Last month I had to buy two dresses for weddings we were attending and for the first time in my life, I had no idea which styles suited my body. I needed something that could keep the puppies in, but let them out for breastfeeding, and I also needed to minimise the appearance of my post pregnancy weight, all whilst looking hot to trot. Outfit after outfit was discarded and panic started to creep in as I feared that I wouldn’t find anything and that if there was any hint of post-pregnancy weight, people may comment. Looking back I feel sorry for the boyf who patiently shopped with me and didn’t pull out his eyes with a clothing hanger…

Every week we are being marketed to by magazines that spew out headlines and stories about how whatever A-Lister or Z Lister lost their baby weight. We used to know that losing the baby weight was a gradual process that happened over the year after your baby was born, but now we’re being led to believe that your figure should snap back and that you can exercise off the weight and be out in a growler grazing skirt by the time your baby is a month old. I’m an intelligent woman that knows the score really, but society’s obsession with weight means that I have times where I lack the confidence but have plenty of doubt about my body.

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I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t competitive. I like to overachieve at work, win board games, and I’m still sulking that the boyf has a far bigger brain than I do on Big Brain Academy, an accolade he achieved by taking advantage of my pregnancy befuddled brain. However, when I took up this motherhood mallarky, I expected caring and sharing, not entering into an 18 year long marathon with women who attack their roles of motherhood as a cross between professional mum and rehab member.

Like thousands of women around the country, I took out a National Childbirth Trust (NCT) membership and paid to take their antenatal classes. It’s supposed to be great for meeting people who are going through the same experience as you from the same walks of life. It’s basically a mothering club for the middle classes when you break it down… The initial get-togethers were quite funny, bitching about being huge, too big and tired for sex, and feeling like you were constantly showing off your va-jay-jay to complete strangers. As they all popped and my baby stayed in its warm little oven rather stubbornly, I admit to feeling my only tremors of competition as I realised that despite being due second, I was in danger of popping last…

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One of the things that I learnt before I endured being induced, thirty-six hours of labour, a tens machine, gas and air, pethidene, thirteen epidural top-up’s (and that’s not including what they gave me for my emergency c-section), plus morphine, and God only knows what else, is that when it comes to babies, expect the unexpected.

We planned to be in our new house two months before she was born, but we exchanged on my due date and moved on the day that I was being induced. I remember driving back to our new home after dropping off the keys to our old place and noting that I had to be at the hospital in four hours. The adrenaline that I had operated on had suddenly been replaced with the terrifying fear of pushing something the size of a melon out of something the size of a lemon and I sat there shaking with my legs clamped shut.

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