THE BEST KEPT SECRETS

*Disclaimer - this has some gross content! WARNING only mums can handle the truth

This blog edition will be dedicated to sharing with women from all walks of life the best kept secrets about pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood... will it be a beautiful recount? highly doubtful... will it be warm and fuzzy? not likely... but will it leave you with tears of laughter and being completely grossed out? BOY I HOPE SO 😂

I love a good dot point being a drama teacher so let's jump straight into it...

PREGNANCY (the ultimate stitch up)

• ALOT of people will tell you it can take up to a year to fall pregnant. And I am not here to brag or be horrible to those women who would do anything to be able to fall pregnant (you are amazing) but I need to warn you that it CAN happen straight away and it did for us ( I was not stoked to find out I was pregnant the day before my work Christmas party and after a 12 week alcohol free boot camp challenge) but here I am and wouldn’t change it for the world.

• You can get take a few days to get over the gender reveal, especially when you thought you were having a girl and really it's a boy! (I cried for 3 days) and it's okay to be upset.

• Your bump has a period of being super cute and petite... and then overnight you become a wilder-beast and just a swollen mess really.

• The indigestion is HECTIC during pregnancy. You really do picture yourself with a cute little bump, wearing floaty dresses and apart from the bump you stay exactly the same. Haha instead for me it was a mix between fire burning up your esophagus and you searching your wardrobe for an oversized anything that will fit your kankels, beer belly and somehow locate your neck.

• When I hit about 24 weeks in my pregnancy journey was when I realized I should have bought shares in Baby Bunting and Gaviscon!

• Morning sickness is the pits but you can get these wafer things that go under your tongue that stop it - like doctors… come on? Why not just be like congrats you're pregnant, the blood test is positive so here’s the wafers your going to need pretty much for the next 40 weeks! Don’t make us ask? We don’t know what’s coming for us? Just give us a welcome to the shit show pack and be done with it!

• Nose bleeds- believe it or not, it can happen! I will never stop laughing at my hilarious colleague Michael’s face when he walked into the staffroom and took this picture of me with a tampon up my nose on the opening night of our school musical that I was directing at 22 weeks pregnant.

• At a certain point you can’t see your feet or your pearl. Like at all? It’s outrageous and it creeps up on you!

• The almighty clean and sweep... WTF? I changed to a female obsetrician right towards the end of my pregnancy since we relocated right before bub was born. But I’m so glad it was her for the pure fact she had little hands😂. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine my obsetricans entire hand anywhere near my hooha let alone basically touching my belly button. This was totally messed up and NOONE told me what this was until AFTER it happened... Bitches.

• Gravity is not your friend! I had two falls whilst preggo in a puddle at my mums basement and during one of my drama classes doing a demonstration 😂😂 like you think you are the same physically and I thought I was totally killing it but really I was just waddling the streets!!
  

• At 39 weeks pregnant DO NOT EAT a vindaloo curry because some flop on the internet says it can induce labour 😂 I DID IT. And it resulted in a fire breathing dragon in my throat from the intense indigestion all night, as well as a baby doing backflips for 12 hours in my already stretched to capacity stomach. Let's just say I was pumping back gaviscon like it was a jagerbomb at Cocktails and Dreams in 2006.

• Nandos peri peri chips whilst pregnant is just so bloody good... you’ll be driving 30 mins out of your way to sit in a dark corner of the restaurant eating them. Honestly, you’ll be moaning every mouthful 😂 and I wonder why I put on 22kg whilst pregnant! My addiction got so real that my year 11 drama class started posting pictures of them eating peri peri chips on our class page in my honour!

• Private health DOES NOT cover the cost of having a baby. It's actually a stitch up because it barely covers half your costs and you are out of pocket so much that you will need to sell your left kidney by the time the baby arrives (if you don't lose that in labour too).

• The back ache... is not a joke! For 40 whole weeks your back aches. Until you give birth and the sweet release is amazing for about a week and then you start breastfeeding and the pain is BACK with a vengeance.

• Most new mums don’t go early! It’s hilarious we all think we are going to and then you just keep waiting and waiting - believe me when I say..the last two weeks are the longest of your life.

LABOUR (the crime scene)

• oh Jesus… THE WATERS BREAKING. So many of my friends actually never had their waters break naturally, so all I had to go off was those cutesy rom coms (imagine my surprise) Anyway I was induced… so they broke my waters manually and I was not prepared for the TSUNAMI that came next. I’m talking straight up Niagara Falls type shit - it was maybe the grossest thing I have every experienced in my entire life!

