs my texts to Sam indicate that I had a pretty bad first night with a crying baby and no clue what I was doing ha ha. And I do remember waking up like “where the hell am I?!” then rolling over and seeing my lovely little monkey and remembering!

This is mega long so I won’t jibber on about the stay in hospital, but I will say that the midwifes – one in particular – were AMAZING and despite dreading staying there beforehand, I have really good memories and they helped me and Sam (and of course Eva) out soooo much.

If you managed to get this far I hope it wasn’t too long and weird to read ha ha, and I definitely consider myself lucky to have had a 4 hour labour! It definitely hasn’t put me off doing labour again and I actually think being pregnant was worse ha ha.

I’m going to try and blog once or twice a week – we’ll see how that works out – so I WILL see you soon!!

xx