So you're pregnant! And never before have you simultaneously felt so happy and terrified. Whether you found out from the doctor, tested yourself with a home kit, or simply realised that perhaps the weight you were putting on wasn't actually the result of a lazy summer holiday, during which you did nothing but lay around eating pizza and cake.
You've had your first check up, informed the father, told your parents (and noted the scornful look on your mothers face which told you that she doubts your ability to care for a gerbil, much less a human baby), spread the news to your friends and now you are sat at home, staring at your tummy thinking.there's a little being inside of me.
People often say that your life changes when you have a baby but it actually changes when you get pregnant. Because from then on, nothing in this world means anything if it can't in some way be related to you and your experience of being a parent-to-be. Even conversations about politics will have you espousing fanatically about how we need to change the world for the better. For your child of course. Forget everyone else. The whole global warming issue, which previously you thought was so trivial you actually went out of your way to buy plastic, is now of great concern. Every bit of ice falling into the sea constitutes, to you at least, a tragedy of epic proportions and your pregnant-less friends will be taken aback to discover this new green side to you. You should bear in mind though that not everyone can be as righteous as your good self, and screaming at them in Starbucks about the extremely slow degrading rate of the polystyrene cup you just knocked out of their hand, will not do you any favours.
There is also the tendency to believe, now that you are carrying your precious cargo, that the whole world should revolve around you and you will find yourself constantly surprised that no-one else seems to hold this belief. In fact, most people will expect you to carry on as normal. For nine months you will feel that you are the most amazing human ever to have graced this earth but at the same time get the distinct impression that not everyone is understanding this concept as they should be.
When dealing with pregnancy, especially in the first few weeks, you might experience an ever so slight nauseous feeling in the morning. Some of you may skip this unpleasantness altogether and some of you may take it to a new extreme and find yourself throwing up whenever you see a certain food. Or smell a certain smell. Or simply when you are able to catch a breath of fresh air.
There will come a point when you are ready for your first ultra sound scan. And nothing could prepare you for the feeling you will get when you stare at that screen, hear the amazing sound of the heartbeat and realise that you can't make out what the hell it is you are looking at. Sure the doctor will point and tell you that this is the head, the body and you will smile and try to look as if you can see it too. But reality is slightly different than the image you had in your mind before you went there. And as fantastic as it would be to see your baby sitting there waving at you, all you're likely to see is a weird shape that looks disturbingly like a cashew nut. But it doesn't matter. It's your baby, you have seen it and you can now go away with a photo that you will show to everyone you meet. And they too will think it looks like a cashew nut but they will be too polite to say so.
You will also have the option to find out whether your baby is a boy or girl. Whilst not important to a lot of people, it does give you the advantage of being able to eschew the ambiguous colours when buying clothes and go for the pinks and blues. And choosing names becomes easier of course.
Once you get into your second trimester you might start to show a little and decide that you need to rush out and buy Mothercare. Before you do, you might want to read this.
Stepping into a baby shop for the first time gives you a rush of excitement. Slow down, don't run around dragging your partner by his tie throwing items into your trolley with no regard for your bank account or the shop assistants who are getting in your way. Yes there are a lot of wonderful, beautiful, gorgeous things which your baby absolutely must have but you need to know a few things.
1 : Babies are tiny. Whatever you buy for it to wear as a newborn will be two sizes too big. Unless you have a huge baby. In which case you have other things to worry about.
2 : Even tiny babies grow at an enormous rate and whatever you buy for it as a newborn, it will grow out of in exactly 2 days.
Or a month or so.
3 : Avoid anything that doesn't have poppers. It doesn't matter how adorable it looks, if it doesn't have poppers, it's not worth the price tag attached to it. As much as it may pain such a fashionista such as yourself, practicality is rule number one. When you wake up to feed your baby at 2 in the morning and realise that its poop has made it's way out of the nappy and up it's back, you don't want to be fiddling with buttons. Seriously, you don't. You need to be able to take one suit off and put the next one on in the least amount of time possible.
4 : Buy enough but not too much. You don't want to find yourself exhausted, with a pile of washing and realise that the clothing your child has just ruined was the last clean one available. On the other hand, you don't want to be changing him/her every few minutes simply to get some wear and tear out of the hundreds of outfits you bought. And bear in mind that when you are pregnant, people will buy you baby clothes. Lots of them. Complete strangers will be handing you canary yellow sleep suits on the street and because they're for the baby, you will take them. They may be ugly as sin, but you will be compelled to keep them all and make the baby wear them at some point.
5 : Apart from clothes you will need a baby bath, changing mat, nappies, lovely soft baby towel, dummies (if you're going down that road), cuddly all in one coat, pushchair, and various other things which may catch your eye. Toys are optional. Babies are very easily amused and although that 30 mobile you're eyeing up will indeed stimulate it, so will you merely by looking at it and talking to it.
All in all, buying baby things is great fun. Just don't bankrupt yourself over it. Apart from clothing and a few essentials, your baby needs nothing but you. If anyone tries to tell you that unless you buy the most expensive items, or that if you don't immediately bombard your baby with a million toys and coloured swinging things, he/she will be forever stunted in intellect and growth, then tell that person that your parenting will come from here (point to heart) and not from here (point to purse). Then give them a smug look and walk away.
CHOOSING A NAME
Unless you're a celebrity and therefore feel it necessary to burden your child with a horrible name that will scar them for life, you will probably take a great deal of care when choosing a moniker for your little one.
Maybe you and your partner have decided that you should choose a name together. Maybe, after hearing some of his choices, you are now seriously wondering whether he has any style or taste at all. Avoid names that are fashionable only because of celebrities. Britney may have sounded nice 7 years ago, but how does it sound now, on the heels of the car crash that the namesake became?