• I was so shocked and horrified at the whole situation... The obstetrician at my 6 week check up said "yeah Bliss you were horrified at that weren’t you... I just can't believe that was the worst moment for you".

• Every time it rains I get flashbacks 😂 and what makes me laugh the most is that about a week before I was in labour, I rang emergency when I thought my waters broke - and the midwife said wait to see what happens in the next few hours... I thought they were so rude and crazy... but honestly it was like a singular tear drop and I thought I was going into labour haha (Gosh I'm an idiot).

• BLOOD - all I’m going to say is it’s a crime scene. During the labour and for weeks after like? Come on grannies why you gotta keep that shit a secret.

• Don't pack a liner for the afterbirth (I had no bloody idea maternity pads existed)... haha you need the thickest grossest maxi pad the world has ever seen - think of it more as a flotation device 😂 and some disposable underpants - THE BIGGER THE BETTER, nothing worse than putting a pair on and splitting them down the sides 😂

• The dreaded induction/c section disaster... Not only do you give labor a good old crack when they literally put you on a drip of synthetic hormones making you feel 1000% more of everything but you could still end up with an emergency c section - where you're still having contractions as they attempt to stick a spinal tap in you. The doctors are all like “are you so excited to meet your baby” and you're like ugly crying “just give me a minute whilst I feel as though a semi trailer is trying to fit through a grape inside of me” then they stick this giant needle in your back and say can you feel this “MATE IM FARKING FEELING EVERYTHANG”. And those women that tell you their birth was a beautiful zen experience... just know they must smoke a crap load of ganja😂

• I would describe the pain of labour as just this absolutely horrible pressure in waves and they come and go - It's ALOT... but I think pregnancy and the first 6 weeks after birth is worse than labour.

POSTNATAL (after baby is born)

• This one makes me laugh but not a little laugh a horrific cackle and brings back a shit load of trauma - mums TRIGGER WARNING. I'm going to take you back to the days that follow labour when the doctors say to you "have you been to the toilet yet"… 😂 and your all like "yeah I’ve done a tinkle" and their eyebrows go up and they say "no we mean a number 2". Cute and self conscious you say "oh not yet hehe"… and then at that point they go into their pocket pull out 10 sachets of movicol and slide it across the dinner tray with a popper of prune juice. LIKE come on… where was that scene in all the rom coms 😂 I won't even go into what happens when the number 2 comes for the first time.

• For me, I did not sleep much during pregnancy as I was just so uncomfortable especially towards the end. Honestly once Bub is born, even though the sleep is broken, I slept 1000 times better I'm talking deep, dreaming and drooling sleep too - AH BLISS.

• The intense respect you all of a sudden have for other mums is insane. Like when you leave the hospital and go out in public with your pram, sleep deprived, coffee in hand and pacing the shops to get ya newborn off to sleep and you see another mum doing a drive by… you just nod with a sly grin, make eye contact and just wanna start singing "gotta catch me riding dirty" by Chamillionaire.

• You become obsessed with your child's poo - like obsessed... my husband always reminds me about how I was telling midwifes "well today he did a little pesto poo" 😂

• Bottles… some babies won’t take them and it doesn’t matter what you try. They are also a bitch to clean and if you can get your baby to take them lucky you, but congrats now you will spend 90% of you're life cleaning them for the next year.

• I wasn't prepared for just how utterly your life is changed forever and even if you wanted to go back you can’t. The new normal takes a while to adjust to, no sleep ins, no lazy trips to the toilet, no washing the treatment in your hair out till these no soap left, no warm coffee or tea, no trips to the cinemas with your partner and long lunch (unless your baby takes a bottle and loves a babysitter).

• When you think you have mastered the art of motherhood and your finally killing it... a tooth happens, or they start rolling, or eating, or gastro or maybe they hit a leap and your learning journey starts all over again 😂

The craziest thing in the world about all the worlds best kept secrets is this one...even if you LOVE your job and thrive whilst working… you may just wanna stay home with your baby forever and this one folks is something I NEVER thought would happen to me. So I am just going to keep writing some blogs for you to enjoy and relate to, with the hope that the money fairies drop a giant wad of cash on me from doing these blogs and my little Stormy & Me side hustle. With the hope to see Stormy grow up for a bit, before he ends up cutting his hair into a mullet, wearing addidas fits and not wanting to know me anymore 😂. There you have it folks... the best kept secrets. Until next time go shop my website 😂 www.stormyandme.com Bliss xx Ps… as gross as that was... you got one laugh? come on...