Maz's One Step Guide To Getting Your Pre-baby Body Back

Step One: Don’t have a baby.

And if it is too late for step one and you happen to have had a baby, the bad news is that without extensive surgery you will never get your old body back. Like mine, it might look all together on the outside but on closer inspection it is just weird floppy sacks of flesh rolled up and smooshed into black jeans and a tshirt with a jacket thrown over the top for posterity. In the spirit of full disclosure for those of you who have similar blobby bodies/are pregnant/just wondering what a post baby body is like, here is a blow by blow of how my body’s changed since childbirth.

Toes: Still ok, mostly the same. A little neglected from months of not being able to cut their nails due to pregnancy bigness, but otherwise still fine, still very hairy.

Shins: Hairy, but only halfway up my shin so, like, little socks made of hair.

Bladder: Far less control than I used to have. Someone ran into me at basketball recently and I had my first experience of ever so slightly weeing myself. Not enough that it ran down my leg, but enough to make me promise to myself that I'd start doing those kegel exercises you're meant to do. Since then I have peed a small amount, numerous times while playing sport. And while I've got around to playing sport, I haven't got around to doing those other exercises.

Breasts: I now actually lift up my boobs to wash under them in the shower. They are like little boob flaps. Which is useful when I need to feed Max while he's in his baby carrier in Coles because I can now flop a boob into his face and continue buying my Danish feta cheese at the deli counter.
Also, this is related to boobs and I don't know how else to segue into it, but when I've looked up tips on expressing milk the suggestion is always to stimulate your nipples while you look at a picture of, or think about, your baby. Is it just me or does this sound weirdly like masturbation?! Masturbabe-tion more like. Again, people think I'm a creep for saying this. It's not me suggesting you masturbate your breasts to a picture of your baby, it’s all the lactation know it alls.

Nipples: bled for a while. I only found out they were actually bleeding when Max spewed blood on me. Which was slightly daunting, and then being the perpetual over-sharer that I am, I wanted to tell people but they don't want to hear about my blood nipples. Same goes for when Max had a crack in his anus. Why can’t I just have a good convo with people about my nips and my son’s anus? Come on guys, be supportive.

Hair: While shiny and thick during pregnancy, a few months after birth my hair started to fall out. At first it was just a few extra hairs here and there. Then it was a small handful. Then, suddenly, I had enough that I could have spun it into wool and made myself a jumper. The height of hair loss came on the day of the Annual Josephans’ Chocolate Cake Competition. I capitalized that like it was a thing, but I’d never heard of it before I entered it and just wanted to make it sound like it was prestigious. Truth of the matter is that I saw someone’s article on Mamamia about all the things they thought they would do while on maternity leave and didn't. I got ultra-competitive and decided that I would achieve all the things they failed at, making me a better mother and human, and winning out over a stranger who didn’t realise they were in a competition with me. In the end, the joke was on me. As I entered the judging room to deliver my cake I realised that these were next level cakes, they looked like they were created by pastry chefs with years of experience. Mine literally looked like a packet cake made by a seven year old. I realised my error too late and was turning to leave and eat my cake alone at home in peace, when one of the women took it from me. I never even got to taste my cake, and definitely didn't win, but on the way out I dusted basically every cake I passed with a good sprinkling of my loose hair. Sucked in better cakes.

The bright side though is this, while my description sounds like my body is practically falling apart, I'm proud of it for doing what it was meant to do. I mean, it grew a tiny penis for fuck’s sake. (With a tiny human, who I quite like, attached to it.)

Shut Your Mouth When You're Talking To Me

Let’s get a little sciencey. Well, psychology actually, but close enough. There is this thing called the Dunning-Kruger effect. You may not have heard of it, but I guarantee you will know someone who is a good example of it. Basically Dunning and Kruger did a study on ignorance and found that a lot of people suffer what's called “illusory superiority”. Basically, the ignorant will often mistakenly assess their abilities to be much higher than they are, so they think they are clever as and doing an amazing job when they are, in fact, dimmer than the inside of an asshole and often, failing quite miserably. In a nutshell, the stupid are too stupid to realised they’re stupid. My favourite part about this unfounded belief in their own intelligence is that it is paired with an arrogance, so the idiots of the world are very likely to broadcast their ignorance to us, the geniuses. On the flip side you have said geniuses (that’s you and I) who slightly underestimate their abilities and, unlike the group previously mentioned, assume everyone else is of a similar level of high intelligence. So basically any time you think you are right about something, you are either completely right or SO wrong and no one has the heart to tell you. Over the years I have heard some amazingly incorrect assertions from these fools in all areas of my life, from fast food restaurants to university, and have been collecting them like precious gemstones, pulling them out to look at them when I'm not feeling great about myself. 

