The
Yummy Mummy’s
Survival Guide
Liz Fraser

For Harry

OK, I know it’s not much, and you’ve read it already at least once, but it’s the gesture that counts. Maybe you could use it to stop the spare room door from banging when the window’s open? Oh, and while you’re in there, is there any chance you could have a quick look at my laptop—it’s gone funny again. Dinner at 6? Love you xx.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

A small note to begin with, just in case you wanted to know

What is a Yummy Mummy?

PART ONE Before It All Starts

PART TWO Pregnancy—The Early Days…

PART THREE The Middle Bit

PART FOUR Nearing the End

PART FIVE The Birth

PART SIX A Yummy Mummy is Born

PART SEVEN Your First Few Months

PART EIGHT The First Year

PART NINE You

PART TEN Baby Things

PART ELEVEN Life With Your Baby

PART TWELVE New Relationships

PART THIRTEEN Going Back to Work

And Finally…

Details of Stockists, Services, Manufacturers, Organisations

Index

Acknowledgements

About The Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

A small note to begin with, just in case you wanted to know

Here’s the only breathing exercise in this book: I am not a perfect mum (sharp intake of breath). In fact, I have never met a perfect mum (and another), and the chances are fairly high that you won’t turn out to be faultless in every way either (and, exhale). Despite our best efforts at self-improvement, domestic perfection and bum-firming, we are all real, faulty women, and we all come with a certain amount of rubbish-Mum-ness attached. And thank goodness for that, because otherwise it would all be hideously boring, and we’d have nothing to moan about.

My own route into motherhood was fast and furious: while my more sensible university peers went off to make money by getting fast-tracked into one glamorous, exciting career or another, I threw my science degree in the ‘I have no idea what to do with you’ bin, asked Mr Right to marry me (he said yes, thank goodness), and I found myself on my own fast-track to maternity clothes a year later, at the grand old age of 23.

Gulp.

And then the trouble started: the dreary, mumsy parenting books available to me left me, without exception, feeling like a highly unattractive, undesirable, lardy has-been, condemned to a life of grime, grudge and goo. According to these books, I would spend the rest of my days wearing shapeless, stained clothes and sharing vomit and poo stories with other lardy have-beens. My brain would be locked away in a secure vault to which I would be given the key some twenty or so years later.

Oh help! What had I done? Where were the beautiful, funny, appealing books about motherhood, which would treat me like a thinking woman complete with faults, worries and a shoe obsession, instead of like an impossibly perfect mother? Why couldn’t I find a stylish book about motherhood, which I wouldn’t have to hide behind a copy of In Style on my way to work, and which would tell me how my life would change in the coming year?

And that’s where the idea for this book started: I would write it myself.

Alas with a new baby, a sizeable streak of laziness and a Blockbuster video down the road, I didn’t get round to it, and it was soon forgotten, along with a million other ‘brilliant ideas’ I had dreamt up while making playdough sausages.

But now, eight years and three children later, I am coming under increasingly heavy fire from a barrage of questions about pregnancy and motherhood, launched at me by those same old friends, who are finally coming to join me down in the playground. They want honest, practical, relevant information about how to do the Yummy Mummy thing, and still keep their bodies, brains, wardrobes and lives in stylish order, and they seem to think I know…

In a bid to get some peace and quiet, I have written down everything I have learned about pregnancy and what you may experience in the first year of becoming a mother, in the most unpatronising, honest, unfrumpy way I can. Yummy Mummies have complicated, ever-changing lives, and we are required to glide seamlessly between different moods and personalities at the drop of this season’s must-have headgear. To reflect this, I’ve written this book in several different moods, which you can turn to as you need them. You will also find extracts from my diaries, which should cheer you up and offer plenty of reassurance, and there are also strings of pearls of maternal wisdom from gorgeous Yummy Mummies, to whom I aspire daily.

The only thing I ask of you, dear, gorgeous reader, is that you are able to laugh at yourself. The key to surviving motherhood is to have a wicked sense of humour, and never to take yourself too seriously. And that’s it. Enjoy it, take it with a pinch of salt where required, and I hope that some of this helps!

What is a Yummy Mummy?

It’s probably best that we get this rather crucial question answered before we go any further, just so that we are all on the same wavelength.

There are loads of different definitions being bandied about these days, so I shall give my own one here, and refer to it throughout the book when I talk about Yummy Mummies.

Yummy Mummy, n.

A mother, of any age, who does not identify with the traditional, dowdy image of motherhood. While she knows her Gap from her Gucci, she is just as happy with a charity shop bargain as an occasional, very necessary splurge, and doesn’t want to give up on trying to look lovely just because she is a mother.

A Yummy Mummy is a skilled all-rounder: she tries to keep fit and healthy, loves spending time with her children, knows it’s OK to break down and cry and (almost) never forgets to cleanse and moisturise. She can cook, amuse a baby and make work phone calls at the same time but, never one to take herself too seriously, she can laugh when it all goes wrong. A Yummy Mummy tries not to let being a good, loving mother utterly compromise her personal style and outside interests, and is always there to help her friends when they need her. Often juggling family and a job, she finds being both a mother and an independent woman very hard at times, but tries her best to make it work for her family, and for herself.

A Yummy Mummy is the ultimate modern woman.

PART ONE Before It All Starts

Prepare, Prepare: What You Should Definitely Do Before Getting Pregnant (or what you should have done months ago, but could start now)

Growing a baby is like any other form of DIY: preparation is key. How you react to this first section depends entirely on your current situation (and on your sense of humour). If you are not pregnant yet, and you bought this book because you are somewhat curious about what lies around the next Big Corner, or you hope you might get pregnant soon, this is very good news: you still have a few months to play with before the big OFF, and there’s plenty of opportunity to lay down some solid foundations.

If your bun is already rising in the oven, and you are merrily cruising down the road to Yummy Mummyhood, then some of what you read may sound a tad gloomy and depressing, and you’ll be kicking yourself every paragraph or so. (As maternal luck would have it, one of the manoeuvres pregnant women can still do is kick themselves. Where’s the justice?) Please try not to get too cross, and take heart from the fact that much of this preparation is never done by millions of perfectly gorgeous and healthy mothers every year.

For everyone else, like me, here are some things which, if you do them for about six months before you become pregnant, should reward you with an easier and healthier pregnancy, and will make life after the birth a lot less, errr, wobbly.

1. Get Fit

As the perfectly formed people at Nike tell us, JUST DO IT. Even bold, capitals, italics and a forceful-looking font don’t convey the importance of this Top Tip. Obviously, if you’ve never seen a pair of trainers before, then now is not a good time to start marathon running. But, being the self-respecting woman that you are, you probably look after your body well, and are reasonably fit already. This is excellent news, and a great position to start from.

Pregnancy plays the most havoc with your stomach, so if you can get your abs strong and toned before your pregnancy, you’ll carry the baby better and you will get back into shape much more easily. I do speak from experience here: I was least fit before my first baby, and have become fitter and stronger in between each of the others. (Something to do with a growing fear that I’ve been lucky so far, and everything is about to fall apart and flab out all over the place!) My body coped and recovered much better the stronger my tummy muscles were before I started expanding, and it made getting back into some decent clothes much easier. Pain, gain, blah, blah.

Babies get very heavy towards the end, and having strong legs helps with the whole ‘lugging yourself up flights of stairs’ problem. The same goes for your back: strong back muscles will make carrying the baby much easier and less painful.

Something else to start toning up is your pelvic floor muscles. Pelvic what? Ha! Now we’re really getting somewhere. Another of those ‘never heard of them before I was pregnant; will think of them for the rest of my life afterwards’ things, your pelvic floor muscles are the ones which allow you to stop weeing halfway through weeing, if you see what I mean. In a nutshell, they are completely trashed when you give birth, and unless you sit at your desk squeezing them in and holding for a count of three while your computer re-boots, you will never get on a trampoline again without incontinence pants. And Agent Provocateur don’t make those, in case you’re wondering…Strengthen your pelvic floors now, and you’ll be able to jog, jump and sneeze while your best undies stay Martini-dry.

2. Clean Yourself Out

If you’ve ever tried to detox then you’ll know what a joyous, exciting time you’re in for, but, equally, you will know how beneficial it can be. Your baby is going to grow inside you, and if you’re clogged up with toxins then your baby will probably clog up pretty soon too, because anything which is in your blood will get into your growing baby’s blood too. It takes a while to flush all the poisons out of your system, so starting the clean-up well before you become pregnant is a good idea.

Stop smoking. Yummy Mummies don’t smoke.

Cut down on coffee. Coffee may taste great and be served in rather nice cafés absolutely everywhere, but it’s still a strong stimulant, and there has been talk that it doesn’t do growing babies much good. This may be why many women feel sick at the very smell of coffee in the early weeks. Clever old biology. The same goes for tea, if you can bear to give that up as well, but as with all things, use your head: the odd cup is almost certainly fine, especially if it cheers you up.

Drink less alcohol. (Unless you drink tons, in which case, drink a lot less.) Pickled babies are not cool or Yummy at all.

Drugs. Don’t really need to say it, do I? You’re intelligent—you work it out.

Don’t panic if you haven’t done any of this, and you are several months down the line already: you are almost certainly in the majority, but starting now is better than not bothering at all.

3. Become a Health Freak

Your growing baby is entirely selfish, and will have no concern for your wellbeing at all. It will drain all the goodness out of your body, leaving you with the dregs, the cheeky young thing. Because pregnancy puts such a huge strain on your body, the healthier you are before you start, the better you will feel, the better your chances of having a healthy, strong baby, and the more quickly you’ll recover afterwards. And it’s after the baby is born that you need more reserves and stamina than ever…So, eat tons of fresh fruit and veg, up the iron intake (it makes you less tired), drink lots of water, get plenty of fresh air and all that other healthy stuff you know about already. You won’t regret it.

4. Take Folic Acid

‘Top Scientists’ have found very good evidence that taking 400mg of this stuff for the first three months of pregnancy can significantly reduce the risk of your baby developing spina bifida. They now recommend that you get your levels up before you’re pregnant, and that you take it throughout your pregnancy. Not a lot to ask really.

5. Take a Special Multivitamin

Only take a multivitamin which is specifically designed for pregnancy. Certain vitamins are potentially harmful to the foetus if levels get too high, and the pregnancy multivits have just the right amount of everything. Bless those Top Scientists.

Some Good News

One of the best things about getting pregnant for the first time is that it shocks you into being more healthy almost overnight, and once you’ve learned some new habits, and have managed to give up the three vodka and tonics and a kebab on the way home from work, you might just hang on to them for the rest of your life. It may feel like a brutal change of diet and lifestyle to start with, but there are great benefits. There’s a good reason why pregnant ladies are said to ‘glow’ halfway through the pregnancy—anyone who pays as much careful attention to eating well and avoiding all toxins would glow after a couple of months! See your clean-up act as the best beauty routine ever, and it might not feel so hard. In fact, for many of you it won’t be hard at all, as your new body just doesn’t feel like ingesting tons of toxins every day. Anyway, you’ll be back on the double tall lattes before your baby can say ‘Mummy, are you sure you wouldn’t rather have an organic peppermint tea?’

Common Concerns of Future Yummy Mummies

This section is for you if you have ever worried about what it might be like to become a MOTHER (in other words, if you’re just like every woman I’ve ever met). Oh, how we ladies love to worry! The list of concerns and questions all future Yummy Mummies carry around in their heads is breathtaking, and it makes one fret for the future of the human race: will anything make all you potentially fantastic mothers take the plunge and actually procreate? Will any reassuring words overcome your dread of turning into a fat, boring Frumpy Mummy, who fails miserably at every aspect of baby care, and who never sees the inside of a fancy restaurant again?

I seem to spend half of my free time pacifying freaked-out childless friends who are terrified of committing to their perceived life of drudgery, lard and frumpiness. ‘Hang on!’ I cry. ‘Are you saying I’m lardy and frumpy? Did I know what I was doing before I started? Do I know now?’ No, no and no.

However, I have learned quite a few things about what it feels like to become a Yummy Mummy, and I’ll do my best to ease at least some of the stress. Where I fail, watching anything with Paul Bettany in it should relieve any furrowed brows.

Here are some of the most common worries my friends seem to have, and some mildly helpful advice:

I don’t feel very maternal—maybe I’ll be an awful mother

This is a disaster. You will never be a good mother, and you should book in for a hysterectomy immediately. You probably shouldn’t have pets either. Or houseplants.

I’m lying, of course: very few women feel very maternal before they have a baby, and most go on to become fantastic mums. (Many don’t even feel that maternal after the birth, but it’s not something people like to talk about. I like to talk about it a lot, and so I do in Part Five).

It’s not even clear what feeling ‘maternal’ means, anyway. In a similar way to how much libido a woman has, so women have varying degrees of maternal urges, and there’s nothing to say that you should be consumed with the desire to foster every child on the planet before having a baby yourself.

‘Feeling Maternal’ could mean any, or none, of the following:

Realising that babies and children exist.

Being able to sit in the same room as a child without feeling annoyed or put off your food.

Finding children quite cute.

Saying ‘Ahhhhhhh’ when you watch a nappy advert.

Starting to cry at the mere mention that somebody you know, or even somebody you don’t know, has had a baby.

Buying baby clothes when you haven’t even found a prospective father yet (and this is a sure-fire way never to find one, unless you keep it very secret).

Genuinely liking the smell of newborn babies, rather than just saying you do.

Being able to wipe somebody else’s child’s snotty nose without retching (I still haven’t reached this point yet).

Wherever you sit on this scale before you have a baby, you will almost certainly sit somewhere else afterwards, and not necessarily at the more maternal end. I didn’t feel the overwhelming urge to have babies before I became pregnant for the first time, and I was quite able to pass babies in the street without drooling. In fact, I was barely aware of their existence until I was at least five months pregnant, and that was mainly because I was checking out groovy pram models.

Happily, something inside my brain changed the moment I held my first baby, and I have been unable to hear a baby crying or see a child in distress since without being overcome with the compulsion to cheer the poor thing up. It’s just Yummy Mummy Nature doing her bit, and luckily it works for the majority of women. I’ve also had periods of feeling very un-maternal, for reasons I’m yet to understand, but these pass and I get back to being sickeningly in love with all three of mine very quickly.

Don’t worry if you don’t think you feel maternal enough: either you will become more maternal when your baby arrives, or you will remain as you are and do a perfectly good job of looking after your baby anyway. Worrying about it now is pointless: you just have to wait and see what happens, and stop telling yourself that you’re not kitted out to be a mother. If you’ve got a heart, a womb, some self-respect and a sense of humour then you’re good to go.

I don’t want to get fat

This seems to be one of the biggest off-putters for my child-free friends. I can’t believe how many pre-pregnant, gorgeous women freak out about this. Why should you get fat? If you’re not fat now, and if you care about how you look, and if you don’t want to become fat, then why should pregnancy make you fat? It’s a bit like saying: ‘I really want to go to Antigua this summer, but I’m worried I’ll get sunburn.’ Pack some sunblock then, stay in the shade and wear a wide-brimmed hat. Bingo—no sunburn!

Seriously, though, worrying about becoming fat during pregnancy is normal, because it happens to quite a lot of previously slimline ladies. But the news is very good: if you are careful about what you eat, if you continue to exercise and if you don’t treat pregnancy as an excuse to eat all the pies, then you will almost certainly not get fat. A little rounder-of-hip perhaps, but not fat. (See You’re Eating for How Many? in Part Three.)

What about the rest of my body? Won’t it be ruined?

No, it won’t. Lots of bits of your body will change, not necessarily for the better, but with a lot of effort most of this is perfectly fixable. If you are really worried about what will happen to your lovely body when you become a Yummy Mummy, then here are some honest truths:

You might get stretch marks, but many large mothers don’t, many skinny, childless women (and men!) do, and there are ways of reducing the damage, should you be genetically challenged in this department.

Your breasts will first become much bigger, and then much, much smaller and less pert. There’s always surgery, or you could, or probably should, just learn to like them that way.

You might get varicose veins, but rarely after a first pregnancy, and your genetic makeup has more of a role to play than any growing baby does.

Your tummy will become more wobbly for a while, but this is absolutely curable with enough crunching and squeezing, if wobbly’s not your thing.

But: You get a child at the end of it all, and no amount of wobble or droop can outweigh the positives of having a baby. Some perspective, please!

What if I mess it all up?

This is a hard one to answer, because I suppose you might mess it all up; you might be the worst mother ever known; you might leave your new baby in a motorway filling station by mistake because you were busy trying to open a packet of M&amp;Ms and got distracted; your marriage might fall apart because of the sudden droopiness of your boobs; and your children might hate you forever and turn to a life of drugs and crime. You might be forced to spend the rest of your life with ‘The Terrible Mother Who Messed It All Up’ tattooed across your forehead.

Or, you might just surprise yourself and cope very well. That’s the thrill of it—you have no idea how it is going to go, things change every minute and you just have to fly by the seat of your still-gorgeous pants and hope for the best. You may have to readjust what your idea of ‘the best’ is, to fit in with the realities of looking after a baby and keeping your sanity, but you are more than likely to do a fantastic job and not mess anything up at all.

