One minute you are pouring over Prada pumps, PDA in one hand and a vodka Martini in the other, the next minute you are freezing your breast milk in a Jiffy bag and bulk-buying maxi-pads. It happens so fast and with such velocity that you are left open-mouthed and reeling.
My fanny feels like I have been on a fourteen-day bareback Lesotho pony trail; my boobs have expanded from A-cup to EE in three days and it’s not as much fun as I thought it would be. In fact, it’s so not-fun it’s scary.
I have a pile of magazines by my bed that make the assumption that I might be interested in making a decoupage changing table with an illustration of an Egyptian goose. But worst of all, everyone is talking to me in the third person and calling me ‘mom’. As in: “OK mom, let’s whip off our knickers. Let's just take a quick look at your labia.”
All those nights of antenatal classes, the hours with magazines and books, the endless talk about being pregnant. Well that’s all over in a few hours and then you are left with a dearth of information, a bruised punda and a seriously outsized frame.
There is nothing that can prepare you for the initial shock of arriving home with a newborn baby, nor for the twelve months that follow that arrival. Not the horror stories from vindictive friends who have been there and survived, not the glowing but misty memories of your mom and, most certainly, not the pregnancy magazines with tastefully soft focus fanny shots and tubby moms with grimaces.
You cannot give it back but you can’t let it out of your sight either. From an ass-kicking career girl you become incapable of even remembering whether you sleep during the day or at night. The answer is neither.
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