The McDOH!nalds Moron: I worked at McDonalds when I was 15 and while I had very little knowledge of tax law (I failed to get a tax file number for a year and was subsequently taxed half my earnings until I did) I knew more than this Dunning-Kruger affected nong. Tax time rolled around and we were told our group certificates were pinned to the notice board and to collect them at our leisure. As I went to find my own, so I could claim back the literally 50% I had allowed myself to be taxed (I got $2000 back that year, which I wisely spent on one shouldered Suprè tops and Fast and the Furious movie marathons) the girl beside me exclaimed “A certificate!! Oh my gawwwd, I knew I'd been working hard, and I finally have a certificate to show for it. I can't wait to tell my mum!” What sort of certificate she thought maccas offered you annually for just doing your job (and quite poorly in her case) I will never know. But I like to warm the hands of my mind on the image of her tenderly hanging it on her family’s fridge.

The Beautiful and The Damned: I had a really awesome friend who I worked with a while back. He had the dreamiest green eyes and all the girls loved him. And never has the demeaningly said “you're lucky you're so pretty” rang more true. One day, after another friend had taken a pregnancy test he approached me looking super quizzical and asked “Mazzy, do pregnancy tests say who the father is?” I am chuckling so hard even writing this, I just need a moment to catch my breath. 

That's better, sorry about that. I can't help but imagine that in his mind pregnancy tests were like magic eight balls and after you took one a random man’s name bobbed into focus on the little screen. 

Did You Get High Before School?: I did history in high school and fell in love with ancient Egypt. So much so that I actually went to Egypt in my early 20s. Did you know that the Sphinx looks directly at a KFC? Amazing. Anyway, one day we were learning about how, upon entering the afterlife in Egyptian folklore, your heart was weighed against the feather of truth. If it weighed less than the feather you could pass into heaven but if your heart was heavier you were damned to spend eternity in hell. Upon learning this one girl in my class, very correctly commented “but in real life your heart would always weigh more than a feather.” Yes. Thank you for that insightful comment. But wait, does that mean that people in ancient Egypt didn’t have human bodies with crocodile heads? And what is this “metaphor” word I’m always hearing echoing around the halls? Could you clear that up for me too, oh wise one?

The UniBLERGHsity Student: Ok, I ran out of clever names for this one so it sort of sounds like something you’d read in a Mad Magazine parody of Revenge of the Nerds, but shut up. I did a subject at uni called “the history of genocide” because I was just into studying really upbeat stuff at uni. In our second lecture after we had combed through all the actions which constitute genocide; mass murder, sterilization, forced removal of children etc. a girl in the back of the lecture theatre put up her hand and told the lecturer “I think you'll find genocide isn't always a bad thing.”

Unfortunately, he stopped her before she could continue and consequently the rest of my life I will be burdened with the desire to know what justification she had for genocide. And I'll never know if she was incredibly racist or just extremely optimistic. 

I apologise if you are one of the people in these anecdotes, because I know I’m friends with some of you on facebook, but I’m hoping that you were distracted by something shiny at about the point where I used the word “science” in the opening paragraph. And full disclosure here, I know I’ve just been a massive bitch to these poor idiots, but I thought that someone lived in the pylons of the Harbour bridge until I was in my mid twenties, and until around the same time also believed that trees made wind. So at least I’m kind of a dumb bitch too.