What about my career?

This is a very tricky one, and, depending on what you do for a living, this could be more or less of a real worry for you.

Some types of work just don’t allow for Yummy Mummyhood at all, because they require your presence fourteen hours a day, 365 days a year (if, say, you are the Prime Minister), or because there are physical factors to take into consideration, like being an astronaut or something.

Assuming you are neither an astronaut nor the Prime Minister, then having a baby should not mean the end of your career, and any employer who suggests it does should be hung, drawn and quartered. Or something else which isn’t very nice. The only effect that becoming a mother will have on your career is that everything you do will be enormously more difficult and complicated forever: there will be logistical and practical hurdles involving childcare, illness and just getting out of the house on time, and every day will now carry a huge emotional burden.

If you do go back to work, three things will be different:

You will have to work harder than everybody else to prove that you are not a waste of company time and money.

You will feel guilty because you are not with your baby.

Your career progression will probably slow down.

If you can handle all of that, and can accept having to take a step back—or sideways—for a while, then some of the worry will be eased.

The real rub is that you, like most other women these days, have probably decided to think about having a baby at exactly the point in your career when things could really take off. You have worked hard throughout your twenties to reach a certain rung on the career ladder, and the last thing you want to do is jump off the ladder, only to be begrudgingly allowed back on somewhere near the bottom again.

This is fair enough. But a Yummy Mummy knows that having a baby is something important that she wants to do in her life, and she will find a way to make it work for her, somehow.

It all comes down to one question: which is more important to you—furthering your career now, or having a family now? Only you can answer that, and deep down you know the answer already. In this country we can, at last, have a career and a young family without drowning in other people’s scorn and too bloody right. But this long-overdue progress can’t solve the central issue: you can’t do both of them 100% of the time or give them both 100% of your energy and care. You just have to decide where the balance lies for you.

The only thing which is not OK is doing something you are not happy with because you feel pressured, worried or guilty, or because somebody forces you to. You do what you gotta do, and all will be wonderful.

I’m just not that organised!

No you’re not, and why should you be? I wasn’t, no mum I ever met was always as frighteningly organised as she is now, but by some as-yet-unexplained process you will become highly skilled at getting a hundred times more stuff done in a much more efficient and effective way than you can at the moment. You’ll still forget half of what you need to remember, but you will become more organised.

Chrissie Rucker, founder of The White Company

Don’t worry if you are not a very organised person yet—I was never organised at all, but having a baby changes all of that. You learn very quickly how to keep on top of things, and you develop your own system of doing things which works for you.

Isn’t it selfish to be a Yummy Mummy?

No.

Real Yummy Mummies dedicate huge amounts of their time and emotional energy to loving and caring for their children—but always reserve some time to make themselves feel special too, which generally involves bottles of sweet-smelling lotions and gorgeous things to hang in their wardrobes.

Real Yummy Mummies would rather spend time with their children than anything else—but realise that spending no time away from them is very unhealthy and can lead to lifeless hair and a deeply wrinkled brow.

If you are simply too selfish to look after your children properly then you are a Rotten Mummy, not a Yummy Mummy, and you don’t need a book, just a good telling off.

I’m too embarrassed about people poking around ‘down there’

Not much I can say to this one, except ‘Oh grow up.’ Doctors have seen it all before, and they really don’t (or shouldn’t) get a kick out of examining your cervix. Your vagina looks like the millions of other vaginas your midwife has already inspected, and there’s almost nothing which can embarrass them.

That said, there does seem to be an unfeasible amount of prodding, poking and measuring involved throughout pregnancy, and also well after the birth, and even the least prudish and most patient of you will be pushed to the limit. I never got used it, and I still hate being asked to ‘lie down on the bed and bend your knees up’. Except by my husband. Unfortunately it’s just part of being a woman, and the only way to deal with it is to stop thinking of yourself as a person and throw yourself into the glamorous role of ‘car going in for a service’. If you can be an Aston Martin rather than a Ford Mondeo that will also help.

I’m scared of all the pain

This is a very good sign. It shows you are a normal, healthy, sensible woman who knows that squeezing a hard object the size of a basketball through your very small and delicate parts will hurt like hell. It also shows that you have put some considerable thought into the ‘motherhood’ issue, and have already reached the critical stumbling block. Good. Now you progress past this point by realising the following:

Giving birth is the most painful thing you should ever experience. It is agonisingly, excruciating, faint-inducingly painful.

Once you have done it, no other pain will ever seem as bad (until you do it again).

Doesn’t the fact that some women go through it more than once show it can’t be that bad? Actually it is that bad, but Mother Nature has solved this by ensuring that…

You will forget how awful childbirth is almost immediately.

Not all women find childbirth terribly painful.

The drugs work. No pain; lots of gain.

Put it in perspective: when the result of this pain is your own baby, who will grow into a child, an adult and then the bearer of your grandchildren, and will fill your life with more joy and love than you can imagine yet, what’s twelve hours of pain, really? I would go through a month of pain to get the children I have now. Ahhhhh.

The pain stops abruptly once the baby is out. Most discomforts and pains linger on for ages and gradually just peter out. Not childbirth: it’s excruciating one minute, and then it’s completely gone the next. And that feels fantastic!

Going through childbirth gives you the automatic and unquestionable right to have the tapless end of the bath, never take the bins out and have a foot tickle every night for the rest of your life. If he does question this right, suggest you shave his testicles with a cheese-grater, and see how fast he moves.

What if things go wrong between me and my partner?

Not the most optimistic way to approach motherhood, but if you will examine every depressing possibility then I guess I would agree that having a baby puts a vast amount of strain on the relationship you have with your husband, or partner, or whatever we’re calling him or her. Whatever your relationship is now, it will be completely different once you have a baby, and even well before that moment actually comes. The only way of succeeding is to TALK about EVERYTHING and to know where you stand before you get too far down a road you’re not happy with. There is more about this in New Relationships in Part Eleven, but, until then, perhaps telling your partner about your concerns is a good idea, as is setting out to make it work instead of preparing for it to fail.

I’m too old/ I’m too young

Well at least you can’t be worrying about both of these!

There is no ‘good time’ to have a baby—what suits some people doesn’t suit others. I did it very young, which means I had tons of energy (never underestimate how important this is), my body didn’t suffer very much, by the time I was thirty I had all my child-bearing days all over with, (I think, but I still have all the baby clothes in the attic) and I will be able to wear my daughters’ far more fashionable clothes very soon. BUT, I missed out on my carefree, childless twenties, I didn’t manage to get my career going as I might have liked, my husband and I had very few years alone together, and I now have to do the career and kids things at the same time.

Older mums have the advantages of enjoying a successful career first, often having more money, being more self-confident and sure of what they want and wanting the time away from work to enjoy being a mum. BUT, it is harder to get pregnant as you get older (tick-tock, tick-tock); you will find the exhaustion harder to cope with; your body will probably suffer more and be harder to get back into shape; you will find all those years of independence and smart, child-free living very hard to leave behind; and you may find it harder to get back to work at the same level in your late thirties or early forties.

Both ways are good and both are bad. I would just urge as many women as possible to remember the biological clock. Science is great and everything, and there have been some huge advances in fertility treatments, but the wobbly bottom line is that, in the same way that 8 inch stilettos are not designed for rock climbing, so we are not designed to have babies in our fifties. We can still do it, but it’s a heck of a lot harder. Just wanted to get that off my pert-ish chest.

PART TWO Pregnancy—The Early Days…

On your marks, get set…what?

Here’s where our little journey into Yummy Mummyhood kicks off, and I start waffling about nipples, hormones, pelvic floor muscles and elasticated waists. Once we’ve started, there’s no turning back (which is one of the key concepts to grasp when you’re going to have a baby), so if you need a little Dutch Courage, go get it now, while you still can.

Ready now? Let’s go.

The first few weeks of your pregnancy can be the most exhilarating, debilitating, confusing and terrifying weeks you have ever experienced. Yippee. With your emotions bouncing around like Zebedee on speed, your body starting to do the most peculiar and unpleasant things, and your list of worries growing as fast as your certainty that this was a Good Plan is shrinking, you can be left wondering whether you really are only pregnant, or whether you have been transported to a parallel, less pleasant universe.

Things will get a lot easier, so if you can just get through the initial shock, everything will be cool…

Getting Pregnant—A Brief Biology Re-cap What’s the best way to conceive?

Have sex.

That really is all there is to be said on the matter, and anyone who gets themselves bogged down with sexual positions, moon phases, eating certain fertility-boosting foods, the right music, positive mental vibes or other mumbo-jumbo is wasting a lot of shagging energy. In my humble opinion. If you have sex, you might become pregnant and that’s the end of it. Having difficulty conceiving is no laughing matter at all, and it’s one of life’s cruellest tests. Unfortunately life is how it is, and some people are just more fertile than others. How you decide to go about raising your chances is up to you, and there is a lot of detailed information out there on the subject. For now, here are some tips which might help you out a little:

The more you worry about it, the less likely you are to get pregnant. I don’t know why it is, but this really seems to be true. Look at all the women who try for years with no luck, and the second they adopt a baby they find themselves expecting twins. Those who want a baby can try desperately for ages in vain, while the reckless, highly fertile singleton who just fancies a quickie in the stationery cupboard is pregnant in less time than it would have taken to actually get the printer cartridge she pretended to be fetching. It’s unbelievable and very unfair, but the mind is a powerful thing. So, if you can, try not to be desperate for a baby, and you might find yourself knocked up in no time. Well, a few minutes maybe.

Forget predictor kits. These are supposed to tell you when the most likely time to conceive is, but they feel like a big con to me. The manufacturers are preying on our nervous, befuddled disposition and our desperate need for anything which seems like it might help. I took several of these tests, for exactly that reason, but I always felt that I knew, from my own cycle length and finger-counting, when the most likely time to conceive was, and that I was just paying a lot of money for some confirmation of this. Again, it’s a very costly way of being told something you probably know anyway. Shagging frequently is cheaper and much more fun, and makes the event a lot less like a military operation.

Don’t have sex for a few days before your most fertile spell. I know this sounds very cruel, but I have heard that saving up a bit more sperm and then delivering it all in one go (so to speak) can boost your chances of getting one determined little bugger who makes it all the way.

Try to enjoy it. We’ve all done it, or know someone who has: we’ve looked at the calendar, checked our watches and run downstairs shouting, ‘Switch the footie off—we have to have sex NOW!’ This is not very sexy, and the moment having sex becomes nothing more than an exercise in getting pregnant is the moment it stops being fun. Once this has happened, it’s hard to go back.

Don’t tell anybody you are trying to get pregnant. A fatal mistake, because once the pressure is on, the likelihood of conceiving will drop through the floor. Act like all those sensible celebrities who ‘have no plans to start a family just yet’, but who have decorated the nursery and already own six pairs of baby Nikes. This is also a good protective measure for your partner, because if you do having trouble conceiving, everybody will assume there’s something wrong with his John Thomas, and that can’t boost a man’s self-esteem.

The Thin Blue Line: That Moment

I love a good ‘apparently’ as much as the next Yummy Mummy, but this one really takes the Farley’s Rusk. Apparently, some women can go to full term without ever noticing they are pregnant. Apparently, they just feel a bit bloated, and then one day they go to the loo, experience an ‘odd’ sensation and wham! a fully developed baby drops into the bowl. Apparently.

To counteract this strange group of women who house a black hole in their abdomen is another unlikely type who, apparently, know they are pregnant the second a sperm arrives, gasping, at an ovum. These same ladies can usually tell you the sex, weight and IQ of the unborn child as well.

For the rest of us (who also don’t believe that a swan can break your arm or that you can really think yourself slim), learning that we are pregnant is life-changing news, confirmed by a strip of blue ink about a centimetre long and a millimetre wide which smells of wee. Cruelly, this line is almost impossible to see if you are desperate for a baby, and is impossible to miss if you’re hoping that you’re just a bit late because of the recent extra stress at work.

Taking a pregnancy test isn’t like waiting for the lottery result, or standing on the scales after a week’s skiing and fondue-eating. It’s a huge deal. If you’ve ever stood in the loo with a thong around your ankles, holding a white plastic pen-like object to the light and straining your eyes in the desperate hope for a trace, any trace at all, of something which could possibly pass for a blue or even a blue-ish streak while time stands still and your bottom freezes, then you’ll understand what I mean. I remember asking my husband after several negative tests if he was absolutely sure he couldn’t see anything there, and he suggested I go and have my eyes checked instead of my hormone levels.

Before taking a pregnancy test, there are some tell-tale signs of possible pregnancy to look out for, but not everyone gets any of these, so don’t worry if you feel perfectly normal—you may well be pregnant, but just be one of the very lucky few who are in for an easy ride…here’s hoping!

Missed period. Duh. No, really?

Extreme tiredness. I really do mean extreme here: it’s not just ‘more tired than normal’, but an overwhelming, unbeatable exhaustion unlike any other, which leaves you falling asleep in meetings, feeling like a lead weight and crawling into bed at 7.30. It does pass though!

Weeing between ad-breaks. If you can’t make it until the next commercial break for a trip to the loo, go back and check your dates again.

Tender breasts and nipples. Not necessarily sore, but much more sensitive than normal, in a bad way. Fondling is not welcomed, and going bra-less is impossible.

Feeling bloated. As most of us feel like this at some point in the month it’s not such a good indicator, but if it’s much more than usual and combined with tenderness in your abdomen, then there could be a teeny, weeny bun in there.

Feeling or being sick. (Unless you drank two bottles of wine the night before, in which case it’s just a bad hangover.) This sickness is not restricted to the morning, so if you’re talking to God on the big white telephone every evening, something might be afoot.

If you’ve experienced any, all or none of these things and you think you might be pregnant, it’s probably time for a test to confirm things. Pregnancy tests are unbelievably accurate, and can detect the tiniest increases in hormone levels, so they are a very good way of getting an answer. But, before you rush to Boots, here are some survival tips for taking pregnancy tests:

Don’t do too many. They are very expensive, and you usually have to take several, because it’s the wrong time of the month, you drop it in the toilet (I’ve done that four times!) or you just refuse to believe the result. I’ve spent a small fortune on them over my three pregnancies, and, looking back, I wasted a lot of money. If you can, try to wait a few days between tests (the packet should tell you exactly how many), and if you still have any doubts ask for a free test from your kind GP.

Get it over with. Waiting for the best moment to do a test is futile: you will be so wound up with nerves that you’ll mess it up and have to do another one. Get up, wee, look, and then cry either way.

Don’t worry about doing it right. If you are, you are: whether you’ve had a glass of water first, or have drunk too much coffee, or weed on it for eight seconds instead of five, if you’re pregnant the test will be positive. Almost definitely. But do get confirmation if you want to be sure.

When that moment happens, and the little window signals the end of your life as you know it, you cannot predict how you will react. Some of my friends fainted (a tad over-dramatic I’d say), others cried or laughed or screamed with delight (or woe—they’re never quite clear on why they screamed…). I tended to be quite quiet, which always surprised me, as I imagined I would at least whoop a little. Perhaps it was just the fact that I was still naked from the waist down.

Tired, Tired, Tired

We’ve all been tired. We’ve been tired after partying too hard, working too hard or making babies too hard.

When you are pregnant, however, you will experience a new kind of tiredness—actually a kind of total, numbing exhaustion—which is so intense and overpowering that you might mistake it for certain, impending death. This sudden, debilitating tiredness was always my first clue that I was pregnant, and every time it left me baffled: how can something so tiny reduce a grown woman to a useless heap? When you’re seven months down the line and hauling about a considerable amount of bulk around with you, feeling exhausted will seem perfectly understandable. But not in the first few weeks! There’s nothing there! You can’t see anything, feel anything, or, worse still, tell anyone yet, so you have to suffer in complete silence.

Survival Tips

Lie. If you are not ready to tell anyone yet, then you will need to have some fantastic ‘Oh, yeah, I was at another amazing party last night’ stories lined up if you are to explain why the bags under your eyes are bigger than the ones you come back carrying after an extended lunch-break, and why you are suddenly falling asleep at your desk several times before morning coffee (which you are suddenly not drinking…)

Don’t fight it. This is not the kind of tiredness that can be outdone by regular double-espressos. During pregnancy, your body is very good at letting you know what’s needed, and the intensity of tiredness in the early stages can only mean that you should get as much sleep as possible. I went to sleep well before anything decent was on telly for the whole of this miserable period, and it was a very wise move, if very boring. Maybe Nature is just preparing you for the decades of sleepless nights to come…

Indulge in some pampering. Falling asleep because you’re tired is one thing, but dozing off because you are so relaxed that your legs can’t move any more is quite another. Treat yourself, and these weeks will glide by in an aromatherapeutic haze. Ahhhhhhh.

Take some exercise. Not only is this a stage when you still can, but it’s also a good way of feeling energised, looking better as the blood gets into your grey cheeks at last, and forgetting how rough you may be feeling. Don’t do anything super-strenuous or new: your body is a bit confused, so stick to what it can already handle.

Remind yourself daily that it won’t last long. This early tiredness usually passes within a month or so, so get the rest you need, and look forward to better times around the corner.

