thing they dont tell you at your ante-natal class

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Things they don’t tell you at your antenatal class.

1. Midwives are not care bears who will automatically adore you and want to make your labour as pain free as possible. They are underpaid, overworked women who dislike being swore at on a daily basis. Be nice to them and they may get you the good drugs.

2.However though be aware when it comes to drugs, petherdine will make you look like you are on crack.

3.Demand feeding is not something you do just for the first year; it continues until the teenage years. The toddler stage of demand feeding often occurs in Tescos with chocolate treats packaged in cbeebies characters. As your child matures the constant rooting for milk changes to juice, to fizzy drinks and eventually to your bottle of Jim Beam.

3.Whilst stressing the importance of your pelvic floor, no one really spells it out that if you don’t do 800 pelvic floor exercises daily you will wee yourself when you laugh, sneeze or cough. To this day I cannot watch Gavin and Stacey without wearing a tena lady.

4. Once your baby has established a sleeping pattern and lulled you into a false sense of security; teething, bed wetting and night terrors kick in therefore guaranteeing you will never enjoy a full nights sleep again.

5. Expressing milk will make you feel and look like a cow in the milking parlour.

6. Practising latching a baby on with a plastic doll in a room full of pregnant people is absolutely nothing like the real thing.

7. After a natural labour you can resume your marital pleasures as soon as you feel ready. For most new mothers this almost always coincides with the desire for a second child. For most new dads it is a couple of weeks after the birth when their brain has managed to erase the image of something the size of a large melon popping out through their pleasure centre.

8. If you have one baby you will marvel at how women who give birth to twins cope; if you have twins you will marvel how women with triplets cope. If you have quads chances are you won’t cope.

9. After having a baby you will not be able to watch a romcom of any description without welling up.

10. Finally the beautiful wriggling baby you hold in your arms, that you spent hours of agonising labour pushing out will one day tell you he wishes he had never been born. (Odds are he won’t mean it!)

48 thoughts on “thing they dont tell you at your ante-natal class”

  4. I agree, that should be a leaflet. let me know if you do I do it for a living.

    Completely brilliant and 100% true down to the last detail. You should tweet it as “A note for all mums-to-be”

  7. LOL!
    You missed out
    -how much blood comes out of you for days after the baby has been born and how you will sometimes need two maternity bricks in your knickers to deal with the flow afterwards.
    – how stitches sometimes don’t dissolve and have to removed at your 6 week check
    and how you will be so paranoid about whether your breastpads are up to the job, that if you are at the supermarket and some perfectly nice old bloke tells you your milk is leaking, the first thing you will do it put your hands on your tits to check, instead of inspecting the 2 litres of semi skimmed in your trolley.

  8. My midwife should have been a CareBear – two babies and I never swore once… *may have been so whacked out on g&a and pethedine that she talked bout all the tools in her dad’s garden shed between contractions instead*

  11. Brilliant! I am a step mother to a boy of 9 since he was 15 months old. I do have some experience of potty training, terrible two’s and general child drama, but I only have to cope at weekends! My husband and I want more children but not quite yet! So refreshing to hear some truth (even if a little tongue in cheek!). I can’t bear it when my mummy friends fluff it all up! I await further posts with excitement and will be taking notes! Great post!
    Bouche aka Jo x x x (jojo_nash on twitter)

  12. All so true! From my experience, now mine are 4 and 7, I can eventually enjoy a full 7 or so hours sleep a night which isn’t often disturbed now, however I am so dog tired after 6 years of no sleep, it feels like it makes no difference at all! I live in hope…….

  13. I just love everything you write,you’re so close to the bone,always. Keep them coming so that all women can be prepared. Fore-warned is Fore-armed after all. Xxx

  14. Hilarious, totally brilliant and 100% true. I still have ‘milking parlour’ flashbacks. And was too paranoid to use milk that had been frozen – still have a freezer shelf fully of the stuff. What an ‘udder’ waste of time that was!

  17. Classic – and so true.

    They also don’t mention that your parenting for your first child (by the book, leaping to attention at the mereist wimper, quiet, calm) goes out the window for any subsequent children who get shoved in the corner and have to learn to cry with real commitment for any attention.

  19. Brilliant post. I admit that I was so emotional after becoming a mother that I even cried at some adverts, I was quite pathetic!

  20. Pingback: Post of the Week III: Things they don’t tell you at your ante-natal class — Notes From Home

  22. Wonderful – you should teach anti-natal classes. You may have to occasionally say ‘sit down, stop crying’ when covering number four on this list, but I think your students will leave the course much better prepared for the terror, er miracle of birth.
    ~M

  23. Came here from ‘Notes from Home’. Very funny!

    Another thing they don’t tell you: helping a child with maths homework is like childbirth all over again, but without any presents and cards at the end.

  24. Brilliant post – just one more thing – once you have had the baby and look at your stomach, dont panic it will reduce in size, but never completely – fact!

    I also think there should be one done for men!
    Bx

  26. what a LOL, brilliant post! i can see why it was post of the week!!

    i actually beely laughed. it is so tue, i am dreading the day they turn round and tell me they wish they had never been born….!!

    see you soon, tamsyn xx

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