Scarenting

“How much of my hair has my baby eaten?” is a thought I have about four times every day, because once I saw a documentary about a girl who had to have a sausage made of hair removed from her intestine because she was always chewing the end of her ponytail. My hair sheds like a mofo and always ends up wrapped around Max’s hands and feet and in his mouth. I've even had friends tell me they've found my hair in their socks or wrapped around their penises, it sheds that much and spreads that far. This hair issue made me realise that while I’m a good mum, I’m not a great mum. Don't get me wrong, I change Max when he’s dirty, feed him when he’s hungry and cuddle him constantly, but I have done some things which I definitely lose parenting points for. For example, I didn’t realise I wasn’t meant to eat soft serve while I was pregnant and ate it more than I ever have for the nine months he was in my belly. Since then I've been making a bunch of poor parent choices, sometimes they are born of ignorance, sometimes I've just consciously made a decision that favours me over Max. I like to call this style of scary parenting “scarenting”. Scarenting decisions can range from mild (letting your three month old baby watch True Blood) to major (giving your baby to a strange man to hold while you go to the toilet in a shopping mall). Some scarenting choices I've made in the last few months are as follows.

Mild: Sometimes I don’t soothe Max when he cries because he just looks so hilarious when he is really getting his scream on. Like a furious little beetroot. 

Iffy: When he decides to cry in an enclosed public place, like a waiting room, my go to response is to look apologisingly at the people around me and offer “Would anyone like a baby? He's barely used!” Har har har. The other day I said it in a lift and a lady who I swear to god looked like the witch in Hansel and Gretel responded very seriously “I would take him”. I bet you would scary lady. I stopped talking and just looked at the lift door, desperately willing it to open before my child was abducted.

Not great: I was playing tennis (because I'm a MUM now) and another player's little girls were patting Max. Which was fine by me until their dad offered me a great bit of “advice”. 

“Did you know no one had peanut allergies until vaccines were invented? I don't think it's right to put something so artificial as a vaccine into my young children’s bodies.” 

Aaaaaaaaarrrrggghh. I didn't know how to politely snatch Max away from his, surely disease ridden, children. So I let them keep patting him. And just so you know antivax man, if you don't want artificial substances entering your kids bodies, here are some natural things which might enter their systems: measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, diphtheria, smallpox. And FYI I'd rather my child have an allergy than be DEAD thank you very much. 

Pretty bad: I moved out of our marital bed and into the spare room with Max for a few weeks when Nick went back to work, because I am a very considerate wife and it also meant I could watch netflix all night. Meanwhile our cat Jenny moved into our room to keep Nick company. A week later when Nick went to change the doona cover he discovered that Jenny had actually done a poo in my side of the bed and he had been sleeping next to it all week. I was out, so he sent me a picture, FURIOUS. Then to make matters worse he went to send a picture of Max to his parents but accidentally sent the poo picture, meaning that he then had to explain to two of the cleanest people I’ve ever met why the cat had pooed in the bed. This was not, strictly, a parenting faux pas but definitely not the best housewifery ever. 

Major: I don’t think this is too bad, but from the looks I’ve been getting from everyone when I ask this question, it is a major no-no for me to even be thinking in the privacy of my head. You know how you find your partner attractive and that’s why you have a baby with them? And you know how sometimes babies look exactly like one parent? Max is like a tiny clone of nick (which is rude because I spent all that time growing him, both when he was in my belly and when he was out of it, literally all the food he’s ever eaten has come from me, he could at least look a bit like me. Boo.) So how is it that you can have a child who looks EXACTLY like the person you are attracted to, but you’re not attracted to the child?! I’m talking about when he’s older, obviously not now when he’s a baby - I'm not some sort of creep. My mum suggested that maybe it was the age difference. And pretty much everyone else just looked at me, disgusted. But I reckon you guys can suck it because, think about it, it's a valid point. 

So I'm not Mum Of The Year, and I may have spent a lot of time explaining to people why Max’s arms are covered in bruises (they're hickeys ok? He sucks his arm until he gives himself hickeys, what can I do?) but as Nick told me when we brought him home from hospital “our only job is to keep him alive.” And, as I find every one of the ten times I check he's still breathing during the night, I'm doing alright at that!

Entreprenah or Yeah?