Breaking the News

1. To the father (who I shall assume is also your partner)

This is the fun part. As the holder of some earth-shattering news, you are in a position of considerable power. So what do you do? Tell him straight away? Over the phone? After work? By text? (Never by text. It’s absolutely not the done thing).

I developed my own little routine for breaking my exciting news: I kept it to myself all day, while the enormity of it sank in, and I then took my husband to a bar after work, ordered him a double whiskey and myself a gin and tonic, and told him straight out. The first time he was surprised and delighted, the second time he looked less surprised but equally delighted, and when it came to announcement number three, in the very same bar, he just asked me when it was due before the drinks had arrived. Spoilsport.

2. To your parents

This is a lot less fun, or at least it was for me, and I’ve heard similar stories of disappointment from other friends. Telling your parents you are expecting should be a perfect, bonding, happy-families kind of moment, where time slows down, everything goes a little out of focus and somebody starts to play the harp. In reality, breaking the news to the future grandparents can leave you feeling somewhat short-changed.

I’ve heard of responses ranging from ‘Oh at last. We were beginning to wonder’, to ‘Already! But it’s only been three years’, and even the astounding, but absolutely true, ‘Are you very sure? Hold on, I have to drain the potatoes. Can I call you back after dinner?’

No doubt your own parents and in-laws will be as beside themselves with excitement as you are, but it’s good to be prepared for a less-than-ideal reaction. Perhaps the idea of becoming grandparents is too much to take in, and they just say whatever pops into their heads first. Or perhaps they really are that tactless.

3. To your friends

Oooooh, lots and lots of fun. Friends are so great at this kind of thing because, being friends, they know exactly what they should say to make you feel fantastic, and they deliver every time. This kind of news is usually cause for a party and lots of gorgeous presents, so pick a time when your diary is looking free.

When Should We Tell?

Because the first few months of pregnancy can be a bit risky, and miscarriages are most common within the first twelve weeks, you might want to try and hold off breaking the news until you have passed this milestone. Another advantage of holding off as long as possible is that friends don’t get bored of the whole thing by the time you’re only halfway there. Nine months is a heck of a long time for someone to be excited about something which only affects them at a distance. Waiting until you first start to show (usually at around four months) means that before they know it you’re into the final stage and ready to go. Much more exciting.

That said, if you tell your friends and family the moment you know, they will be able to help you through this difficult, vomitty, sore-boobs, random-tears stage, and if things do go sadly wrong after all that, as they do sometimes, you will have a lot of much-needed support.

Work: Mum’s the Word? When to Tell, What to Expect

How you play your cards when it comes to spilling the beans to your employer is up to you. Maybe you have a fantastic relationship with them, and they are super family-friendly, in which case you’ll probably walk away with a bunch of flowers and your first pair of baby booties. If, on the other hand, you are instrumental in a huge company buyout, which is due to complete three weeks before your due date, then you should expect less jubilation.

I had one bad experience of this, which happened during the final round of auditions for a career-making presenting job. I was newly pregnant for the second time, and I decided that the honourable thing to do was to let them know, because Saturday morning kids’ TV wasn’t, and still isn’t, exactly awash with pregnant presenters. When I didn’t get the job I spent the next few months fuming at the injustice, and quite convinced that I missed out because of my expanding waistline. (I now realise it was because I was rubbish, but it was hard to see that at the time!)

Once bitten, twice very devious, and the next time I was in a similar position I decided to keep schtum. I still didn’t get the gig, but at least this time I knew it was because I wasn’t right for the job, and not because I was gestating. There are, however, some legal and practical guidelines to be aware of:

You cannot be dismissed (sacked, fired, booted out, shown the door) for being pregnant.

To qualify for statutory maternity pay you must tell your employer that you are pregnant by the fifteenth week before you are due, and tell them when you intend to take your maternity leave.

You don’t have to tell your boss that you are pregnant (but he or she will probably notice eventually).

You can take time off for antenatal appointments and classes without missing out on any pay…

You don’t have to tell a potential employer at a job interview, and if you do, they can’t discriminate against you. (Even though they probably will, but will claim it’s because you are overqualified, underqualified, or some other nonsense like that.)

The details of your maternity rights are far too dull for this beautiful book, but if you want all the useful facts then go to www.tiger.gov.uk.

Olivia, mother of Clemmie, eight months

I had to take a bunch of journalists on a flight to Scotland at nine weeks pregnant, and I couldn’t let on that I felt like throwing up the whole time. I had to concentrate so hard on overcoming the constant feeling of nausea, and I sucked Murray Mints the entire day. Twelve hours later, after I’d dispensed with the press packs and waved everyone a jolly goodbye, I dashed back to the car and immediately threw up.

Hello Boys! Some Physical Changes You (and Others) Might Notice

The starting gun will still be smoking when your body starts to change all over the place, and the rate at which this happens can be alarming. One of the good side-effects of pregnancy is that your breasts get bigger: even if you have practically no breasts at all you will develop something worthy of a decent ‘Phwoooaaar!’ if you happen to pass a building site. This is just one of the changes you’ll notice within weeks of fertilisation, along with the following:

Your boobs become tender and harder (oh great) before getting noticeably bigger (great!).

The skin around your nipples gets darker (this part is called the areola, if you really want to know).

You might get light-headed easily.

It gets harder to pull your abdomen in successfully and pretend you have a washboard stomach: it’s like having permanently bad premenstrual fluid retention, except this time it doesn’t go away—it just gets worse.

You have trouble sleeping, despite being exhausted.

You start having very complicated, frantic dreams, in which you already have a baby but you keep doing all sorts of dreadful things to it, such as dropping it off the top floor of Selfridges, leaving it at a bus stop, forgetting you put it in the bath while you went out for a meal, only to find…well, it’s not pretty, but it’s just a normal reaction to your huge news.

You might start to feel sick, or even be sick (see Morning Sickness below).

Morning Sickness: If Only it Were That Simple…

What a misnomer! Firstly, as millions of women every year discover, it does not only occur in the morning, and secondly, it does not always involve being sick. The (presumably male) genius who came up with the term ‘morning sickness’ should have spent a month or two in our house during the first trimester of my pregnancies, and then maybe we’d have had something more realistic to work with: 24-Hour Nausea, Early Evening Retch, or Twelve-Week Hell, for example.

From what I’ve read, this ‘feeling really sick’, which you are very likely to experience to some degree in the first few months, seems to have something to do with hormones, as usual, and the reasons it seems worse in the morning are, apparently:

The levels of these wretched hormones are higher in the morning.

Your stomach is empty, so you feel sicker.

It’s Nature’s clever way of saying ‘Put that third pain au chocolat down! You’re about to start expanding wildly, so just suck on a lemon drop instead.’

I suffered from evening sickness, which confounds all these theories. I was fine all day until about three or four in the afternoon, and from then on it was just a case of surviving until my husband came back from work (he had to negotiate shorter hours just to get me through those weeks). I would immediately collapse into bed and try to fall asleep, just so that I could forget how awful I was feeling. Oh, happy days.

The other misleading thing about ‘morning sickness’ is that it sounds as though you are actually going to be sick. If only. In fact, one of the things I found hardest to bear was that I wasn’t sick. Ever. I always felt that if I could only be sick, I would somehow feel relieved and better, but I never was. It was just hour after hour of feeling sick, like terrible sea-sickness, except that, being pregnant, I didn’t want to take any anti-sickness tablets, because of the potential health risks. I even made myself sick a couple of times, just to get some relief, and although I did feel better for a while afterwards, it wasn’t for long and it’s probably not a very good idea.

Common Concerns

I’m just being pathetic

No you’re not. Feeling nauseous and being sick for week after week is physically and mentally crippling, and for many of my friends it was the worst part of the whole pregnancy. For some it was even worse than the actual birth part, so don’t ever kid yourself that you should just pull your socks up and stop being such a whinger: you’re pregnant, so whinge away! Anyone who hasn’t eaten properly for six weeks, feels as though they are on the high seas with Ellen MacArthur, and is trying to come to terms with the mind-blowing fact that there’s a human being growing inside her is entitled, and absolutely bound, to feel well below par and to want some sympathy. Morning sickness is not just a mildly unpleasant inconvenience—it can be almost unbearable, so give yourself a break and spend some extra time trying to look after yourself.

I’m not eating enough because I feel so sick. Is it bad for the baby?

Miraculously, if you are managing to eat and drink anything at all, your baby will carry on as if nothing is wrong. That’s where your reserves come in handy: the baby takes all the nutrients it needs from what you have stored up over the last few years, and it can survive very well off those while you walk around like a nauseous zombie for a few months. But if you can’t keep any food or liquid down then you must get medical help. There is a condition called Hyperemesis Gravidarum which causes this sort of complete food rejection, and you can get more information at www.hyperemesis.org. A small number of women end up in hospital for a while if the sickness gets really bad, so keep an eye on things.

So what can I do to make it better?

Short of spending a night (or several) with Gael Garcia Bernal or receiving a lifetime’s supply of Crème de la Mer products, I really have no idea, because there are as many supposed remedies for the condition as there are positions for getting yourself knocked up in the first place. As that is so obviously not the answer you were after, here are some suggestions from myYummy Mummy friends which are all supposed to help:

Eat more ginger—crystallised, or in tea or capsules—or slowly nibble ginger biscuits.

Eat small amounts regularly, so your stomach never becomes empty.

Sip water frequently.

Get more sleep and rest.

Cut out coffee and alcohol.

Only turn left, except on Wednesdays when there is a full moon (no, not that one).

Smell fresh mint.

Get as much fresh air as possible.

Press your pressure points: 11/2 inches from your wrist on the underneath of your forearm, in the centre. Try it—it just might work!

Take extra vitamin B6, or eat more nuts, bananas, avocados and whole grains, which contain it.

Try yeasty foods, such as Marmite, bagels, dry fruits and beer (sparingly!).

Eat more iron-rich foods, such as beef, sardines, eggs and leafy greens.

I tried all of these to almost no avail. The things which made me feel a little better were brushing my teeth about fifteen times a day, smelling fresh coffee and drinking diet lemonade.

Sonia, mother of Freya, two, and Louis, eight months

It sounds mad, but I had to drink a can of ice-cold Coke the minute I woke up, and I was absolutely fine all day after that. After about eight weeks all the symptoms disappeared, but I still have my morning fix!

I’ve recently discovered all kinds of ‘natural’ remedies available on the Web, which all have glowing reports from absolutely-not-nauseous at-all-any-more mothers. These include naturally coloured lollipops, glamorously named ‘Preggy Pops’ (wouldn’t you just love to have sat in on that meeting?), wristbands that apply pressure to your wrists and apparently relieve nausea that way, and even specially compiled recordings of soothing sea noises for pregnant ears. This last idea seems somewhat insulting to our intelligence: pregnancy may leave you a bit befuddled for a while, but surely it doesn’t render you gullible enough to shell out a tenner for some whale songs and wave noises in the belief that they will ease the queasiness? I suppose if the nausea gets completely unbearable then you will probably be ready to try almost anything. Even whale songs will seem worth a try. Do not, however, take any anti-sickness pills without asking your doctor. There are many available, and not all are suitable during pregnancy.

One final thing you should be prepared for, as I wasn’t the first time, is that it doesn’t last for 12 weeks and then stop. Or, at least, it might, but it almost certainly won’t. Everyone I have talked to has had a different experience. Things always settled down for me at around this time, but for every textbook case there’s one lucky lady who never gets sick at all, and another one who throws up three times a day for nine months. C’est la vie!

Oh, and it does tend to get a little bit worse with multiple babies and with each successive pregnancy, so count yourself lucky you’re not on baby number six yet!

More Worries

More? How much can one woman worry about?

I’m afraid sections dealing with worries, concerns, fears and feelings of utter doom and gloom will crop up time and time again throughout this book. This is not because I am the world’s greatest pessimist, or because I am trying to wind you up into a panic, but because you will experience many of these worries over the course of becoming a Yummy Mummy, and I couldn’t possibly fit them all into one part. Anyway, if I did manage, you would take one look at it and run to the nearest department store for some cosmetics or footwear-related escapism, never to emerge. Fun, but very expensive, and anyway, denial is not very helpful at all, no matter how high its heels are. Better to tackle the issues head-on, and be prepared.

Most of my worries in the early months of my pregnancies focused on all the evils I had done to my body in the past, rather than what awaited it in the immediate future. Could a baby grow inside a body which was previously best known for its pint-downing ability? What about that magic mushroom I was offered in Indonesia ten years ago? Maybe just being in the same tent had an effect on my brain, which would surely be passed on. And what about the genes from the rest of my unsuitable family? Mum used to smoke, my dad’s great-great-great-grandmother had a heart attack, my husband used to live next to an asbestos factory, there’s a phone mast at the end of our road, and I don’t drink green tea. Oh God, oh God! This baby is doomed to grow into a hallucinating piss-head, with heart trouble and a carcinogen-filled brain. What have I done? As far as I can make out from other Yummy Mummies, this sort of irrational panicking is perfectly normal.

Heather, mother of Alex, three, and Katie, six months

We went to a wedding when I was eight weeks pregnant, although I didn’t know at the time. I got hammered, and I put all the throwing up down to the ten glasses of champagne I had quaffed during the reception. When it turned out I was pregnant, I was convinced my baby would be a pickled onion rather than the healthy child she was. It was worrying, though.

Cheering Yourself Up

If you are feeling worried and scared about what is happening to you, and about the whole ‘becoming a parent’ thing, then read this bit as many times as you need to over the next nine months:

Becoming a mother is the best thing you will ever do. (Read that bit again a few more times now, if you like.)

Becoming a mother changes the way you feel about everything, and if you are not sure about it now, you will be absolutely sure about it, and know you have done the right thing, when the baby comes. You will manage just fine.

You will get your figure back, and you will look wonderful and sexy again.

Being a Yummy Mummy does not mean you change who you are, and you will still be able to go out, have a job, go shopping, travel and see your friends. A little less than before, but you can still do it.

You will get Mothers’ Day treats (yippee!).

You will be able to board flights first.

You get balloons when you go to restaurants with your baby.

Yummy Mummies are the luckiest people alive today, because being somebody’s mother is the happiest feeling in the world, and we still get to look fab and have a job. How good is that?

And, finally, with the ‘mush factor’ turned up to the max, just remember:

Your baby will grow up to be the best friend you’ll ever know, and you’ll have many, many years of happiness, laughter, love and fun to look forward to together. Your baby will make your life better in more ways than you can imagine now, and you will wonder how you could ever have worried about it all. Awwww, sweeet.

Anya Hindmarch, designer

Being a mother is very hard. You are getting up in the middle of the night, clearing up sick and giving most of your attention, love and resources to someone who is brand new in your life and hasn’t even earned it. It doesn’t really add up on paper but somehow it is the ultimate privilege to watch this little person grow and be allowed to enjoy steering them and teaching them everything you know.

PART THREE The Middle Bit

In theory, after about 12 weeks you enter a new, easier, more Yummy and less vomitty phase, known as the second trimester. I call it the Middle Bit, because that’s just a lot clearer, as I’m sure you’ll agree. The middle bit brings clearly visible physical changes, and it heralds the beginning of your pregnancy ‘proper’, as opposed to some invisible affliction which makes you tired and grumpy. Now we can all see why!

It’s during this stage that you will finally start to feel pregnant, and it can be very odd realising there really is a baby in there, and you really are going to be a mum fairly soon. Scary stuff, but something you’ll get used to in about ten years’ time. This part deals with some of the key physical and mental hurdles you will stumble ungraciously over, and hopes to make the transition into Properly Pregnant Lady a little smoother.

Physical Changes

15 October. 8 p.m. Hotel room in Manchester. Seven months pregnant.

We are near the end of filming a very boring maths series for schools. My bump has grown so much over the course of the three-week shoot that we have had to resort to all sorts of clever trickery to conceal it: sitting down, holding objects at bump-level, shooting from the waist up and so on. Today wasn’t even subtle: they just stuck me behind the sofa instead of on it, and had me casually leaning over from the back. At one point I heard the floor manager complaining to the director that we needed to ‘find some way of disguising the situation’. I am not a situation. I am a pregnant lady who is not feeling very glam, and could do with someone telling her how gorgeous she is, and not that she is now so offensive to the eye that she needs to be hidden behind items of furniture!

The worst thing is that I am starting to feel guilty about being pregnant: that I am ruining their show because of my big tummy. I should be proud, not ashamed. I felt tons better after going to the gym this evening and I managed to have a chicken salad and a yoghurt for dinner, instead of the banoffee pie and large glass of wine I actually wanted. Good girl. Now to try and sleep despite all the heartburn and a bump which means I can’t get comfortable, ever. Good night.

