Sonia Neale - Bad Mothers Revenge

Theres something about a teenage daughter. Her photographic memory can retain every nuance of the convoluted plot of her favourite soapie. Her analytical brain can dissect character motivations and likely dramatic developments. But can she take an accurate phone message? Nah. It was one such wrongly taken phone message that brought Bad Mother Sonia Neale into my life.

My first contact with Sonia was an email I received from a woman, a stranger to me at the time, whose daughter had told her that a radio station had phoned. Was it by any chance, the emailer enquired, me at 720 ABC in Perth? It wasnt, but her email about the trials of one family sharing a phone made me laugh out loud, a rare and welcome event on a working Monday morning. And so it was, from this initial email, that a friendship and a radio spot were born.

There followed two years of wonderful, honest, funny radio segments and now this book, which will resonate with anyone who has ever been, or who has had, a mother. It has been a time filled with shared stories of the sane and insane consequences of motherhood.

Our children know that mothers are far from perfect, for which we do not thank the advertising and film industries, which rarely show the lowdowndirty side of family life. But mothers know that there is no halo delivered after the placenta. Or, if there is, mine got lost, probably somewhere under the massive mountain of laundry waiting in vain for some attention to be paid to it.

No, we mothers remain the same funny and flawed creatures we were before we gave birth. We are capable of many low acts: slipping the boring, boring Thomas the Tank Engine book surreptitiously into the log fire after one reading too many (yes, I have done that), the kids put to bed in their school uniforms to save time in the morning (not yet inflicted, but kept in mind as an emergency strategy), the hissed instruction not to tell friends that the reason they have to get off the phone at 9.30 at night is because mum has finally served dinner (happens every night).

Not that its a one-way street. There is such a thing as the kids revenge.

Such as the penetratingly clear voice of the 3-year-old child in the supermarket queue, urging me to look at the size of that womans bottom How big must her toilet be? A few years later (quite a few) the same daughter is now studying beauty therapy. I get to interrupt my working day to be the guinea pig in her waxing exam. Motherdaughter bonding over my bikini line was never mentioned in any parenting manual that I ever read.

Its precious moments such as these that Sonia observes from her own life and the lives of her own family members and preserves for those who follow, thereby providing them with evidence of the real truth of parenting.

Relish this product of Sonia Neales creative mind. It has taken the family, its love and loyalty, its cunning and ruthlessness, and turned life into tales we can all recognise as the outrageous and heartening behaviour of our own families. Its all about love and survival the best of both that we can manage.

Read, and recognise yourselves.

By the way, I sometimes wonder who did ring Sonia in the first place and if she is still waiting for her to return the call.

Rosemary Greenham

Senior Producer

720 ABC, Perth

P.S.

My second daughter has just read this foreword and assures me that its all yuck. Situation normal, then.

A: Fornication, Gestation, Lactation, Frustration, Vexation

In the Beginning

Youre pregnant! said my doctor, fifteen years ago.

Immediately, I sank into a state of blissful consciousness a state of mind Supreme Buddhist monks spend six months of deep meditation and extreme fasting to achieve.

And there was more bliss to come much more.

It wasnt until I threw up my breakfast of olives and salami on toast every morning that I truly knew what cravings and morning sickness was all about. Just looking at my toothbrush guaranteed an extra blissful heave.

A pre-paid, pre-pregnant holiday to Bali left me feeling queasy; every morning I hung over the toilet bowl in our Legian Hotel. Not so different from when Id been to Bali before, in a non-pregnant state, when I somehow always found myself listlessly resting my chin on the rim of the toilet seat, heaving my guts out in exactly the same fashion. Nothing to do with the pub crawl the previous evening of course, and everything to do with drinking the local water.

Thats my story and Im sticking to it.

When we got back from Bali, my boss informed me that daydreaming about impending motherhood was not in my job description, so I had to give up paid employment.

By this time I had a preggy brain, a state of mind that remains with some mothers until the last child leaves home. I spent the next six months rocking in my armchair, eating for two and watching my kneecaps slowly disappear.

I had no qualms about giving birth. I was having a drug-free, natural birth. Just how hard can it be to breathe and push?

Confidence is a state of mind, never more so than when you are completely ignorant of the facts.

And I was still as ignorant after attending ante-natal classes as I had been when I first walked into the class. Giving birth, I truly believed, would be a series of mildly uncomfortable contractions followed by a slight burning sensation when the babys head crowned.

These little pearls of wisdom were of course written by a man who would never have had the pleasure of delivering something the size of a bowling ball from an orifice the size of a ping-pong ball. If men had to give birth there would be only one child per family. Eventually, not only would we have zero population growth, but wed also end up with population zero.

The mirth of birth

Having a birth plan is not quite the same as giving birth.

I planned my pregnancy according to the books and glossy magazines I read. Trouble was, my pregnancy hadnt read the same books as I.

I was sixteen days overdue, had gestational diabetes, varicose veins and a haemorrhoid the size of a maternity hospital before high blood pressure dictated I be induced. Postnatal depression put in an appearance even before my baby was born.

In other words, prior to giving birth I felt I had already failed as a mother.

Failure #1: The induction

An induced twelve hour labour, an alarming dose of pre-eclampsia and an epidural that didnt deliver what the glossy magazines had promised it would had not been part of my birth plans.

Pain was never an option. In fact, pain was not an option in any event of my life. Breathing exercises were highly overrated. Besides, should pain occur, the drugs and the spinal tap were going to take care of that particular problem.

Finally, I came to the conclusion that a birth plan, as with a hospital bowel management plan, was yet another of lifes oxymorons. No amount of laxatives or enemas can ever prepare you for that first excruciating crap.

If your baby rips you a new vagina then the first post-delivery bowel motion is akin to ripping you a new anus.

Failure #2: My unbreakable waters

OK, so it was a teaching hospital and we had let our medical insurance lapse so we could afford a new nursery. But now, with hindsight, I can see that paying a hefty monthly fee for insurance would have been far less painful than having a medical student spending sixty minutes up my whatsit trying to break my waters.