I had a facebook friend once who got 30+ likes on approximately three statuses in a row and then started posting (seriously) about how he was going to try stand up comedy. There was nothing I wanted more than for him to actually do it. I would have absolutely gone to that show. Because he was for sure going to flop and the only thing I like better than seeing someone who’s really good at comedy is seeing someone who is REALLY bad. Look, I think I am hilarious, my sense of humour is exactly my taste in funny, but I’m pretty sure that if I got up on stage and started telling stories about my cat* no one would be laughing. Call it schadenfreude, call it shade, maybe I’m just really mean, but you can’t say that one hundred percent of the time you want everyone around you to succeed at their stupid dreams. And maybe it’s because people don’t know that their dreams are stupid that they pursue them. So here’s my stupid dream: to be a billionaire entrepreneur. And I need your help. Come on, you’ve been reading this blog for free forever now, you owe me one. So help a sister out and let me know if these inventions I’ve invented are stupid or completely viable (my hunch is it’s the latter). But let’s just keep these between us because I’ve read that you can’t patent things you’ve spoken publicly about.

SnapCrap
Explained in four words: The selfie lover’s nightmare
Key Demographic: this one is for those people whose friends are obsessed with the perfect selfie
The pitch: If you have a friend who is just way too obsessed with the perfect photo of themselves and spend more time looking at their own image than Narcissus, this may help them remedy this personality flaw, or at minimum, really piss them off. This is more a service than an invention, and it may or may not have illegal elements to it but I’m sure we can find a way around those if you choose to help me finance this little goldmine idea. What we will do is take a really bad photo of them (provided by you) and have it printed on all new doonas, pillowcases, plates, mugs, bowls etc. then while the selfie-lover is out we will break into their house and switch all their stuff so they can’t escape the terrible photo of themselves.

Gat Girdles
Explained in four words: A girdle for cats
Key demographic: Cats
The pitch: Do you have a fat cat that people are always being mean about? My cat Jenny has struggled with some weight issues, which I know has got her down at times. The cat girdle would be made of spanx material and faux fur in a variety of colours allowing your cat to slim down in minutes (after only minimal yowling and scratching). No more saggy baggy moggy tummy!

Superstretch Smalls
Explained in four words: Really stretchy little undies
Key demographic: People with private parts who like to go away on holiday
The pitch: Does packing your undies take up HEAPS of space in your going away bag? I like to pack at least one pair of undies for each day I’m away and this can be quite space consuming. So I propose we find the stretchiest material available and make really tiny undies out of it, approximately the size of a matchbox. They’d stretch out to fit you when you went to put them on because of this theoretical super-stretchy material. Then you can pack all you undies in your pocket and you're ready to roll.

Stampcam
Explained in four words: See mailed gift reactions
Key demographic: People who regularly post gifts in the mail
The pitch: Are you really good at sending gifts in the mail? But then do you feel let down by not being able to see the recipient’s reaction (because of course the best part of giving a gift is the kudos you receive for being such a good friend)? Stampcam is a really, really small camera which lives in the stamp you affix to your gift and allows you to watch the joy which results from you being such an awesome friend via your phone. I haven’t figured out the logistics yet, but hello, genius.

Tablesavers
Explained in four words: People reserve your table
Key demographic: Parties of less people than the minimum party requirement to book a table at a busy Sydney restaurant. Ie. People who aren't that popular but still like food.
The pitch: Why is it that so many restaurants in Sydney require 5+ attendees before they can book a table for you? Otherwise you're required to just wait there for an indeterminate period of time like a schmuck. And who are these mysterious groups of five? Two married couples and a divorcee? A single dad and his four adult sons? For a small fee I would have someone go and wait in the table queue at your restaurant of choice and then call you when your table is ready. And you and your one friend can rush there ASAP and enjoy the fruits (and meats) of someone else’s labour.

Boughto-correct
Explained in four words: Make cash from autocorrect
Key demographic: People who want to advertise their wares
The pitch: Now it might take some convincing Apple to agree to this but I think this is a missed opportunity for advertisers. You know how your phone autocorrects words to other words? Like once my phone changed “let's go shoppingggggg” to “ape Finn nutty”. Maybe for a reduction in your monthly phone repayments you could opt to have advertising autocorrect. For example, you'd type “Let's go to the movies” but your phone would correct “movies” to Bedknobs and Broomsticks or whatever.