You will have noticed by now that pregnancy doesn’t just affect your tummy and breasts. Sure, these are the areas it hits hardest, but the whole of your body, including your brain, God-dammit, will feel the effect in some way, and each day will hail the arrival of a new change for you to get used to. Well, at least it’s not boring…

1. Hair

Ahh, some good news here. It is very common for pregnant women to have thicker, more glossy hair for the last two trimesters. This is partly thanks to your hormones, which stop hair falling out so fast, and also partly because you have stopped murdering it with chemicals and treatments now that you are up the duff. If you already had thick hair then you might look like a backcombed toilet-brush, albeit a glossy one, so work out a style which works for all the new volume. If your hair becomes more oily, use a milder cleansing shampoo and don’t rub with your fingertips—this will stop it getting even oilier. For dry haystack hair, use a moisturising treatment every two weeks and leave overnight for a more intense effect.

Top Tips for Pregnant Hair from Daniel Galvin Senior, and Lino Carbosiero, Artistic Consultant at Daniel Galvin, London

You are more than safe to carry on having your hair coloured during pregnancy: there is no evidence that it can cause any harm to you or your baby, but if you are worried, then leave it.

Semi-permanent colours contain no ammonia or peroxide, which you might feel happier about. Vegetable dyes are also a fantastic, gentler option.

Having your highlights done regularly will keep you looking groomed and fresh throughout your pregnancy. It’s also a good way to relax for a few hours.

Keeping colours lighter towards the hairline opens up the face, looks more natural, and can make you look thinner.

Maintain your routine with your stylist throughout your pregnancy, so he or she can help you through any changes in condition and style.

If your face becomes bigger, avoid short hair styles: this just makes your face look even rounder.

Try softening the shape around the front of your face by going for a soft fringe, or gentle layering from the chin downwards.

We recommend to all our pregnant clients that they get their hair washed and blow-dried before they go into labour. It doesn’t take long, but it will make you look sensational, and can really boost your mood. Lino’s wife swears it helped her to get through it all!

NB: DO NOT GO FOR A RADICAL RESTYLE WHILE YOU ARE PREGNANT! Firstly, your face will change shape (see over) so what suits you now might look awful within six months, and secondly, you are just a confused pregnant lady who thinks a change will make her feel better about the whole thing. It won’t. It will lead to tears and a disastrous barnet.

2. Nails

Like hair, your nails can look particularly lovely during this stage, and they can grow much more quickly. Unfortunately this can mean they become thinner and more brittle, but it’s a perfect excuse to have regular manicures.

3. Eyes

I had a very weird side-effect between about five and eight months pregnant with my third baby: my eyes became dry and itchy, and it looked as though the corneas were swollen and detached. Very gross, and quite worrying for a while. A check with an eye specialist concluded I had a ‘previously unseen and possibly pregnancy-related swelling of the cornea’, which I took to mean: ‘I haven’t got a clue but you’re not dying and it will probably go away eventually’, and I was discharged (sorry, unfortunate word for our subject). I only mention it to demonstrate the kind of bizarre changes you can come across.

4. Bottom and Thighs

The Middle Bit is when things start to change in these regions, and if you’ve been a bit smug so far, you might have to eat your words now. Despite your best efforts, your legs and bum will get a bit bigger now, because your amazingly intelligent but fashion-unaware body is programmed to retain some extra fat stores for after the birth.

5. Arms

Arms? Yep, even these can put a bit of worst-case-scenario-preparation flab on them, but if you are doing your weights in the gym then any emerging bingo wings can be sorted out quite easily.

6. Face

This was my worst bit. Seriously. I didn’t mind the legs or stomach, or even the occasional swollen ankle. But in all of my pregnancies my face got bigger, and I hated it. Sadly, it is very common: you’ve probably seen pictures of famous Yummy Mummies getting fuller in the face as their pregnancies progress, and it isn’t because the camera starts to add more pounds too—it’s because they really are getting bigger there. There is nothing you can do about this new look, except to try and like it. Most women actually look better with a rounder face, but we are too used to thinking of chiselled jaw-lines and defined cheekbones as desirable to adjust easily.

7. The Linea Nigra

There it is!! This is a faint brown line from your tummy button to your pubes, which usually appears at around three months. I was obsessed about the lack of mine for weeks before it showed itself, because I thought I should have one, and I wanted to see some proof that I was doing this pregnancy properly. As soon as I saw it I wished it would go away of course, but I was still happy that I had managed to make one! How dark this line becomes depends on how much melanin your body makes, and it should fade over a year or so, if you’re lucky.

8. Milk production

Eeeek. At about twenty weeks (or so—everyone’s different, remember) your boobs will receive a message from Mission Control, telling them to get their milk production sorted out quick smart, because pretty soon there will be a baby to feed, and they should allow for technical glitches and printing errors.

So they do. And it’s very, very weird. Like squeezing spots or picking dry skin off your heels, squeezing milk out of your nipples is a bit gross, but very satisfying. What comes out to start with isn’t actually milk, but a thick yellow goo called colostrum. Bath-times have never been so much fun.

If this is all getting too much for now, then I’ll move on. I just thought you should be prepared for the moment you turn into a dairy cow.

9. Heartburn

If you are experiencing this already, then you are in for quite a rough ride, as heartburn only gets worse as the baby gets bigger. I got it terribly, and couldn’t sleep without drinking milk and downing the Rennies. Antacids aren’t thought to be dangerous for the baby, but ask your doctor or midwife about how many and which to take.

10. Insomnia

There’s a lot going on in your mind, and as the baby starts to move about and get more cumbersome, sleeping becomes very tricky. So unfair, given how much you need to stock up on the stuff—where’s the evolutionary advantage of insomnia then, Darwin?

11. Uncomfortable bump

Now that you are finally getting BIG, you will notice knock-on effects such as back pain, aching tummy muscles (if you still have any), and trouble getting comfortable, especially at night. This is a good time to start sleeping with a pillow between your legs, because it makes the bump pull down less, and if you can pretend that it’s Johnny Depp and not a pillow at all, then you won’t mind all the insomnia. Sorted.

12. Cravings

I hate to burst a somewhat amusing and traditional bubble, but cravings are a hugely over-emphasised part of early pregnancy. Gherkins with cream, charcoal and raw onions are all the stuff of hearsay and fantasy, because the truth is a whole lot less exciting. Sorry.

Here are some cravings I can vouch for, as related to me by several Mummy friends: fresh fruit smoothies, sweet and sour Chinese food, iceberg lettuce, roll-mop herrings, vinegar (my mum used to drink it, which may explain a few thing about me…), strawberries (one lady could smell them from 800 metres away!), strong curry, ice-cream and black olives.

I never craved anything, apart from a flatter stomach, but I did go off things I had previously adored: Marmite made me retch, hot chocolate (which I had previously guzzled in pints) suddenly smelled like rotten cider, and I couldn’t eat lettuce at all. Disaster! I had no problem with coffee, which is supposed to make all pregnant women feel sick, and even alcohol never lost its appeal. Here’s hoping you experience some wacky cravings to tell your children and Yummy Mummy friends about. It’s kind of expected…

13. Skin

Despite what your partner may try to tell you, the skin is the biggest organ in the human body. (Worth remembering for times when a severe put-down is required—any time he tries to have sex with you when you are in a bad mood for example. ) It’s really no surprise, then, that an event as physically demanding as pregnancy will have some effect on your skin. You may even get more skin problems after the birth than during the pregnancy itself.

In my case, the biggest skin problem was hyper-pigmentation.

Hyper-what?

Pigmentation. What started as sweet-looking freckles around my nose and dotted across my forehead (very Milly Molly Mandy; very cute), grew into patches of darker skin all over the place. Suddenly, this stopped being cute and started to be unsightly.

Early attempts to cover this up with foundation were successful, but as the months progressed the dark patches became so noticeable in the middle of my face that no amount of slap and powder would hide them properly, and they began to make me miserable. The final straw came when my peach-skinned three-year-old asked, in that levelling way only three-year-olds can get away with: ‘Mummy, what are those horrid brown marks on your face? Did the baby make them?’ Grrrr.

Time for some science. Ahem!

Skin discolouration, or pigmentation, is the result of increased local melanin production. Melanin is the skin pigment which protects us from the effects of strong sunlight (you knew that), but often, due to environmental or internal influences (I’d say pregnancy is probably a fairly hefty internal influence), the skin produces more melanin than it needs. During pregnancy, our good old friends oestrogen and progesterone are thought to cause greater stimulation of the pigment, resulting in hyper-pigmented skin spots. (You didn’t know that!)

Luckily for you, cosmetics and pharmaceutical companies have been quick to cash in on the increasing awareness of this problem, and the number of ‘skin-lightening’ and ‘blanching’ products, which aim (and claim) to remove, or at least lessen, pigmented areas, is rising.

These either stop the melanin being produced or act as superexfoliators, penetrating the skin, removing the old cells and increasing the production of new, unpigmented ones.

I peeled, masked and creamed religiously for six months after the birth, and I am pleased to report a dramatic improvement. Whether this would have happened anyway, I’ll never know, but just doing something about it felt better than sitting the ugliness out.

Before you rush out to fill your rather lovely Anya Hindmarch tote with acids and peels, here is some life-changing advice from one of the UK’s best dermatologists: photocopy it and stick it to your bathroom mirror.

A good sunscreen is a woman’s most important weapon against skin pigmentation. You should wear it every day, even in winter or on overcast days, and you should apply two coats half an hour before you go out. There’s no point treating your pigmentation marks unless you also use a sunscreen of at least factor sixty every day. Finally, always wear a hat and try to stay in the shade.

You heard the man! I never leave the house without at least one coat of factor sixty all over my face these days, my hat collection has almost outgrown my bedroom, and the same is now true of sunglasses, but can a girl ever own too many?

Some skin lightening products you might like to try:

Dermalogica: Skin Brightening System.

Elizabeth Arden: Visible Whitening Pure Intensive Capsules.

Lancome: Blanc Expert range, and Absolute Radiance Anti-Dark Spot Concentrate.

Guinot: Lightening Serum, Lightening Mask, and Lightening Cream reduce melanin synthesis and lighten the skin.

And some excellent cover-up products to hide the damage:

Stila: Illuminating Liquid Foundation, and Face Concealer, which blends brilliantly, allowing you to wear it on its own.

Jo Malone Finishing Fluid. Smells divine, goes on like cream, and leaves even my skin looking remarkably even-toned. This is fabulous stuff.

Bobbi Brown: Foundation Stick gives very good coverage, and it’s a great pop-in-your-handbag product.

14. Alien

Somewhere around the fourth month you will be convinced you have turned into Sigourney Weaver. Not because you suddenly grow six inches taller, develop dramatic cheekbones and achieve a perfect smile, but because a creature will start moving around inside you.

This is one of the weirdest, best and worst things about pregnancy: weirdest because—well, how weird can it get? There’s a human being moving inside you! The best because it connects you so strongly with your baby, and worst because it can get very uncomfortable and sore if there’s a mini David Beckham in there.

The first time you feel your baby move seems more like trapped air bubbles jiggling about in your tummy than a foot or hand doing anything interesting, and you may not notice anything for quite a while. As these sensations grow into more noticeable jiggles, you might wonder what you’ve been eating recently, until finally, one day when you’re least expecting it, you will feel a kick!

This is a fantastic moment, and the only shame is that your partner can’t share what you feel. This is the moment you finally believe you are pregnant.

As the weeks go by, these movements will get very strong, and towards the end there can be all kinds of bones, limbs, digits and other unidentifiable body parts jutting out under your ribcage, out of your tummy button or near your pelvis. I used to love all of this, but I know lots of mums who found it far too peculiar. I would spend hours in the bath talking to my internal gymnast, massaging a protruding bottom, or tickling a cheeky foot. It sounds crazy, but it sure beats depressing yourself about how big your legs are getting near the top!

TOP TIP: If you think your baby has suddenly stopped moving about as much as normal, keep an eye on it, and if you are worried then call your midwife. Hospitals are usually happy to monitor your bump for a while, just to check everything is normal. Don’t panic immediately though: babies do sleep occasionally, you know, and you will feel like a real clot when you rush in, only to monitor a baby having a well-earned nap.

15. Stretch marks

Ready? These are a complete misnomer, because stretch marks are not caused by stretching at all. You can get them without being pregnant, whether you are fat or thin, as a teenager or even if you are a man. Ha! Some think they can even be caused by stress. Stretch marks can look like thin red lines or patches. They sometimes turn white with time, and in bad cases they can actually be raised from the surrounding skin.

The bad news: There is almost nothing you can do to prevent them from appearing. It’s in your genes, so start praying you’ve got some good ones. Oh, and they are permanent.

The good news: Lots of pregnant women never get any, and they do fade with time, so ‘permanent’ doesn’t mean permanently very visible.

Can I do anything to prevent these ugly marks?

Oils and Lotions. Whether these have any significant effect is still up for debate, but there are lots of lovely lotions, oils and creams which are definitely worth a try—and feel wonderful too.

Mama Mio Superstretch Tummy Rub: This very stylish brand promises stretch mark-free tummies up and down the country.

Pure Vitamin E oil mixed with wheatgerm oil.

Jo Malone’s Vitamin E Gel: This is used in her heavenly facials, but clients started to report back on its fantastic stretch-mark-preventing potential.

Clarins ‘Tonic’ Body Treatment Oil: A legendary oil which tones, firms and moisturises. I’ve seen it in lots of myYummy Mummy friends’ bathroom cabinets. I do like to snoop, you know.

Clarins Bust Lotion and Bust Gel: Because you can’t forget the marks which might appear here as well.

This Works Stretch Mark Oil: It does, apparently.

Vichy Complete Action Anti-Stretch Mark Cream: Helps to prevent new ones, and reduce the appearance of existing ones.

Exercise. If you keep the exercise up, your skin should stay more toned and the risk of stretch marks might be reduced. Might, but even a ‘might’ is worth a few extra visits to the gym.

Looking Good: Gorgeous Clothes for the Suddenly Large of Girth

18 December. 5 p.m. Seven months pregnant.

I’ve been trying on outfits for an hour, and I am now so depressed and disgusted that I don’t think I’ll manage to drag myself out at all. I look like a dairy cow—I have to stop looking in this mirror.

And my shoes don’t bloody fit because my feet are swollen! Why can Sarah Jessica Parker look so fabulous with a great big belly? Oh yes, Oscar de la Renta. Well, Zara will have to work the same magic for me.

Once upon a very unfashionable time, all pregnant women dressed badly. This was partly because there were no gorgeous maternity ranges available, and partly because Yummy Mummies hadn’t been invented yet. Happily, times have changed, and we all know that pregnant ladies can look fabulous: just look at Anna Friel and Victoria Beckham.

Of course everyone has a different opinion of what constitutes an attractive woman: some like their ladies curvy, others prefer the androgynous nymph; curls do it for some, poker-straight for others. Tall, short, blonde, brunette, muscular, willowy, bold, reclusive, pale, tanned, made-up or natural, we come in a glittering array of shapes and forms, and manage to look sexy and feminine in all of them. We are clever, aren’t we?

But whatever your personal ideal, one thing makes a woman look like a woman, and feel like a woman. It’s such an important biological characteristic that even babies can tell the difference between a man and a woman by it. No, it’s not the presence of breasts: it’s the hourglass figure created by having a defined waist.

Ah! A waist! A flat, trim, nipped-in waist. Hips are fairly crucial to the female form too, but unless your waist is smaller than your hips, it’s very hard to look feminine, and it’s harder still to feel beautiful. Social anthropologists reckon a ‘magic ratio’ of waist to hips of 7:10 is evolutionarily significant: it signals sexual appeal at a primal level, as it indicates good child-bearing potential. You mean men think that hard?

Those geniuses among you will already have guessed where I’m going here: when you are pregnant, your waist disappears for a while, and then reappears as your bump starts to come out—a LONG way after a certain point, and it is not the most flattering shape when it comes to modern fashions and ideas of femininity, and looking good in these circumstances takes some effort.

The First Signs of a Change

I always imagined that the Absolutely Enormous phase towards the end would be the worst time of pregnancy, in terms of how I looked and felt, but actually many of my friends agree with me that the moment your waist disappears is one of the big pregnancy lows. At least when it’s out, it’s out, and you can pretend to glow and blossom into your new shape. But when it’s just not there at all you look neither slim nor pregnant. I wanted to wear a badge explaining: ‘I know I don’t really look it yet, but the reason I’m a bit shapeless is that I’m four months pregnant and my waistline is in temporary hiding. Please stop staring at me and pretend that I look lovely.’

Unfortunately, there’s very little that clothing can do to help. Developing an addiction to Juicy Couture trousers is not so much a fashion statement as a ‘missing waist’ concealer, and it works, and I’d advise any bloated-feeling Yummy Mummy-to-be to do the same. Don’t do what I did though: I lived in some very unattractive tracksuit trousers for a month or so, and all this did was to make me feel incredibly fat and ugly. By my third pregnancy I’d learned that ‘comfy’ doesn’t mean shapeless and without-any-style-at-all. Wearing some stylish, comfy trousers at this not-quite-pregnant-enough-yet stage makes you feel much better about your condition.

Pregnancy Wardrobe Phase One: Before It Really Shows

Wear comfy (but gorgeous) trousers, which fit your legs well but have a forgiving waist: stretch fabric, low-slung and elasticated all work at this stage.

Make sure your top half is longer than waist-length.

Three-quarter-length jackets come into their own now.