Exactly.
Definitely avoid acting like a celebrity when choosing a name. Apple, Princess Lilly and Peaches are all well and good when all you have to do in later life is flounce around drinking shots and getting photographed. When your daughter decides to become a high court judge however, suddenly it's not such a good idea.
Don't forget your last name. A mistake made by many a parent is the fact that they neglect to say the name together with the surname to see how it sounds.
A girl I knew of had the name Candice Dick. Say it out loud.go on, I'll wait.
See? They wanted their daughter to be called something graceful and serene, and ended up making her sound like something you'd buy at Brighton beach.
Another factor to keep in mind is that names get shortened, rhymed with and all manner of things once the child gets to school. Make it as hard as possible for some unruly ragamuffin to make fun of your child by turning his/her name into something that can be laughed at. Your child will be forever grateful to you.
LATER STAGE OF PREGNANCY
Once you get towards the third trimester you have so many things to look forward to, I don't even know where to start.
You'll get bigger. Even if you don't get that big, you'll still feel like the size of a small village and it will take extra effort to do even the simple things in life. And by simple, I mean putting shoes on and getting out of bed. Your back will ache, your feet will ache and did I mention that you won't be able to get out of bed?
You'll forget occasionally that you can no longer do human things like bend over and pick something up, and, at times you will try and then stop short when you remember that you actually can't anymore, and that now the baby's foot is caught under your ribcage.
Your stomach will get so huge that you will be able to balance things atop of it whilst sitting down. Your partner will find this delightful. Being interested in gadgets and all that, he will be thrilled to bits to discover that his beautiful, loving woman can now also be used as a table. You'll find this amusing the first few times. He will find it amusing constantly. So when it comes to the point when you're tired and hot and your feet have swollen to the size of balloons, and you sit down and suddenly find a Budweiser can perched on top of your bump, look at him and sweetly say;
Yeah, that's funny. How funny would it be if I got up really quickly so this can of lager spilt all over your PS3?"
Wait for him to gently remove beer can and then demand a massage from him.
It will kick you too. The first time you feel the baby move, it's amazing. You grab the nearest person's hand and shove it on your belly. Then when it kicks, they go "ooh" and immediately take away their hand. And then they walk away from the crazy lady with the supermarket trolley full of cheesecake and Gaviscon.
It really is great, feeling life move inside you. The only thing is, as you will come to discover, is that your baby is apparently something of a nocturnal soul and whilst you are preparing to go to sleep, he/she is preparing for a night of foetus dancing and jujitsu. So when you finally DO get to fall asleep in-between the gastric acid attacks and the general uncomfortable-ness of it all, don't be surprised if you are rudely awoken by your prodigy lashing out at you from within.
If it makes you feel any better, wake up your partner so he can enjoy this special time with you. If he grumbles something about how lovely that is but he needs to be up for work, gently (by which I meanreally hard) kick him in the shin and act like it was an involuntary jerking of your leg.
Even the most sympathetic of partners will eventually mumble something like, you'd think no-one had ever been pregnant before'.
It's all very well playing the martyr but some men just don't get it. When you say,
Don't worry, I'll serve dinner in a minute after I've finished washing the floor and taking the rubbish out'..some men don't actually understand that what you really just said was,
DINNER? ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?'
They don't understand that in your mind, you are eyeing up every blunt instrument in view and weighing the potential damage it could do if thrown at them.
So tell them. Men shouldn't have to guess if its hard for you. And neither should it be taken for granted that they know. After all, in their eyes, women HAVE been doing it since the beginning. Some men are excellent, others aren't so good at knowing when women need help. Tell them.
MISCELLANEOUS THINGS
Were you the type of person who only really needed to empty her bladder a few times a day? Could go the length of a movie or even the whole night without needing to rush to the loo? Welcome to your new world. A world where a toilet should only ever be a few feet away from you, just in case. A world where the slightest pressure on your stomach (say for example if someone strategically places a marshmallow on it) can make you need to go. It's not fun, but you do have an excuse for getting out of any situation repeatedly by shrugging apologetically and making your escape.
It used to be the known thing that pregnant women had to "eat for two". Then some spoilt sport male doctors came along and said, actually, no you don't.
But you can. Because maybe your partner never heard about that new advice and even if he did, you can always claim you heard they had reverted back to the original. If he asks where you heard this, simply say "Google" and say that you'll show him as soon as you've finished eating your second pizza.
If he then looks at you suspiciously, simply ignore him, switch over from Top Gear to something more girly, take the batteries out of the remote and eat them too.
Sooner or later, probably around the 7 month mark, you should get your bag ready for when you have to go into hospital to have the baby. I cannot stress how important it is to have this bag ready before you go into labour. You might think that because you can pack a 2 week holiday bag in 10 minutes and organise the workload of 10 people, that you can manage to get a few things in a holdall in a short space of time. After all, it's not like you go into labour and have the baby straight away.
But what if you do?
Ok, you probably won't.
But what if you do?
Believe me, when your waters break or you feel that first contraction, the last thing you want to be doing is sorting out an overnight bag. You definitely don't want to leave it to your better half. If you do this, you will get into hospital, open said bag and find a games console, a bag of Doritos, 13 pairs of knickers and a copy of yesterdays Guardian.
Just get the bag ready. You will need your things and you will of course need baby stuff, including lots of nappies, baby wipes, cotton wool, and anything else you can think of. Don't bother with books and mp3 players, thinking that when this is all over you will lie down and relax a little. Assuming your baby actually GIVES you time to relax, you will spend that time staring at your new child. Trust me. You will.
And that's all you really need to know about pregnancy. Sure, there's loads more but it's ok.
You'll be ok.