Chafe Bomb
Explained in four words: Instant chafed thigh relief
Key demographic: Anyone who is a few kilos overweight or whose thighs rub together when it gets warm and sticky
The pitch: The only people I’ve ever mentioned this to were incredibly fit and toned girls so they laughed in my face because they had never experienced how weird you look walking after you’ve chafed the inside of your thighs on a hot day. Chafe bomb will be a little like a bath bomb and a little like a water balloon filled with talcum powder. You take this small, purse-sized bomb, place it between your thighs, squeeze them together and pop it, releasing and distributing the soothing talcum powder within, relieving the pain of the chafe and allowing you to glide about for the rest of the day like you're on ice skates. Or like you would if you weren't so fat that your thighs chafed together.

So if you have a spare $10,000 you can buy any of these ideas from me. I can also do you a discount for multiple ideas. I started a Kickstarter page but you have to submit it for review and it's not that I was embarrassed but, no, wait, yep. I was embarrassed by all these ideas.

* When my cat Jenny wants dinner she gets really meow-y, so I ask her questions whose answers rhyme with the word meow, like “When do you want dinner Jenny?” “Neow” “What do you say when you hurt yourself?” “Ow” “How did the chicken cross the road?” “How?” See, I think that's comedy gold.

Smotherhood

The day I had our baby was not the best day of my life. Are people kidding when they say that? It was the scariest day of my life, sure, definitely the goriest and most gruesome. It was a day I had to get stitches in my private parts while the obstetrician talked to me about Star Wars (way to instil confidence Vagina Doctor!) It was also a day that I may or may not have crapped myself (I will never know if I did, but that is okay) and it felt like someone put a firecracker up my nether regions and rendered me unable to walk without the gait of an aged cowboy. Nick summed up his experience with the old adage that watching the birth of our first child was “like watching your favourite pub burn down”, suffice to say neither of us particularly enjoyed childbirth. For sure it was sweet as a nut getting to see the person I’d been growing for nine months, but let’s be honest, all newborns look the same: like little squashed goblins wrapped up in that pink and blue hospital blanket. I didn’t realize that getting him out would be the easiest and least terrifying part of being a new parent; so I have chronicled the horrors of the first two weeks of parenthood that maybe you should consider before you decide whether or not you'd like to go and get a hysterectomy.

Minus One Day Old: December 29th
Nick’s anal Dad side was already in full swing when my waters broke and he yelled at me to quickly get out of bed and off the new carpet, so as not to ruin either of them. He ran to get an (old) towel for me to stand on so I wouldn’t do any damage to the floorboards either. BTW guys, your amniotic fluid keeps leaking throughout the whole of labour. Disgusting. Just disgusting.

Born: December 30th
While the hospital brought with it myriad new experiences and emotions (Nick actually got to milk me regularly while I was in recovery, a very interesting first for our marriage) the horror of what we had done to our lives only really hit me the night we got home.

3 Days Old: January 2nd
Within the first few hours of being alone with Max and not really knowing what I was supposed to do when he cried, I had the following thoughts:

“Can I return him to the hospital?”
“I have stitches in my downstairs and am scared to ever poo again. Why did nobody warn me about this? I'm mad at all the mums who didn't warn me about the scary first poo.”
“I definitely can NOT do this. How do the 16 year olds on 16 and Pregnant do it if I can’t? I am less capable than a Teen Mom.”
“How quick is the adoption process and do you get money for it?”
“My boobs hurt” at which point I punched myself in the sore boob out of frustration. It didn’t make my boob any less sore.

The crux of this freak out was that I have never had to take care of myself, and have always been looked after by everyone else; and I mean, for my whole life. My mum still peels my oranges for me and from the age of 15 I had a boyfriend who would share the great responsibility that is Maz, with my mum. Seriously, my first boyfriend cleaned my room for me and found ten forks. Another time I had my current and ex-boyfriends come to my house to repaint my bedroom. Cut to now and I married a man, who I constantly joke, can’t die because I don’t know where anything is located in my kitchen. So the weight of the idea that now I was not just in charge of myself, but also of someone else who can do nothing on their own was CRUSHING.