Tie a hoody or a jumper around your waist and pretend the bulk is from that.

Wear a really long, skinny scarf which hangs loosely down to your waist: it hides what’s behind. But don’t wear belts or tie scarves around your waist—it just accentuates the enlargement.

Long cardigans (worn open) can hide your curveless middle zone.

Dresses can be a good plan, as the whole ‘waist’ issue is lessened, but avoid anything tight, obviously. Keep that for later.

Floaty and feminine is a look which works; structured and fitted isn’t. Avoid über-floaty though, as this can easily turn into ‘shapeless heap’ which helps no one. You need some structure.

Don’t buy maternity clothes yet. You want to enjoy these last months of wearing semi-normal clothes while you can, and you may not even need them, if you are lucky and clever with your wardrobe. And anyway, you won’t believe how big you are going to get, and you will almost certainly buy everything a size or two too small. I had to take everything back the first time, because I grew out of them at seven months. Darn!

Accentuate the positive: legs, bust, neck, shoulders, arms—wherever you look best is what we want to see most of.

Later On (When You Are Really Showing)

For me this tended to happen at about six months. Until this point I was always certain that I wouldn’t get that much bigger, being what I considered to be enormous already. Everyone convinces themselves of this, because thinking any other way is just too depressing. But a moment passes at around six months in your first pregnancy (and at about three months in subsequent ones) when your stomach will start its journey outwards, and this signals the end of Pregnancy Wardrobe Phase One.

Now that your bump has become clearly visible, you enter the next phase of wardrobe confusion. Instead of cunningly concealing a slightly tubby midriff, the best way forward is to embrace your bump and make a feature of it. A protruding, pregnant waist is not at all the same as a fat stomach: the latter comes with all the trimmings of a fat everything else, usually, and making an effort to lessen the impact is probably a good idea. But when you’re pregnant, 90% of your body is almost as trim as it was before, and you just have an unamusingly large middle zone. Trying to hide it is the female equivalent of sweeping long straggles of wispy hair over a man’s bald patch: it looks worse than it did before, and fools nobody.

Jemima French, designer, Frost French

I felt great when I was pregnant. I used to wear designer pregnancy jeans which where really comfy and yet still flattering on the bum. I also used to cut my own jeans at the back and wear big baggy t-shirts which was both practical and stylish. I wore lots of empire vintage nightie dresses which made me feel cute.

Pregnancy Survival Wardrobe Phase Two

Stay in regular clothes for as long as possible. If you’re lucky, you will be able to wear non-maternity bottom halves right up to the birth, by tucking the waist under your bump and wearing trousers as hipsters. But remember that clothes will sit differently now, so make sure they still look good.

Long skirts can make you look dumpier and more box-like, because they don’t show your legs. Minis have the advantage of slim-leg exposure, which takes the eye away from the waist, but they are only for the brave (or tasteless—I never went along with the ‘pregnant hooker’ look, but perhaps you can pull it off better than me.) Mid-length will slim you out if your calves and ankles are still trim, as they might be if you are still exercising well and putting your feet up whenever possible.

Don’t move into your partner’s clothes just because they are bigger. They are bigger, but they are not cut for your shape or size, and the old ‘looking like a sack’ adage will apply to you.

Don’t over-complicate matters. Keep it simple: bold patterns and prints may be in, but you should stick to understated and muted for now, unless you are as self-confident as Trinny or Susannah.

Invest in some hip maternity clothes to see you through this last bit in style. Now you can go for the maternity wear if you need to (see below), but remember you will get bigger than you think. Think bigger, bigger, bigger.

Black works.

Try support tights. These make Bridget Jones’s knickers look like something from a Victoria’s Secrets catalogue, but they do apparently have some amazing health benefits for your legs: they can reduce varicose veins and can even keep your legs trimmer and more shapely. I never wore them, mainly because I never wore skirts much, but I have heard some very favourable reports from other Yummy Mummies who swore by them. Or was it at them? Not sure.

Sexy underwear is absolutely essential. I sparked off quite a debate in Cambridge when I happened to mention in one of my parenting columns that I still possess, and wear, thongs. ‘Thongs? A mother wearing a thong? A pregnant mother wearing a thong? Disgraceful!’ cried the forward-thinking inhabitants of this highly educated city. Perhaps some learned professor could explain the psychology behind the theory that ‘all women who are pregnant should make themselves feel worse by wearing Big Pants’. It’s complete tosh. Quite apart from the fact that increasing numbers of medical professionals will be looking around down there, and so making an effort is only polite, you will feel better if you stick to sexy lingerie.

All hail Diane Von Furstenberg, who invented the wrap dress. Now here’s a style which works throughout pregnancy, provided it fits well. Whether it’s a crossover shirt, jumper, dress, or a long-sleeved T, wrap yourself in one of these and cruise to the finish-line looking sexy.

Leggings. You’re getting into dangerous territory here, and you should try to avoid these unless you want to look like a maternity-wear model in the mid-Eighties. I wore them, and hated myself every day. The same can be said for…

…dungarees. (Unless you are as hip as Sarah Jessica Parker, in which case you can look fabulous in the frumpiest of maternity frocks.) Dungarees are actually having a bit of a revival at the time of writing, but fashions come and fashions go, and this is one item which needs some careful research.

Top Wardrobe Tips From Vanessa and Baukjen, designers of hip maternity label Isabella Oliver

Soft, drapey jerseys, and anything that stretches, are the best fabrics and cuts to cover your bump. They are always comfortable and will grow and move with you, while still looking feminine and sexy.

Buy as many little black jersey dresses as possible for pulled together, versatile looks which are always feminine. They are easy to wear for work, or dressed up for an evening out with sparkly accessories and sexy heels.

You shouldn’t have to change your style just because you are pregnant. The same rules of dressing still apply—there is no reason to start wearing oversized, tent-like clothes or pinafores just because you are pregnant.

Splurge on handbags, shoes, scarves and jewellery. Make the most of your classic, versatile wardrobe by changing your accessories to fit the occasion. It is so easy to change your daytime and evening look by simply putting a few strands of chunky beads around your neck or by adding a pair of dramatic, sparkly earrings. The possibilities are endless!

Mind the Gap. If your tops aren’t long enough you will have a gaping hole between the bottom of your top and the top of your bottoms, which can only be filled by a swollen, veiny tummy. You will also look much bigger because everything will hang straight from your boobs down, with no curves or shaping. Tops have to cover your bump and fit well.

Shoes. Here’s where you can add some essential sex-appeal. Living in trainers for four months is very comfortable, but it’s highly unglamorous. Do what the sexiest Yummy Mummies do and stick to something pretty for as long as you feel comfortable (and stable!) and keep trainers as part of a low-key, funky street look, rather than a ‘dishevelled blob who crawled off the sofa to fetch a pint of milk’ outfit.

Accentuate your neck and shoulders with pretty necklines. That’s ‘pretty’, not ‘plunging’, unless you want to show off your newly impressive cleavage.

Use accessories to draw attention away from your waist. Scarves, earrings, hats and brooches all work, but not all at the same time: less is always more on the accessories front.

Avoid large areas of uniform colour. Breaking things up a bit, especially across your chest, will make you look smaller.

Stand and walk tall, and pretend you don’t feel pregnant. This really works, and you will look 1,000 times better immediately.

Shoe Warning!

Don’t even think about buying expensive (but obviously gorgeous) shoes when you are heavily pregnant, especially if it’s in the summer months. I made the huge mistake of indulging in some ‘shoes are the only answer to my hideousness’ retail therapy care of Anya Hind-march when I was eight months pregnant with number three, and walked away beaming with a pair of almost edible kitten heels.

Alas, when it came to the Big Summer Wedding three months (and one baby) later, I discovered that they were a size too big. Needless to say, I wore them anyway, with several layers of insoles, but to be honest I just looked ridiculous, they came off with every step, and I ended up barefoot on the dancefloor. Silly girl.

Maternity Clothes You Might Like to Buy

The excellent news for all you future Yummy Mummies is that maternity wear has become as stylish as normal gear, with everyone from Juicy Couture to Elle MacPherson launching maternity ranges. Not only that, but many high-street brands have been quick to get in on the act, and now make utterly fashionable, very affordable maternity wear. You don’t need a budget like Liv Tyler to look as glamorous as she did when she was pregnant, so get yourself down to one of the stores listed on pages 51-52 and get some figure-flaunting, sexy outfits.

Is it worth it?

If you’re only going to be in them for a few months, after which you’ll want to burn the lot, is it worth spending money on nice maternity clothes?

Yes! Yes! Yes!

As every woman knows, it’s not how you look, it’s how you feel. Although obviously if you look terrible you will also feel terrible but it’s safe to say that you need every bit of help at this time to feel good in your new body, and investing in some pretty maternity gear is one huge leg-up. Good maternity clothes can improve your look dramatically, because they are specially cut to fit your peculiar new shape, which makes them much more flattering: normal tops are always too short and tight, skirts are too short in the front and look ridiculous and so on. As well as this, anything non-maternity you wear in these last months will stretch so much that it will never go back to normal, and you’ll regret ruining half of your wardrobe.

1. Underwear

You need a good, supportive bra for the extra volume (and hence extra weight) and if you are going to breastfeed then you might as well make it a nursing bra while you’re at it. Don’t buy a plain white tit-sling: buy the most beautiful one you can find, even if it’s slightly squeezing the budget. Bits of this bra will appear in public when you start feeding, and you should be very proud to have it on display. Elle MacPherson has a lovely range, as do faithful M&amp;S.

2. Vests

Maternity ones have better boob support than your normal ones, which is essential for you, and they are cut longer to fit snugly over your bump, which is essential for everyone who has to look at you. I bought four from Top Shop and used them until they fell apart, which was about three months before I did.

3. Jeans or Trousers

I feel a bit hypocritical telling you to buy a pair of maternity trousers, because I didn’t for my first two pregnancies. I found the stretchy panel over the bump part just soooo unattractive that I stuck to my regular jeans and tucked them under my bump. However, during my last pregnancy, I discovered the truly gorgeous Earl Jean maternity range, which succeeded in making me neither look nor feel particularly pregnant at all, and anything which can do that is worth serious consideration. I’ve since noticed several pregnant friends looking great in H&amp;M and Next maternity jeans, so have a look and see what feels good.

4. Workwear

If you need to look suit-smart at work, investing in a proper maternity one could be a great investment, unless you are one of the 2% of (lying) pregnant women who manage to fit into all their normal clothes until the birth.

If you work in an office where shirts are the norm, it’s worth buying a maternity one, because they will fit much better and you’ll avoid the button-popping look over the waist and bust-line. You might even consider getting a smart, properly fitted maternity skirt if your ankles are still worth seeing, and if not, then stretchy bootleg black trousers will see you most of the way through. Check out Formes, Séraphine, Tête-à-Tête, Upfront and Top Shop B maternity range for some good work gear.

5. Eveningwear

You will be invited to a stylish function when you are absolutely humungous—it’s Mrs Murphy’s Law—so be prepared. It may feel like a huge waste of money, but buying a glam maternity dress which will make you the most attractive, sensual woman in the room is worth it. If you are not brave enough to do the top-to-toe clingy black dress à la Victoria Beckham, then go for something a little more conservative but equally stunning. You can’t pretend you don’t have a massive stomach, but you can pretend that you feel sexy. Cunning.

That’s about it to be honest. Above all, have fun with your temporary wardrobe. Hiding away for three months because you have nothing beautiful to wear is absolutely not acceptable: you are a gorgeous Yummy Mummy-to-be, so show the world what you’re made of and strut!

Where to Buy Your Yummy Maternity Clothes

Good Value: Shops

Top Shop: Already everybody’s favourite shop, but it just got a little bit better for mummies-to-be. Great!

Dorothy Perkins: Good for staples like vests and definitely affordable.

H&amp;M Mama: You wouldn’t expect this range to be anything less than fashionable, beautiful and well within budget and it doesn’t disappoint at all.

Gap: No maternity range yet—watch this space!—but their generous sizing means you can get away with non-maternity stuff for a long time, and it’s all very preppy and cool.

Formes: Now here’s one of the most stylish places to buy maternity wear. A tad more expensive but gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous!

Good Value: Online

This is a great way to shop if you feel so queasy or fat that you can’t face trawling through the shops. Many websites are beautifully designed, so you can stock up your new wardrobe feeling confident and lovely. Just go easy on the ‘buy’ button: you’ll only need most of this stuff for a couple of months, so four pairs of maternity jeans is probably overdoing it a bit.

Blooming Marvellous: Plenty of choice and it’ll see you through the ‘big’ months looking fine.

JoJo Maman Bébé: Très chic basics and dresses.

Isabella Oliver: Beautifully designed flattering wardrobe essentials for you to look fabulous throughout.

Bumps Maternity Wear: Pretty lingerie and also baby clothes.

Maternity Exchange: For fabulous second-hand designer labels (which, don’t forget, won’t have been worn for more than a couple of months).

Homme Mummy: The Essential Maternity Wardrobe is a fabulous capsule wardrobe of stylish maternity basics—looks great, saves time!

Budget Blowers: Shops

9London: Extremely exclusive. Breaks the bank, but the Yummiest Mummies shop in there so may be worth the overdraft. And it smells lovely.

Diane Von Furstenberg Maternity: Well, the queen of the wrap has now launched an equally marvellous maternity range, so you don’t have to stretch your normal dresses and tops any more!

Bumpsville: This is really special stuff, and a couple of basics from here will be worth the minor splurge.

Blossom Mother and Child: Already visited by Kate Winslet, Thandie Newton and other A-listers, Blossom stocks regular designer labels which you’ll still fit, as well as their own gorgeous maternity one.

Budget Blowers: Online

Séraphine: Prettiest, most feminine maternity clothing I’ve ever seen. Well what did I expect? It’s French.

Arabella B: Excellent denim collection.

Push: The most un-glamorous name imaginable, but the collection is as sexy as it gets, and Push has a huge celebrity following so you’ll be logging on soon.

Serendipity: Stock super-stylish and glam stuff, from designers such as Earl Jean, Liz Lange and Urban Baby.

Gym Babies

To start with, a small disclaimer, so that you don’t try and take me to the High Court if things go wrong: what follows worked for me, through three healthy pregnancies, and I know many other women for whom it worked too. I’m not saying it’s for you, and you know what your body can take better than I do. Get the all-clear from your midwife or doctor before you start, and ask them if you are unsure about anything. Thank you.

How Much Exercise Should I Take When I’m Pregnant?

Ahhh, a subject of such debate, confusion, conflicting advice and worry. When you are pregnant you will feel quite protective over your bump, and the idea of putting your growing baby at any risk at all seems unthinkable. To counter this, you will also feel fat and large and huge and wobbly, and you will probably want to do some exercise to try and keep things in some kind of toned order, which is absolutely fine.

It all just depends on how much and what kind of exercise your body is used to, and whether it still feels OK to do it when you have a baby taking part as well. ‘If it feels bad, don’t do it’ seems like sensible advice to me. Something to bear in mind is that your body will be producing a hormone called relaxin, which is not a natural laxative as its name suggests, but just loosens all your joints in preparation for the you-know-what. This means you should be more careful about how much high-impact exercise you do, even if you are used to that sort of thing.

For me, it was running. I’ve been running competitively since I was a little girl (why? am I mad?), and my poor body is quite used to being put through its paces, on the road, in the gym, along a beach or wherever. In fact, if I don’t go running for a few days I get as grouchy as a pre-menstrual banshee wearing newly washed, slightly-too-tight jeans. It’s just who I am and what I’m used to.

Given this starting point, I decided I would try to carry on running, lifting weights, cycling and doing everything else I usually do, until it felt wrong or I just couldn’t manage any more because my bump got in the way, and it worked very well.

NB: Doctors advise against doing any exercise lying on your back after the first trimester, because the baby puts pressure on your vena cava, (the big vein carrying blood from your legs to your heart) which reduces the blood flow to the uterus, and to your brain, both of which are bad.

Here are some types of exercise you can do when you are pregnant:

Running: The most vigorous and probably ill-advised type of exercise during pregnancy, but it worked for me. I ran until I was 20 weeks pregnant, at which point it started to ache a little, so I stopped. Also, I got funny looks from people as I jogged along with my paunch, and I felt embarrassed.

Cross-Training: A perfect way to burn unnecessary calories you felt you ought to eat at the time: it’s non-impact, aerobic, and you can read about beautiful, non-pregnant people while you’re doing it to remind yourself why you’re bothering.

Weights: Very important, because moving your heavy body around in the later months will become hard work, and there will be lots of lifting and carrying to do after your baby is born. The stronger your muscles are the easier both will be. Your legs and arms aren’t pregnant, so you can have fantastically toned limbs to make up for the fantastically un-toned tummy. Apparently doing weights is very good for reducing your risk of getting osteoporosis too, so start now and carry on forever…

Sit-ups: I’m nervous about this bit, because I did them until I was about five months pregnant, but I would hate anyone to feel they ought to do this and do themselves or their baby an injury. If you’ve done your pre-pregnancy work and have strong abs before you start, then you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting back into shape. Do them if you want to, but never do anything which feels bad, and ask your doctor before you start.

