Victoria Emes - Welcome to Motherhood, Bitches: The Real Guide to Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2022

FIRST EDITION

Victoria Emes 2022

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Source ISBN: 9780008453558

Ebook Edition February 2022 ISBN: 9780008453565

Version: 2022-01-04

The advice and information in this book should be used to supplement rather than replace the advice of your doctor or another trained health professional. If you know or suspect you have a health problem, it is recommended that you seek your doctors advice before embarking on any medical programme or treatment. All efforts have been made to assure the accuracy of the information contained in this book as of the date of publication. This publisher and the author disclaim liability for any medical outcomes that may occur as a result of applying the methods suggested in this book.

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For Rob, Oliver and Edith

Hello, bitches, its so lovely to meet you. Im assuming youve picked up this book because youre curious about having kids, youre currently up the duff, or youre stumbling through the early days of parenthood with a mattress-sized sanitary towel between your legs and wondering what the hell has just happened. That, or youre killing time in WHSmith, waiting for your flight to Ibiza. You lucky bastard. Either way, Im going to take a wild guess and say youre probably here because youre searching for something that most parenting books have failed to deliver: the brutal truths about early motherhood. Well, youre in luck, sister, because as the title suggests, thats exactly what Im hoping to administer.

Some of you may already know me, while others will be wondering who the hell I am, and what authority I have to be writing a book about motherhood. Well, let me tell you, Im no one special, or spectacular. Im just a very average woman who happens to be a mum, and who accidentally gained a tiny ounce of recognition on the internet talking about motherhood from a frank, and hopefully funny, perspective. Im no more of an expert or a specialist than anybody else; the insight I have gained into motherhood comes from my own lived experience of having grown, birthed and nurtured two babies, and that in itself has been quite an education. But dont worry, the information and advice shared in this book hasnt just been plucked out of my anus. Its been informed by up-to-date research alongside input from a team of experts including a midwife, a sleep consultant and a breastfeeding specialist.

From a very early age, I knew I wanted to be a mum; in fact, I was a tad obsessed about my future unborn babies. While my peers were busy role-playing being doctors, astronauts and superheroes, I was preoccupied with shoving pillows up my jumper and pretending to be pregnant, birthing my dollies out of my tiny foof and breastfeeding my plastic offspring from my milkless bee-sting nips. Nothing carried as much significance to me as the prospect of one day becoming a mum. But fast-forward thirty years of pining over random babies, blowing many many frogs to find my Prince Charming and finally arriving at a place where motherhood was in reach and BAM! I got pregnant, and everything I thought I knew about carrying a child, giving birth and finally having a baby of my own turned out to be a load of absolute bollocks.

See, the biggest secret of motherhood is that in reality its actually fucking hard yet no one seems to talk about it. Not just from the physical perspective of having to grow and carry a child for nine months and then squeeze it out of your vagina, but also the mental and emotional toil that being responsible for the life of a tiny human can involve. Despite spending my formative years trying to latch a plastic dolly on to my tits, motherhood did not come easily to me. From the outset it felt like a torrent of physical, mental and emotional headfuckery that left my body feeling like a tattered ragdoll and my mind in a permanent fog of unknowing. Becoming a mother made me feel more alone, isolated and bewildered than I have ever felt in my entire life. And all at a time when I needed support the most.

But thats where I hope this book will come in handy. Think of the next thirteen chapters as your pregnancy, birth and postpartum BFF. Its that special kind of mate that you can get outrageously drunk with, tell your deepest darkest secrets to without the fear of being judged, and who will hold your hair back reassuringly and ensure you take regular sips of water when youre violently vomiting up Jgerbombs at the end of the night. This book is that bird. Solid, sound and surprisingly practical in a crisis.

Over the course of reading this book, you will learn more about what to expect from the physical, mental and emotional onslaught of having kids, as well as exploring some of the more taboo aspects of pregnancy, birth and mothering that other parents are too embarrassed, afraid or ashamed to reveal and that, funnily enough, are never included in parenting books or antenatal classes. Well start with Pregnancy: theres an alien in my uterus, where youll discover some of the weird and wonderful ways in which carrying a baby transforms your being. Then well move on to some essential pre-labour tips and tricks to lube you up for birth in Birth Preparation: Getting ready to ruin your vagina, before tackling the main perineum-splitting event of actually having your baby in Pre-labour, Labour and Pushing and delivery. This is followed by the aftermath of having extracted a human watermelon out from your uterus in The aftermath and Welcome to Babygeddon, before moving on to the remaining chapters exploring everything from the struggles of breastfeeding, the hell of sleep deprivation, learning to love your postpartum body and navigating sex for the first time after giving birth. Then well round off with a little delve into feeling like an isolated loner in Loneliness: marooned on the Island of Motherhood.

I will use the term mother/mum in this book as a catch-all for anyone male, female or other who is tasked with the duty of full-time childcare. However, the content is very vagina-heavy. Being a cis white woman, I am aware of my privilege and how that would have shaped my experience of pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period, but Im hoping the information within this book will have universal appeal to every mum out there, no matter their background. It contains everything I wish Id known before having my babies; from swollen vulvas, dinner-plate areolas, shitting in labour, the horror of postpartum haemorrhoids, losing your confidence and identity, going out of your mind from sleep deprivation, right through to salvaging a sex life when your pelvic floor feels like its going to fall out of your vagina. Had I been prepared for all of that and the rest, the journey into motherhood might not have felt like such a massive kick to the vag.