5 Days Old: January 4th
I had assumed that the minute I had a baby, I would have infinite patience for them. Turns out, this was not the case. At five days old Max cried for four straight hours and no matter what I did he wouldn’t shut up or go to sleep. It got to the point where I had to give him to Nick before I punched him. I conveyed this desire to Nick and he was beyond horrified. It’s not like I wanted to punch him in the face, just give him like, a little dead arm for being such a dick. Note: I told the nurse who comes to visit and check on him that I wanted to punch him and she said that was fine as long as I didn’t actually do it.

Seven Days Old: January 6th
Having a newborn is the most intense experience ever; you are literally just holding this other person all day, everyday. And I mean all day. It is not, as I imagined, watching real housewives of everywhere while my little angel cooed politely in the other room. I have to hold Max constantly; while I’m in the toilet, while he smells, when he is literally climbing up me to get to my ear and scream into it as loudly as he possibly can and all I really want to do drink a six pack of UDLs and run away (I've even planned my outfit for this, it involves a leather jacket and some sunnies, I call it my delinquent mum look). But do you know what helps temper this partly awful experience of clinging to a person while they void their bowels on you and vomit your own milk back onto the boob from whence it came? I am finally part of the group that knows everything in the world/is better than people who have not had unprotected sex and conceived a child: parents. Now that I too am a parent, I can finally give unsolicited advice to all and sundry whilst smiling smugly. Some of the great advice/wonderful stories I have been given/told and will be sure to perpetuate:

• Teach your newborn to sleep all night by putting earplugs in and refusing to get up to them between 7pm and 7am. If they REALLY scream, get your husband to get up and give them some water
• When teaching a baby to eat, just put food in its mouth and then hold its mouth shut until it swallows
• Various accounts of babies being stillborn/dying in the womb - very appropriate and comforting stories to tell a pregnant woman
• This is a burping cloth. In case you don't know what that is, you use it to burp your baby

Two Weeks Old: January 13th
In case I didn't convey it earlier, the aforementioned human holding is boring. Actually, newborns are really boring in general and anyone who disagrees is a liar or has incredibly low expectations of what constitutes entertainment. This means that you want to shirk the responsibility of them as often as possible and will hand them to anyone who will take them. That's when fathers are useful. Who's turn it is to hold the baby may also become one of the biggest points of contention in your marriage/possible grounds for divorce with said father. It is amazing how angry holding a baby all day can make you. Unfortunately for Nick he cops the brunt of this anger (although to be fair to me, he is at fault for the following):

• He asked me to hold Max when it was his turn to hold Max and did chores instead of holding Max
• After two hours of trying to get Max down and finally succeeding,  busting to pee, I rushed to the bathroom (the only one in our house) and was pipped at the post by Nick who slipped in before me
• He had the audacity to say he was tired. NEVER SAY YOU’RE TIRED if your night’s sleep has consisted of eight solid hours vs mine which involves cleaning up both baby and cat spew in amongst my four hours of broken sleep

Six weeks on and Max’s belly button bit is still sitting, dried out, on my bedside table because I don't really know what I'm meant to do with it. Despite that, I feel like I've come to terms more with this whole parent thing. I've managed to have at least one conversation not about the baby, I've put something on other than pajamas, I've even started to find the things Max does slightly less than boring and Nick and I are not even divorced, so if you want some advice from someone who’s basically parent of the year now, hit me up!

How To Gain Weight Rapidly

Let’s just get it out in the open: I hate all your pregnancy announcement posts. I hate the clichéd photos of a small pair of shoes next to a big pair of the same shoes, I hate your lame cartoon announcements telling the wonderfully generic story of “we met, we married, we have a baby on the way” and don’t even get me started on the bun in the oven posts – blergh. And while there are a lot of inane things people want to tell you about their pregnancies and being pregnant, something they never tell you is how hard it can be to actually fall pregnant in the first place. We started trying to have a baby years ago, and had no luck for a long time. So I’m not sure if these announcements irked me because I was jealous of those people who were able to fall pregnant when I was not, or if it is just that I am allergic to lame shit put together for the sole purpose of garnering facebook likes. Anyway, seeing as no one talks about how hard it can be to actually get knocked up, and therefore gives you little advice on what magical spells you can do to get pregnant, I had to make up my own magical baby spells. Please enjoy my “How to get up the duff” advice. Disclaimer: None of this actually works.