Cycling: There is a point beyond which this becomes impossible because your knees bash into your huge bump. This isn’t usually until the very last month or so, and until then I found cycling a fantastic way of keeping fit and having toned legs. If you can cycle outside then so much the better: fresh air is great for growing babies. Just be aware of your changing balance as you get bigger—it can get quite wobbly on there towards the end.

Swimming: Probably the best exercise you can do, according to all the experts who know about this sort of thing. It’s cardiovascular, all your muscle groups get a workout, and it relieves the weight on your tummy and back, which is wonderful. I swam dozens of lengths every day as soon as I stopped being able to run, and until two weeks after my due date. It was so boring that it nearly killed me, and now I can’t go anywhere near swimming pools, but watching the attendants panic as a very overdue lady entered the pool again was well worth it.

Dancing: Not only good exercise but also very relaxing and good fun. I’m a hopeless dancer, and was even more ungainly and hopeless when I was pregnant, but I found it very calming and relaxing. Not sure about tangos and vigorous dancing, but ballet is perfect. If Darcey Bussell can do it, then so can you. Some gyms offer balletcise (what a word!) classes, which sound very soothing, and aim to tone you up gracefully. Ha ha.

Walking: Everywhere. If you really can’t find the opportunity to do any of the above, then walking is a highly overlooked form of exercise, and when you’re lugging a heavy baby around at the same time it becomes quite effortsome. Be warned, though: walking can become painful later on, as the baby puts pressure on your back and you start to get pains and twinges in your legs. In the final weeks walking is a great way to get things moving south, which you’ll be very keen to do.

Pilates: Apart from being the most fashionable form of exercise, Pilates targets the tummy and pelvic-floor muscles, which weaken during pregnancy. Many Pilates exercises are performed on your hands and knees, which is an ideal, if rather inelegant, position: it helps to take a lot of stress off your back and pelvis, and towards the end of your pregnancy can help to position your baby well when it’s time for lift-off.

Aquaerobics: I never did this, as the idea of a pool full of pregnant people was too grim for me, but those Mums I know who tried it said it was better than dry aerobics because the water made the bump less heavy.

Activities You Should Avoid

Some of the activities I was advised to avoid during pregnancy made me laugh until my stomach hurt. So there’s one for starters. As well as stomach-hurting laughter, I have read that pregnant women should also avoid waterskiing, horse-riding, sky-diving (!), downhill skiing, fencing, and ice-skating. Other no-nos include doing strenuous exercise if you are suffering from vaginal bleeding, premature labour or heart disease. You don’t say!

NB: In my experience, no matter how much you exercise, and how careful you are about what you eat, you will get a bit fatter during pregnancy. It’s nature’s way of preparing your body for the exhaustion which follows, and of cheering you up when the bulk starts to fall off at the far end. Don’t try to be a weight your body doesn’t want to be by doing too much exercise, and try to enjoy your new shape. Most men love the curves, and you will honestly look wonderful in your new, womanly silhouette.

TOP TIP: You will need new sports gear: a better, more supportive bra, a longer vest or T-shirt (to avoid exposing several inches of highly stretched midriff to the hunk of muscle on the machine next to you), and a very high quality pair of gorgeous trainers to protect your legs, joints and back. This is one item of kit which you can wear after the baby comes too, so spending a little more won’t feel as extravagant.

Antenatal Classes

If you want to spend a lot of time looking at huge, panting women, then I suggest you rent a (bad) porn movie instead. Ante-natal classes teach you little more about the birth than you can find out for yourself, they are usually in the evening when you’d rather be watching telly, they take ages, and there is always the possibility of them whipping out a ‘birth video’, from which you will never recover. What can be useful about these evenings among the dungarees and bored men, is that you get to know where the maternity ward is, you might meet women who will be your friends for many years, you can try out some labour positions which you will never use, and you will discover how hard a plastic baby is.

If you are going to go then find out about classes near you from your midwife, and book early—there are usually six sessions to go to, and they can book up quickly.

You’re Eating For How Many?

2 February. 8 p.m. Five months pregnant with number three.

All of a sudden I’m SO fed up with feeling big. I feel that I should be eating more because the baby must be beginning to need more now, but I just seem to be expanding in all the wrong places suddenly, and I really hate it. My legs are huge and I’ve got that horrible big-pregnant-face thing back again. I’m trying to stick to fruit for breakfast, a light salad-y lunch with some chicken or something, and lots of veggies for dinner with some carbs, but maybe that’s not enough. Yes, it is enough. It was fine last time, and the bump is definitely getting bigger so it must be OK. God, it’s so hard to know if I’m getting it right. If there’s anything wrong with this baby I will always blame myself, but if it all turns out fine and I’ve turned into an elephant I will wish I hadn’t pigged out so much. Either way I’ll be wrong, so I’ll just try to eat sensibly. Fat chance, ha ha.

So, so, so, so many of my friends dread becoming fat during pregnancy. In fact, they’re so convinced that pregnancy will turn them into a big blob of lard, that it’s one of their main reasons for putting the whole thing off a little while longer. This completely baffles, and also rather annoys me, for two reasons:

Firstly, what’s wrong with getting a little bigger? Maybe pregnancy is a good time to lose the boyish hips and develop a womanly curve or two. Secondly, being pregnant doesn’t mean being fat. Not all pregnant women swell to the size of a salad-dodging Sumo wrestler. It all depends on how you decide to play it, and how much willpower you have. If you have no willpower at all, then now is a good time to start cultivating some.

The great news is that you can have a baby and still get into your normal jeans on the way back from the hospital—you just can’t button them up for a few weeks. Toned thighs and abs are still a definite possibility, and unless there are medical reasons which cause excessive weight gain, it’s very possible that you will go back to being roughly the shape you normally are. Like all desirable things, you just have to work at it, and in this case that means really, really, really hard.

When you are pregnant, you will get bigger. It’s mainly just your stomach and breast regions which will go a little crazy, and to be honest that’s hardly very surprising: there’s a person growing inside you, and it’s got to go somewhere. Unless you have some really weird internal arrangements, like no vital organs at all, then the only way is outwards, hence the big tummy.

And the breasts thing is fantastic! Even the flattest of flatties develop heaving bosoms worthy of a Merchant Ivory production. Any man (or woman) who has cause to be fumbling around the region will be delighted with your new arrivals. Embrace these new curves: flaunt them, feel them and enjoy every inch, because when the breast-feeding is over, so are the breasts. Gone!

Anyway, so far, ‘bigger’ is OK. It’s a good kind of bigger. The trouble starts when you feel you have to eat enough to feed your growing baby as though it’s running a marathon in there or something. It’s not. It’s just hanging around, swallowing, stretching, sucking its thumb occasionally, and growing a teeny bit. Hardly enough to merit a full extra meal, if you’re honest.

‘But it needs to grow—I must eat more!’, you will cry, washing down another granola bar with a full-fat latte before polishing off your husband’s pain au chocolat and wondering if just one more doughnut before lunch might be in order. This is absolutely fine, if you don’t mind turning into a bus. It’s not fine if you want to recognise yourself in a few months’ time.

WARNING!!: This strong sense of having to eat tons more than usual is reinforced by absolutely everyone you know telling you to, and tirelessly offering you calorie-laden nourishment, which you would never normally have (honest). Resist! Resist! This goes doubly for your parents, and about ten-fold for any in-laws you may have acquired. Only visit these well-meaning people if you are armed with either a will of iron strong enough to decline their barrage of offerings, or a paper bag to pop any unwanted but forced-upon-you food into for future disposal. It sounds awful, but these desperate times can call for desperate measures. The alternative is just saying ‘No, thank you’ the whole time, which becomes very boring, and makes your mother-in-law think you hate her. Bad plan.

But I’m eating for two

No, you are not, or at least not in the way that it implies. ‘Eating for two’ makes it sound like you should be packing in two times the amount of food you would normally eat, or at least something approaching it. If you do that, as everyone from your second-best friend (your best friend will know better) to your favourite barista will do their damnedest to encourage, you will, as you so fear, become enormous!

‘Eating for two’ became my most hated phrase when I was pregnant (apart from ‘Oh, I had twins, too.’ I’ve never had twins, just huge bumps, apparently).

OK, so how much am I supposed to eat when I’m pregnant?

This is an impossible question to answer, but I can tell you what worked for me, and you can decide if you want to give it a go. Everyone is different, everyone wants different things, and I am NOT saying that this is medically or universally the best way to approach things, so please leave the lawyers out of it.

For me it was a simple question of maths. I am 1.7 metres tall and I normally weigh about 50 kgs. At twelve-weeks gestation a foetus is, depending on which book you decide to believe, about 6cm long and weighs roughly 18g. Grabbing a pocket calculator for a second, I calculate that this made my three-month-old unborn baby about 3.5% of my height, and only 0.36% of my weight.

So at this stage, going by our relative weights, it was more a case of eating for 1.0036 than for 2. Looking at a typical day’s food, that’s probably not much more than a few extra grains of rice, and maybe a couple of grapes.

Not two Danish pastries, a mozzarella panini and a steak tartare, then? Errrr, no.

Even at full term, when it is ready to be born, a baby is generally about 35 cms long and weighs on average 3.5kgs. That’s still only 7% of my normal body weight. In food terms, I make that one extra potato and a chicken wing, at the most.

Can a baby really grow big enough that way?

Babies do whatever Mother Nature has in mind for them. Most just seem to grow as big as their genetic make-up tells them to, and there seems to be little correlation between the amount Mummy eats and the size of her baby. I’ve known big ladies produce tiny babies, and skinny ladies give birth to whoppers. Que serra, serra.

Using my very own geeky, logical approach, I managed to produce two 9 lb babies (which to you and me just means ‘ridiculously big’), and one 8 lb baby. I didn’t put on more than a kilo or two besides baby weight with any of my kids, and most of this was to be found in my maternity bra. I breast-fed all of them without any trouble at all, and so far they seem to be very strong and healthy children.

Now, before you padlock the larder…

Other Factors to Take Into Account (which mean you should up the food-intake)

Your increased blood volume, higher metabolism and just general extra effort required to haul yourself around all mean you should probably increase what you eat by slightly more than I’ve shown above. But the general point remains the same: becoming pregnant doesn’t mean you have to eat tons more. Just a little extra healthy food will do wonders.

Obviously, if you have any concerns, then go and talk to your doctor or midwife about them. At the end of the day, or rather nine months, it’s your baby, and your body. If you do what feels right for both of you, you will always know that you did your best. If you don’t mind putting on a bit of weight, then go for it! Being pregnant was the first time I enjoyed feeling rounder and more curvy, and it was (eventually) a very sexy feeling. But if you’d rather keep the weight gain to a minimum, then try not to eat much more than normal. As long as it’s a balanced diet with all the food groups in it, you and your baby will probably both be just fine.

Body Image and Eating Problems

Here’s an indisputable fact: lots of women have eating problems. Millions of us. I can hardly think of a single friend between the ages of twenty and sixty who hasn’t had, or doesn’t still have, some kind of hang-up about food and eating, and that’s not because I hang around neurotic, anorexic, food-obsessed people. Almost everyone has food issues these days, and pregnant women are no exception.

We may like to think, or hope, that becoming a mother somehow changes our attitudes to life, our priorities and our self-image, but in fact it often does nothing of the sort. Just because you have a baby to think about does not automatically mean you suddenly stop caring about the size of your bum, the wobbliness of your thighs or how much carbohydrate you consume. Nor should you expect it to, or worry if it doesn’t.

If you are one of the lucky, confident types who loves her body in whatever form, then I take my hat off to you. If, like me and most of my friends, you have a fairly changeable body image and have been through periods of being underweight, overweight or just-not-the-weight-you-want weight, then you will probably continue this way throughout your pregnancy. Some women get a little worse, and some women get a little better as they learn to relax about their bodies.

One thing I have discovered is that pregnancy can be the start of food problems for many women because it changes your body shape out of all recognition very quickly, you suddenly become aware of lots of parts of your body you had never paid much attention to before, and it requires you to think about what you do and don’t eat the whole time. Once you’ve had the baby you might start to lose some of the weight gained, but this pursuit can become addictive, which is why you may have seen pictures of previously gorgeous, curvy girls suddenly looking like skeletons within a year of their baby being born. It’s very sad, but it’s not uncommon.

So if you are wondering why there is quite so much reference to food and body size in this book from now on, that is why. Spend 20 minutes in a playground or a toddler group and just listen to the conversations: 80% of them are about biscuits, picking at food, losing weight, trying to get fit or just feeling fat. I had a conversation with a stunningly attractive mother of four last week who told me she only started to accept and like her ‘new’ body when her first child was 12. It’s not just me. It’s motherhood.

Anorexia

If you are truly anorexic then you have done well to conceive in the first place, and you should get some medical advice about nutrition for your pregnancy. The main person who will suffer if you don’t eat enough is you: I have known some unbelievably skinny women produce healthy, chubby babies, but they themselves look drained, pale, and pretty rough. Also, we don’t know much about what long-term effects your being slightly undernourished can do to your growing baby. When the breastfeeding kicks in, you really do need to have extra reserves in place if you want to remain healthy, so get some help if you think you should be eating more but can’t.

Bulimia

Again, if you make yourself sick occasionally, regularly or even frequently, you probably won’t stop the day you become pregnant. Bulimia is so widespread these days that there are probably hundreds of pregnant women who continue to make themselves sick, and are terrified of what it’s doing to their baby. I have been an on-and-off sufferer since I was about fifteen, and it was only a recent health scare which finally kicked the habit abruptly and permanently. Being pregnant didn’t, and I carried on being sick every so often throughout all of my pregnancies. My babies were all absolutely fine. The worst part is the guilt and worry, and if you can get some counselling then do. Probably the worst side-effect of bulimia from a baby’s point of view is that it puts your stomach under considerable stress, it can throw your electrolyte balance off-kilter, and it makes you worried.

Taking laxatives

This seems like a very bad idea to me. Laxatives reduce the amount of nutrients getting into your blood, and hence into your baby’s blood. Talk to your doctor as soon as you can about this sort of problem.

There have been many studies into the effects of eating disorders in pregnancy on babies, but there is little to support the idea that having a minor eating problem can put your baby at greater risk of miscarriage or abnormalities. What does seem to be agreed upon is that issues about body image and food do not go away during pregnancy, and can even get worse afterwards unless some kind of counselling is offered. If you are worried, embarrassed or confused about any of these issues, then please, please talk to your doctor or midwife, who should be able to point you in the right direction. Hiding won’t help anybody.

Pampering—Yes Please! But Is It Still Safe?

If indulging in a little luxury and pampering were out of bounds during these most trying months, then Life really would be a total bitch. Luckily, she isn’t, and she has a heart after all. Either that or she just has a well-developed sense of what’s important, and knows that keeping a pregnant lady looking and feeling good is near the top of the list.

So, what can and what can’t you treat yourself to? Here we fall into the ‘not recommended if you are pregnant’ trap: manufacturers are so terrified of getting sued by irate mothers blaming every skin upset, disastrous hair colour or streaky tan-marks on a product they’ve used, that they slap a warning on everything from two-minute hair packs to nail buffers. Actually, not nail buffers, but that’s probably only a matter of time. The only way to keep up your beauty routine and to enjoy some glamour-restoring treats during your pregnancy is by turning up the common-sense dial once again, and trusting your own instincts.

Hair Colouring

See the box of hair-care tips from Daniel Galvin on page 33.

Aromatherapy

To get all serious for a second, you should only use essential aromatherapy oils if you know what you’re doing, and never during the first three months of your pregnancy. Some essential oils are very dangerous if used during pregnancy, and absolutely not worth messing around with. Having said that, the correct blends of oils can restore your sense of mental well-being, happiness and balance, and an aromatherapy facial is a fantastically relaxing and effective way to care for your pregnant skin and worried brain. Book into a salon which caters for Yummy Mummies-to-be, and talk to your beauty therapist about what you need first.

Essential oils to AVOID include basil, camphor, bay, cedarwood, clary sage, clove, cinnamon, hyssop (what?), juniper, marjoram, myrrh, sage and rosemary.

Essential oils which are still OK include peppermint, for morning sickness, lemon for indigestion, lavender, geranium and rosewood for itchy stretch marks, and grapefruit and orange to combat fatigue, now that coffee’s off the menu.

Massage

Essential for pregnancy survival, especially in the later months, but you need to go to a specialist who knows how to handle and pummel your changing body. There are special positions, techniques and even bizarre objects to lean yourself over to make the whole experience safer and more comfortable. Business-savvy health spas up and down the country are cottoning on to the fact thatYummy Mummies are desperate for this sort of pampering, and there are new ones opening every month. Below is a list of some of the finest, and where to find more places near you.

TOP TIP: Leave leaflets for some of these day and weekend spas lying around as the weeks go on, and make subtle hints about feeling very achy and knotted. If he doesn’t book you a little surprise within two weeks, take yourself off with a girlfriend and have a ball.

