The due date of Kate and Wills’ baby has been announced – and, what was the press’ first reaction? ‘But Saturday 13th July is slap bang in the middle of the Coronation Festival!’ Although we know the press love to exaggerate, perhaps that is something Kate’s best friends’ should be giving her a heads-up about? As the baby won’t be timing itself according to a Royal schedule!
Along with our Royal Bump Watch we started thinking that we know Mum’s love to tell their labour stories and note how useful (or not so useful) their partner was: every first-time Mum has heard endless tales along the lines of ‘I went into labour on the tube’ or ‘he actually suggested I toned down my language!” But, after talking to Kate Ladd, the Mummy behind the ‘Makeshift Mummy’ blog, and Laura Schwormstedt, blogger and photographer of ‘Side Street Style’, we came up with six revelations first-time Mum’s could really do with knowing before they give birth:
1. A whole new level of shattered
If only each Mum-to-be got a fiver every time they heard ‘get as much sleep as you can now!’ they would be rich. Yet Kate Ladd says, “when I brought my son home and he slept I literally said to my mum, ‘what do we do now?’” So there’s one thing first-time Mum’s might wish they had been told – you might not know quite what to do with yourself, even when a bit of that ‘much needed’ shut-eye might seem like an option.
2. Be prepared to start battle with car seats
This one is actually from Louise, my colleague, and her Mum who was once the matron of a busy maternity ward. Louise said “I’ve always considered myself lucky – thinking that I’ll surely know all there is to know about giving birth, with my oh-so-knowledgeable Mum there.” Well, as it turns out, not so much. Louise’s Mum recounted to her how she left the hospital and drove at 30mph along the dual carriageway with Louise’s tiny baby brother slipping in the car seat. An hour or so earlier both Louise’s Mum and Dad were out in the February snow desperately fighting with a car seat that justcouldn’t have been made for a two-door car.
3. Expect the unexpected – if you can!
What about when it comes to the birthing process? We all know there is a wealth of choices out there – home birth? Water birth? C-section? However Laura tells of how she “had to be rushed into an emergency C-section – having planned a water birth with calm music, no one had even mentioned the possibility of a C-section as I had a fairly easy pregnancy.” Things don’t always go to plan, and that relaxing CD may just have to be saved for another time.
4. ‘What’s that Mummy?’
Another point that comes to mind for Laura is that no one told her “after you have a child you cannot actually go to the toilet or have a shower without an audience”. I think Laura’s said it all there…
5. It’s just natural
Going back to the birthing process again, Kate notes that she wasn’t prepared for sickness and diarrhea, she says “I was warned not to be embarrassed of our bodies natural functions when it came to the baby crowning but not all of this leading up to that moment.” We know it’s all a part of giving birth, but a little extra warning at the start may have been helpful?
6. Nothing beats it
Perhaps the biggest one for Laura, though, is that “no one can explain the immediate love you feel, as soon as he or she is in your arms you wonder what your life was like before they arrived.” Of course there are undoubtedly going to be moments when Kate Middleton wishes she had been told this-or-that before – but the most important one, the ‘immediate love’, is one that first-time Mum’s just can’t be prepared for.