Nurturing Massage at Elemis Spa: If you like a little inner peace and ancient philosophy with your pampering treat, then head straight here. Using a beanbag for the massage, camellia oil to prevent stretch marks, and specific care for stressed skin, this is sheer luxury in heavenly surroundings.

Pregnancy Massage at Space NK: Each trimester of pregnancy is specially catered for in this aromatherapy treat.

Mother-to-be Package at Apotheke’s Jurlique Day Spa and Sanctuary: How does a float in Dead Sea salts, a body massage, a holistic pedicure and an organic facial sound?

Pitter-Patter Preparation at The Parlour: Using the miracle-working Dermalogica products, this treatment, in fabulously opulent, boudoir-esque surroundings, will tailor to your specific needs brilliantly, and includes full body massage.

Many hotels and day spas offer specific treatments for pregnancy, and babycentre.co.uk lists quite a few.

Fake Tan

Again, there isn’t any evidence to say that this is dangerous in any way, but you might not turn out exactly the colour you had in mind because of your hormone situation. I had no trouble with it at all, and was glad to see a little colour in my now tired and slightly anaemic face and over my increasingly unenviable body. If you can get a professional splash of colour worked into your pampering treat, then so much the better.

Reflexology

Contrary to what you may have heard, reflexology cannot bring on a miscarriage, but most reflexologists won’t treat women in the first three months of pregnancy because that’s when the risk is highest naturally and they don’t want hefty lawsuits. Fair enough. After this, you can have your aching feet prodded and squished as much as you like, unless you have a pre-term labour (before 37 weeks, but what are you having reflexology for if you’re in pre-term labour?!), you suffer from placenta previa (low-lying placenta) or hydro amnios (too much water around the baby). Ask your midwife if you are unsure.

The benefits of reflexology include helping to relieve back pain, curing insomnia and digestive problems, and having somebody touch your feet which is my idea of Heaven at any time.

Keeping Up Appearances à la Maison

Unfortunately, it’s not within most of our budgetary limits to have weekly facials and daily neck and shoulder massages. Damn. But leaving time to pamper yourself at home is just as good for day-to-day survival. This is also true of looking after your basic make-up and the way you dress: you obviously don’t need the most expensive products or a stylist to help you out. Just making some time to wash and dry your hair nicely and taking some extra care over your makeup can give you a cheap but very effective morale boost to get you through the toughest ‘my bum is massive in this’ day.

Home Facials

I always have hundreds of face-mask sachets promising one beauty miracle or another in my bathroom, and they certainly didn’t get ignored when I was pregnant. Your skin will need more pampering and care than it ever has before, as your baby starts to drain every ounce of goodness from your body, and a moisture-replacing, glow-enhancing, dead-cell-removing, mood-lifting face mask will be the cure to your greyness.

Great Exfoliators: Clarins Doux Peeling, Dermalogica Daily Microfoliant and No. 7 Gentle Renewing No Grains Exfoliator.

Great Masks: Botanics Vitamin Recovery Mask, The Body Shop Vitamin E Mask, and Elemis Exotic Cream Moisturising Mask for dry, dull skin. Nivea Visage Active Purifying Face Mask, Crabtree &amp; Evelyn Deep Cleansing China Clay Mask or The Sanctuary Mint and Rosemary Mask for upset, spotty skin.

Great Moisturisers: Olay Total Effects Time Resist Moisturiser, Dr Hauschka Rose Day Cream, Clinique Dramatically Different Moisturising Lotion, Lancome Hydra Zen Reinforced Skin De-Stressing Hydration Cream.

Great Eye Treatments: Elemis Absolute Eye Mask, Lancome Primordiale Optimum Yeux.

Great Hair Treatments: John Frieda Frizz-Ease Miraculous Recovery Deep Conditioning Treatment, The Body Shop Olive Glossing Conditioner.

Great Body Treats: Elemis Frangipani Monoi Moisture Melt, Body Shop Shea Body Butter, Dove Silkening Body Lotion.

Mother-to-Be Treats: The Sanctuary Mum To Be Body Cream, Natalia Perfect Pregnancy Kit Bodycare by Vital Touch.

Debbie, mother of Luke, three, and Helena, eleven months

While I was still in the hospital I shaved my legs, put on a refreshing face pack and painted my finger—and toe-nails. When the health visitor called at my house the next day, she looked at me, in my Monsoon shirt, flowing skirt and full make-up, and asked if I was my sister. She couldn’t believe I had just had a baby, but I felt wonderful. Fully me, and fully ready to tackle the day’s chores.

Sex: How, Why And When?

Sex may not be foremost on your mind as your pregnancy really starts to take shape (as it were), but it’s still there, and it needs some attention too. Pregnancy can have a huge effect on your attitude towards sex, and whatever your experience, somebody else will be feeling the same way.

Some women become nymphomaniacs, others go off sex completely for the rest of their lives, and most fall somewhere in between.

Dealing with the WHY first, there are two answers I have found: firstly, because you still can, and secondly, because if you don’t you will worry about your lack of interest, and that your partner, becoming paralysingly frustrated, will run off with next-door’s nanny while you turn into a miserable old prune. The first part is very real: when you are super-huge, sex becomes physically impossible, if not dangerous to whoever happens to be underneath you. Once the baby is born you won’t be able to have sex for a good few weeks, or even months, and after that you will have to schedule it in between ‘go to bed’ and ‘fall asleep’, which can only amount to about ten seconds, on a good day.

HOW is up to you really, but any chandeliers, trapezes and highly penetrative sex toys are out for now. Sorry. Vibrators are still cool, but careful where you put them is all I’d say: easy does it…Lying on your back is uncomfortable and unwise for long periods of time now, because the baby is getting heavy and it presses down on your back and reduces your blood flow. Get a book and play around, because I’m sure as hell not going to tell you how we did it!

WHEN? Whenever you can. And can be bothered. And don’t feel sick, or have terrible heartburn (although my husband swears he knows the best cure for that, if you know what I mean…), or are too tired, or want to sit in the bath squeezing colostrum out of your nipples instead. It’s your call, because you are the pregnant one here.

Oh, and masturbation is still fine. Quick, effective, painless and risk-free.

TOP TIP: Less of a tip than a request, really. Please, please keep having sex as much as you can while you are pregnant. It’s so easy to put it on hold for a while, but getting your mojo back when you’ve been ‘on a break’ for several months is really difficult. You will need all the help you can to feel like a sexy, horny, desirable, nubile young thing once you become a Yummy Mummy as it is, and sex is one of the best ways of keeping in touch with the old you.

The F Word: I am Definitely the Fattest Person in the World

No you’re not. You are pregnant. Reminding yourself that you are pregnant and not fat doesn’t make it any easier or less distressing at the time, alas: when you start to feel big, bloated and shapeless it’s horrible, and you won’t be able to see past your growing abdomen and convince yourself that it’s actually not that bad. However, to most other, rational people you look lovely and womanly.

TOP SURVIVAL TIPS for this stage:

Don’t spend hours looking at yourself in front of the mirror from all angles, wondering if you are still the same shape when you try really hard to imagine the bump isn’t there. It’s hopeless.

It’s impossible to be objective. To your pregnant eyes, everything is bigger. And bigger is definitely not better right now.

Don’t ask your partner’s opinion. It’s very unfair, because he can only either lie to you or be the target of your pregnant wrath and loathing. You won’t believe him anyway, because you are convinced that you are fat, so leave him out of it. Poor bloke.

Look at pictures of beautiful, sexy, curvaceous women, and realise that larger can definitely be gorgeouser. Rachel Weisz, Jennifer Lopez, Kate Winslet, Kelly Brook and on and on. Sexy, curvy women! Love it.

If none of the above works, then this will be a difficult, depressing few months, until you become properly pregnant and have no option but to go with the flow and love your bump. In the meantime, do yourself a favour and remember: YOU ARE NOT FAT, you just have ‘fat lenses’ in for a while.

Testing, Testing: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six…

Pregnant women need to toughen up before the birth, and the best way to do this is to stick needles in them as often as possible. Or so the medical profession seems to think. By the time you’ve reached The End, your arms will look like a watering can, you’ll have weed in enough small plastic vials to fill a watering can, and you will have had more tests than a watering can goes through before it’s released onto the shelves at B&amp;Q.

Most of this testing is just to keep an eye on your iron levels and to see if there’s any protein in your urine (a sign of pre-eclampsia, aka Very Bad News). But there are other tests you will be offered, which can tell you a lot about your unborn baby, and which you will have to decide whether to have done or not.

Here are some of the main tests to expect:

Routine blood tests. These will first determine your blood group, rhesus factor and iron levels, and then whether you have Hepatitis B, syphilis (ugh) or toxoplasmosis, and whether you are immune to German measles. If you are rhesus negative you will probably have blood tests every four weeks or so after 28 weeks.

Blood-pressure checks. Every time you see your doctor she will check that your blood pressure isn’t starting to shoot through the roof. If you are like me, the opposite problem will occur: my blood pressure gets lower throughout every pregnancy, until I can barely stand up without passing out. Hey, at least it’s different.

Screening for Down’s Syndrome. This is a hard decision for some, and an obvious one for others. Only you know how you would feel about having a child with Down’s, so talk it through with your partner and do whatever feels right for both of you. There are loads of different tests available, and different areas will offer different ones.

Glucose-tolerance test. Some women develop a special form of diabetes during pregnancy, and this is detected by finding extra sugar in your urine. You will probably have to drink a can of Lucozade and then have a blood test shortly after. Don’t do what I did, which was to drink a can of Diet Lucozade. The whole point is to get the sugar in there, Liz—duh!

Urine tests. You’ll have these throughout your pregnancy to check for signs of pre-eclampsia and to practise being humiliated. There is no simple way to get it in the bottle, so just hold it down there, hope for the best, and scrub your hands, wrists and forearms afterwards.

Amniocentesis. By removing a sample of your amniotic fluid with a long, hollow needle, and then analysing its contents, doctors can identify hundreds of genetic disorders, including Down’s Syndrome, trisomy 18, and spina bifida. It is usually offered between the fifteenth and eighteenth week of pregnancy, and you have to be very sure that you want it done: there is a 1 in 200 chance of having a miscarriage after amniocentesis, so it is a big risk to take if you don’t really need it. Talk about it…

Ultrasound Scans

Oh. My. God. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Scans are one of the most incredible things you will experience during the whole of your pregnancy, on a par with feeling your baby move and looking at your cleavage. A scan makes your baby seem real for the first time, and it can be a huge shock.

If you have completely irregular periods, like me, then you might have a scan within the first few weeks of gestation, just to confirm how far gone you are. At this stage there is almost nothing to see, except for a small blob, so don’t get too excited.

It’s common to have another one at about twelve weeks, to check that everything is hunky-dory, and to terrify you a little. By this stage your baby is about six centimetres long, and you may clearly be able to see the beginnings of little limbs, and a definite head bit. This is a good chance to get the first ‘baby photo’, which you can stick on your drinks cabinet to remind you why you’re not going to have that gin and tonic, or hide in your wallet and peek at on the way home.

The BIG SCAN usually happens at twenty weeks, and you should prepare yourself well. This time you will see a proper-looking human baby sucking its thumb, kicking its legs, waving at you (yes, really waving at you), scratching its head, turning somersaults and all sorts. Most people cry, some can’t speak for hours, and others get hysterical.

Tips to make the experience better:

Never go to a scan alone: This is one of the most important moments of your life, and sharing it with a four-year-old copy of Hello is not a good idea. You will need a cuddle when you come out, so take someone special.

Drink lots of water: It makes the image better, because a full bladder pushes the baby closer to the ultrasound thingy…

Wear some beautiful knickers: They will be seen.

Check your bikini line: They make you pull your knickers down very low, and it will just make the nurse’s day if there are no wayward hairs sticking out. Eeek.

Bring some cash: Trying to pay for a baby photo with a credit card won’t work, and you only get one chance to buy one.

Tell the scan-lady (or man) if you want to see the screen better: They are usually very kind, and will turn the monitor round for you to see everything. Otherwise you end up with a cricked neck as well as a belly covered in jelly.

Ask if you can’t identify anything: The image from an ultrasound is very dark and confusing, and unless you are used to looking at such things, it may look like nothing but black and grey blobs. Don’t lie there saying, ‘Oh yes! I can see her tiny fingers’, when really you could be looking at her earlobe for all you know. Ask, and ye shall learn.

Try not to think about having a scan as a way of finding all sorts of things wrong with your baby. A lot of people get really worked up about scans, but they are usually just a great chance to see your baby for the first time, and to make the pregnancy feel more real. Very, very real, in fact. Yikes!

Come Fly With Me (while you still can)

If this is your first pregnancy, then please trust me on this one: travelling will never be as easy or enjoyable as it is now, so GO ON HOLIDAY and enjoy yourselves while the going’s good. If you don’t, and you duck out because you can’t be bothered, feel too tired, or don’t look nice in a bikini any more, you will regret it forever, and really annoy me because I’d love to go, thanks very much.

If possible, fly away somewhere beautiful, because this will be the most tricky form of transport once the baby arrives, and you can get somewhere much more exotic on a plane. Flying short distances is perfectly safe for your baby and cabin pressure, dry air and ugly seat-covers won’t harm it. Do tell your doctor before you go though, because everyone has different medical circumstances…

TOP SURVIVAL TIPS for pregnant travellers:

Fly before you are 28 weeks pregnant. After this, some insurance companies get a bit panicky, and either refuse to insure you at all, or require a letter from your doctor confirming your due date.

Carry your travel medical insurance with you at all times.

Take your medical notes with you.

Drink lots more water than usual to combat swollen feet and ankles, and to stave off dehydration.

Go to the loo every time you see one.

Walk about even more than usual on a flight, to prevent varicose veins, backache, thrombosis and so on.

Learn how to say ‘pregnant’ in the language of the country you’re going to. ‘Stop staring at my big stomach’ is also handy.

Don’t go scuba diving, or use saunas or hot jacuzzis.

Go to the British Insurance Brokers Association if you are having trouble getting travel insurance.

Health Matters

Yes it does, and here are some.

As well as what you eat, drink, do and think, there are yet more things which could affect your pregnancy, and which you should be aware of. Because we’d hate any pregnant ladies to be having too much fun, wouldn’t we…

Gardening

Assuming you can still bend down and reach some soil and filth, then wearing gloves and washing your hands thoroughly afterwards is essential. Earth contains parasites which can cause toxoplasmosis, which in turn can cause brain damage to the foetus, or even a miscarriage. If you let these get under your nails and into your mouth, you could be in real trouble.

Pets

If you still have a pet, then try to get rid of it as soon as possible. Ok, obviously don’t really do that, but you might like to spend a few minutes honestly trying to think how manageable this will be soon: a baby is quite enough for most new mums to handle, without also having to feed the goldfish, clean out the hamster or take the Labrador for long walks. In the meantime, being near animals is not a good idea when you are pregnant, because they carry all sorts of bugs and nasties, which are potentially very harmful to a Yummy Foetus, for example toxoplasmosis, chlamydia, listeria, E. coli and salmonella. It’s also not a good idea to visit a zoo, a farm or a vet. The worst domestic offender is the cat litter tray, and if you must clean it out then dress like a bee-keeper and wash your entire body thoroughly with TCP afterwards.

Medication

If you are on any, your doctor should have gone through whether you can carry on taking it while you are expecting. If you have to take some medicine at some point, make sure it’s OK to.

A small problem: Almost everything carries a ‘do not take this if you are, or think you might be pregnant’ warning in case somebody drinks an entire bottle of Night Nurse and sues the pharmaceutical company when her baby has three heads. This makes it impossible to know whether something really is potentially harmful, or if there’s virtually no risk at all unless you are armed with common sense. If you truly believe that taking one Nurofen for the headache you’ve had for two days will do more harm to your baby than the stress your headache is causing you, then you must carry on suffering.

Definite no-nos: aspirin (it thins the blood), ibuprofen, decongestants containing ephedrine.

Safe medicines: paracetamol (hooray!), antacids containing magnesium or aluminium, and most other over-the-counter medicines, but ask first!

External Factors

These include working in a smoky atmosphere, being very trigger-happy with the bleach, living under the M4, painting all your walls in leaded paint, and other such nasty things. Try to avoid inhaling, ingesting or spending a lot of time hanging around any nasty chemical or biological substances, which could pass into your blood, and then into your baby.

PART FOUR Nearing the End

The third trimester (aka ‘the last lap’) can feel disproportionately long. It’s a bit like standing in the Co-op behind an old lady who wants to buy a half-bottle of Vodka with an out-of-date cheque book, when all you need is a pint of milk and this month’s InStyle, and you’ve parked outside illegally.

With only a couple of months left, the time for burying your head in the sand is well and truly over, and things are hotting up on all fronts. If you looked at yourself in the mirror at 24 weeks, and swore you wouldn’t/couldn’t get any bigger, this last stage will come as quite a shock. You are about to get very, very big indeed, and it’s time to start getting organised for take-off. It’s an uncomfortable, exciting, frustrating and nervous stage, and the only way to survive it is to keep busy.

More Physical Changes (nearly there though…)

Never wishing you to become bored, or too comfortable, your body saves a few surprises for the last month or two. Cheers, love.

Is There a Loo Around Here?

In the last month your baby presses down on your bladder quite hard, so you will need the loo constantly. Added to this is the fact that you feel you need to drink lots to keep hydrated and avoid getting piles, so it’s not uncommon to have to wee more than once an hour. And when you have to go, you have to go NOW.

Backache

A big stomach means a sore back. Mostly this is your lower back, as the baby weighs down so heavily there, and maintaining a good posture is critical now. Backache can be very bad during the night towards the end, and upping the number of Johnny Depps between your legs to two, or even three, can help.

I Can’t Get Comfortable

Nope. And you won’t until Junior is out. Lying on your back for long periods is, as you now know, not a good idea. Lying on your stomach became impossible months ago, standing hurts your back, and sitting down squashes the baby into your rib cage so you can’t breathe or eat anything. The best positions for me were perching on a high stool, and lying on my side with pillows in position. It is a tough time, but you’re nearly there now…

Twinges and Cramps

These can be really painful and also terribly embarrassing: there is no subtle or ladylike way of relieving cramp in your groin when you are in the middle of Selfridges. Leg cramps and twinges in your back, abdomen and groin ligaments happen a lot now, but unless they are painful and prolonged they are probably just caused by your baby getting big and heavy. Moving around as much as you can helps, as does gentle stretching every few hours.

Haemorrhoids

Don’t panic: I never got any. Promise. If you do, drink more water and up your fibre and fresh fruit intake to keep things, errr, moving more easily.

Stretch Marks

Just when you thought you’d made it they can pop up like a bad zit before a party. Keep going on the oils every night, and pray for a lucky miss.

Burping and Farting

This is so much fun, because you can fart as much as you like, and blame it on the baby. Seriously, it’s really common to get somewhat gassy towards the end, so if you have to be in an enclosed space with somebody for a long time, then sit near the window or be prepared for some funny looks. It was around this stage that my two-year-old learned to say “Whodunnafart?” It was always Mummy.

Braxton Hicks contractions

These have been going on since the middle of your pregnancy, but you may start to notice them a lot towards the end. Your body is just doing lots of dummy runs for what a proper contraction should be like, so it makes your uterus tighten for 30-60 seconds every so often. Your abdomen may feel harder, and it may hurt a little, or you may hardly notice it at all. If I sound a bit vague, it’s because I have to: every woman has her own experience of Braxton Hicks contractions and there are no hard and fast rules. Oh, except these: if you have any vaginal bleeding or leak water, and if, before your 37th week, the tightenings are accompanied by lower back pain, come at more than three per hour or seem to be very regular, call your midwife. You may be in premature labour. Them’s the rules, girls.

What To Buy Now

Baby Clobber

Considering how tiny they are, babies need a head-spinning amount of clobber. If you are ever accused of owning too much ‘stuff’, then point your longest manicured digit at the youngest consumer in your family and plead innocence: next to your baby, you look positively frugal.

I say babies need a lot of clobber, but it’s probably more a case of ‘are expected to have’ a lot these days. When your grandmother was a baby, she probably made do with some swaddling clothes and an old rag doll, and was much better off for it. But these are ‘these days’, and Yummy Mummies can choose from a baffling array of equipment, toys and aids to make their babies happier, comfier and more stimulated, and their own lives much easier.

Here are some essentials:

1. Car seat

The only legally required bit of kit. Newborns’ car seats need to be rear-facing because babies’ necks aren’t yet strong enough to withstand any force. Some come as part of a three-in-one system, which means you can lift the car seat straight onto your pram chassis and off you go. Don’t scrimp on a car seat: get a good new one.

2. Pram

Probably your biggest investment, and worth every penny. The best advice I can give is push them around the shop and see how they handle. Things to look out for include:

Swivel wheels or fixed? I’m a fixed girl—give me swivel wheels and I’m like a drunk ice-skater.

Suspension. Will it withstand bumping up and down kerbs and over potholes? Will your baby get whiplash between your front door and the end of the road?

Space. Does it have enough underneath for piling all your shopping into? Remember that your shopping list will quadruple the minute you become a Mum: nappies, wipes, baby-food jars, nipple cream, gin…you need a lot of room under there, and that’s before you have piled in the baby’s changing bag, some toys, your handbag and last week’s Sunday supplements, just in case you get a moment to yourself.

Handle height. Will it break Very Tall Daddy’s back when he pushes it?

Folding and dismantling. If you are likely to do a lot of travelling, then getting a pram which comes apart easily, or better still just folds away in one piece, is essential. We have wasted hours at airports removing the top half from the chassis and putting it back together again.

Size. Does it fit in the back of your car? You’ll feel so stupid (and cross) if it doesn’t.

Lining. Does it come out and can it be washed?

Can your baby sit up properly, as well as lie down? New babies should lie down all the time, because of the weak neck problem, but after a few months they will love sitting up a bit and looking at the world whizzing by. Then, when it’s time for a nap, you can just lie them flat again.

Can your baby face forwards or backwards? This, for me, is one of the most important factors. All my babies have faced me (i.e. backwards) when I pushed them in the pram, because that way they could see me, I could talk to them and point things out, and I could also see whether they were being strangled by some loose strap or other more easily. I am also convinced that all the talking, smiling and singing you can do with your baby facing you can dramatically improve how fast they learn things. And if they’ve just been sick out of the corner of their mouth you will notice before anyone can tut-tut you.

Can it have a buggy board attached to it? This ride-on platform will be indispensable once you have another baby (which you might, despite it seeming like a ridiculous notion right now).

And, finally, if it ticks all of these boxes, ask yourself one last question:

Is it stylish enough for me? Your baby’s pram will become like a fifth limb to you, so if it doesn’t make you proud, don’t get it. Get one you like—the baby doesn’t care.

3. Buggy

A pram and a buggy? Isn’t this a little unnecessary? Not at all: prams are big, heavy and cumbersome; buggies are small, light, fold-down-in-a-flash-able, portable and absolutely essential. For day trips, quick hops to the shops, and travelling abroad, a good buggy is the piece of gear you’ll need. NB: babies can only go in a buggy once they can sit up properly. Otherwise they just slide down into a heap at the bottom and you’ll be picked up by Social Services. Not glam at all.

4. Raincover and sunshade

Ooooh, don’t get me started on these. I hate raincovers. They are ridiculously expensive, they never fit on properly, they rip, they snap, they stick out so far that you’ll clear supermarket shelves as you go down the aisles, and, most annoyingly, they are essential. I think it’s called being caught between a rock and a hard place—wet baby or infuriating rain cover?

NB: there are loads of different models available, so make sure you get one which fits your pram or buggy, and don’t take the shop assistant’s word for it. Get her to fit it right there in the shop, and watch her struggle to get the damned thing on. If you’re not sure, find a different model. Good luck.

I have no such murderous thoughts about sunshades, but I would complain that they are very drab. Where are the beautiful, stylish sunshades out there? If you can get one where the sunshade is detachable from the bit which screws on to the top the pram, then do: it’ll save a lot of time screwing and unscrewing.

5. Moses basket

I was sure we didn’t need one of these, partly because the name is as unappealing as the object itself, and partly because I didn’t see what was wrong with letting my baby sleep in the top half of the pram for a while. Or a large cardboard box—it’s not as though the baby will notice. Having bought the least hideous one I could find, I was very glad I did: much more comfortable (and socially acceptable) for the baby, and it was even quite cute. However, I would never leave my baby in a Moses basket in a stand: a disaster waiting to happen, surely? The floor is the best place, preferably right next to your bed to start off with, so that you can just finish a feed, turn over and pop your baby back in again.

6. Cot and travel cot

Not much to say here, except that the top bar should be high enough to stop a nine-month-old baby from nose-diving onto the floor. Choosing a cot bed is quite cunning, because you will be able to squeeze a good few years out of it. Just using a travel cot is a bad idea, because they are less sturdy, they often have fabric sides which rustle if your baby wriggles against them, and they look fairly hideous. Get a nice wooden one, and sit back and admire. We swore we didn’t really need a travel cot (did we think we needed anything, in fact?) but it has come in useful on hundreds of holidays and weekends with friends.

7. Mattresses, sheets, blankets

For some weird reason we are happy to spend a fortune looking after our own backs and necks, but make do with a horrible synthetic-foam mattress with a plastic cover for our babies. Considering how much time they spend on it, this is pretty mean, not to mention unhealthy. Get a supportive, breathable mattress made from natural fibres if possible (The Natural Mat Company is a great place to start looking) for your baby’s cot, and find sheets which actually fit. There seem to be a million different cot shapes and sizes, and buying a ‘standard’ sheet size never worked for me. Or maybe I’m just hopeless at making a mini bed.

NB: Don’t put your baby under a duvet for at least six months. They wriggle around all over the place, and will end up kicking the duvet over their head and suffocating. Stick to blankets or a baby sleeping bag, and if it’s cold then put an extra layer of clothing on the baby, rather than in the cot.

8. Baby gym

Excellent, excellent investment. No sweat or Lycra involved here, just some bright, shiny objects which dangle above your baby’s head as she lies on a mat. There are loads of different types, but my favourites were the soft ones which fold up—you can take them away with you and ensure a happy, occupied baby while you’re on holiday or visiting relatives.

9. Bouncy chair

Bouncy chairs allow for more stretching and bouncing than car seats, which babies like. Until your baby can sit up unaided, a bouncy chair is the only way you will be able to go to the loo, wash your hair, or do anything else which requires two hands.

10. Non-slip rubber bath mat

Cheap, not very pretty, but very useful—it makes bath-time less like trying to catch an eel in a Jacuzzi.

11. Changing mat

Always far too flouncy and unattractive, but as they’re going to have a fair amount of poo and other nasties wiped on them, I don’t suppose it really matters. The most important thing is that it’s long enough—you don’t want your baby to have outgrown it within four months, and have her bottom resting on the carpet.

12. Cupboard and drawers

Junior fashionistas have a ridiculous amount of clothing considering how little there is to actually clothe. The wardrobe I started out with was woefully too small, and I upgraded within three months to something much bigger. Twenty babygros, ten snow-suits (because everybody will give you one), hundreds of socks and unworn baby shoes, and all the clothes your baby is yet to grow into have to go somewhere, and anything smaller than a full-sized armoire with five drawers is too small.

13. High chair

Not for at least six months, if not more, but at some stage within the first year you will need something better than a bouncy chair for feeding your growing baby. A high chair should be the opposite of your desired body shape: think sturdy, chunky and practical. Those tall ones with long, skinny legs terrify me—my babies would topple those over in three seconds during a particularly lively feeding session. Ours converts into a table and chair, which will be very useful just as soon as we can stop producing yet more babies who need it as a high chair. My daughter is still waiting for a desk…

14. Muslin squares

When my first college friend joined me in Yummy Mummyhood, I remember giving her a box of beautifully wrapped muslin squares—they were the most useful baby things I ever bought myself, and I knew that everybody else would plump for impractical bonnets and My Baby’s First Photo Album schmaltz instead. Her face displayed a look I can only describe as something between disappointment and disgust. I bet she regrets it now. I became so used to having a muslin square over my left shoulder to catch any post-feed spills that I frequently walked around with one even though my baby was somewhere else. They are also indispensable for lying your baby down on if you need an emergency change somewhere less than spotless, as a very thin layer in hot summer months instead of a blanket, or as a makeshift sunshade if you’ve left yours at home as I always seemed to.

15. Bibs

Loads and loads and loads. Soft ones which do up at the back are best, unless you want to smear egg into your baby’s hair as you remove it. Done that many times.

16. Changing bag

This will go with you everywhere from now on, and should be able to fit a nappy, wipes, a bottle of milk, a food jar, a spoon, one change of baby clothes, small toys, a travel changing mat and some lipstick. It doesn’t need to be designer, but something pretty which you will be proud to carry everywhere with you will do.

17. A baby sling

This is not in case you do break one of his arms while getting him dressed, but to carry him around in if you don’t fancy heaving the pram over any rough terrain, or when you could do with sharing some body heat. Front carriers (aka papooses or slings) are very useful for times when a wheeled vehicle is unnecessary or inappropriate. Make sure the part near your baby’s mouth is removable and washable—it will get disgustingly pasted with slobber and bits of sick. That covers the essential items you should get for your new baby. It’s a huge list, and it costs a large fortune, but, unless you subscribe to the ‘swaddling clothes and an old rag doll’ approach to childcare, then you should find them all very useful or even essential. Best send your bank manager some flowers, smartish.

Things You Will Feel You Should Buy, but Don’t Need and Won’t Use

Baby bath. See Bathing Your Baby in Part Six.

Cot bumpers. Totally unnecessary, very flouncy and possibly dangerous due to the loose ties.

Pillow. Babies need to lie flat, because their necks just aren’t up to any crooking. Apart from the fact that they’ll just end up underneath the pillow anyway. No pillow.

Changing station. The floor will do. Safer, cheaper and takes up much less room, which will now be at a premium.

Baby rucksack thing. Unless you live in the Highlands, you will spend a lot of money (upwards of £60 for a good one) on a large unfoldable object which lives in the attic. Borrow this from a friend for the three occasions you’ll ever need one.

Playpen. Huge, ugly and never used. If you must lock your baby in a cage, then a travel cot would be as good.

Nappy disposal system. Why would you want to keep nappies full of poo inside your house for more than two minutes? Throw them in the wheelie bin immediately!

The Ultimate Luxury Baby Gear—Because Looking Good Doesn’t Stop with You

Storksak Classic Shoulder Bag: Finished with a chic leather trim, with a wipe-clean interior and pockets for hot or cold bottles.

Posh Baby Changing Bag: As used by Ms Paltrow and Ms Cox-Arquette, has metal feet so everything doesn’t get soaked from the bottom up, and is the most sturdy I’ve seen. The Reversible Day Bag/Tote is slightly cheaper, machine-washable, with straps long enough to stretch right across the pram handle, which I could have done with at times.

Petit Planet: Made of soft nappa leather and pony skin, these luxurious bags have been designed to cater for every emergency in true Yummy style. Mobile phone pouch, make-up compartment, washable changing mat and much more.

Dior Baby Bottles: Oh go on—it’s quite funny!

Bill Amberg Sheepskin Snuggler: This supremely cosy snuggle-bag is fully machine-washable and mouth-wateringly stylish. It is also great for lining prams on cold winter walks.

And some cheaper alternatives…

I am always happy to buy second-hand baby clothes and toys, but somehow when it came to the basics of pram, cot, high-chair and so on, I had to have them new, clean and unexposed to another baby’s snot and spit. Just a personal thing, which probably involves some irrational motherly pride too. You can get some fantastic second-hand bargains at car-boot sales and by looking on good old eBay, and never be too proud to accept a hand-me-down from a friend or relative. I’ve just inherited a friend’s buggy, as our old one finally caved in after seven years of hard wear, and, while it’s not the loveliest piece of baby equipment I’ve ever owned, it’s free, and it’ll do the next six months perfectly.

If none of this sounds appealing, and new is really what you’re after, try these for value and no loss of style:

High Street Clobber

Mothercare has come a long way since the days of shapeless dungarees and flowery blankets. They stock all the necessary basics at reasonable prices, and just occasionally you can spot a really stylish piece.

Other stores to take a look at, while you are actually shopping for yourself and not your baby, include Boots, Argos and John Lewis, and if you can set an entire Sunday aside, then never forget Ikea. Flat-pack equals better value, remember?

Online

This is the best place to start to get an idea of the styles you like. If you can bear to buy without touching and smelling first, it’s also the easiest way of baby-furnishing your house. Search under ‘baby equipment’ and you’ll have enough choice to satisfy even your high standards.

TOP TIP: I have heard miserable tales of cots and prams arriving late, with bolts and screws missing, leaving the baby to sleep in a drawer for a few weeks and Mummy unable to go out until the extra parts arrived. Order online items with plenty of time to spare, and be ready to get your Ikea ‘how does this fit together’ head screwed on.

For You

Yummy Mummy clobber. There is a complete list in Part Seven, but for now you might want to sort out some earplugs and a blindfold, if you are intending to get any rest in the hospital at all, and maybe the new Mummy-friendly handbag should make an appearance before you go into labour—because it’s fun, and because you will need it the moment you step out for the first time. Your new make-up and beauty routine will be helped if you get loaded up with beautiful products now: trawling around the heavenly ‘pamper-me’ counters at John Lewis will be a lot less fun in a few weeks’ time.

Baby announcement cards and thank-you cards. Obviously you can’t be 100% certain which flavour you will end up with (even seemingly enormous penises have turned out to be nothing more than enormous umbilical cords or fingers, though what exactly they are doing down there is anyone’s guess), so hold off the ‘It’s a Boy!’ stationery for now. Much better to go for something neutral and classy, which can apply to either sex.

You will hopefully get lots of presents in the next few weeks, and there’s nothing like a prompt, beautiful thank-you card to set your Yummy Mumminess off on the right track. Smythson has the most coveted ones, but if you’re after something more affordable it’s worth a rummage around your nearest ‘lifestyle’ shop, which is bound to have something gorgeous and unusual, and WH Smith can also come up trumps.

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