Smoothies: I tried having a green smoothie every day for breakfast. These were actual serious hard-core green smoothies. The type that people who believe kale can cure cancer would have for breakfast. They had flax seeds and spinach and cucumbers and turmeric in them. They weren’t remotely delicious and made me poo green poo, and I thought “if this won’t get me pregnant, nothing will!” Spoiler: the smoothies didn’t get me pregnant.

Vitamins: I bought myself vitamins. I bought Nick vitamins. I yelled at Nick until he took his vitamins, and then would forget to take my stupid, super expensive vitamins because they made my tummy hurt. Then one day my adverse reaction to my vitamins meant that I threw up my green smoothie in my car while I was driving over the Anzac bridge at 70km/hr. I had no time to pull over and had to vomit in a paper bag while I drove. I had to put the bag on my lap and vomit into it while trying to still look ahead. Then I had to sit with the warm, seeping bag of green smoothie vomit on my lap until I got to work.

Acupuncture: I bought a $40 groupon for two acupuncture sessions and had a random woman stick needles in me in a room she shared with a cobbler. I had spent all my money on fresh fruit and veg for my smoothies and had to scrimp somewhere. I’m not made of money you know.

Actual magic spells/talking to dead relatives: I would talk to my dead grandmother through my cat Jenny, who I believe is a conduit for said dead grandmother and ask her to ask Nanny to help me out somehow. I also googled “spells to fall pregnant” and then would immediately delete my internet history so no one would see it. Then when I was at work and someone was standing behind me when I was looking up how to spell a particular word, google suggested “spells to fall pregnant” but in that purple font like I’d looked it up before. I don’t know if she saw it, but I’m pretty sure she did. So THANKS GOOGLE, you stupid fuckhead.

As previously noted, none of these ridiculous solutions to my infertility actually worked. However, I did manage to fall pregnant by some miracle well after giving up my magical pregnancy remedies and now have a 8 month old ball of elbows living in my belly. So in the spirit of a before and after, here is my list of things that no one told me about actually being pregnant that I had to discover on my own. Thanks guys. Maybe next time you make pregnancy announcements you could include some of this stuff in them because then at least they’d be like a public service announcement.

Morning sickness: while this is definitely a thing, so are the other sicknesses no one tells you about including eating broccolini sickness, vomiting from hunger sickness, vomiting from thinking about porridge sickness and gummy bear sickness. I would have to say my least glamourous pregnancy sickness moment had to be when I ate some broccolini and roast lamb. Not only did I throw it up, I threw it up so hard that toilet water splashed all over my face and into my mouth. Then I had toilet water sickness.

Weird crushes: I know I often have weird crushes on people, compared to normal girls, but early pregnancy had me crushing on anyone from Peter Overton to Captain Planet and Stephen King.

Being suddenly special in the head: the other day when making suggestions of good places to go for breakfast I sent three messages which read something along the lines of: 
“Where should we go for breakfast? I’d suggest Zest.”
“Another good place would also be Zest.”
“But really, I’d recommend Zest”

No cravings: Here is a list of things I have been eating on the regular since well before I was pregnant: tomato paste out of the tub with a spoon, sour cream out of the tub sprinkled with salt eaten with a spoon, frozen peas, an entire jar of pickled chillies in one sitting, a one kilogram tub of sour worms. I have craved absolutely nothing new during my pregnancy, except some time with Captain Planet.

Being kicked in weird places: I am not a idiot and know that babies kick you on the inside when they are big enough. But no one told me that sometimes, somehow, when you are trying to wee, they will kick you in the vajayjay from the inside causing you to scream in surprise and then wee really weirdly. You don't know what it is to be pregnant until someone has kicked you in the vagina internally while you are on the toilet. Also hiccupping into your privates is a thing. No one told me that.

In conclusion, pregnancy is a super weird thing that doesn't always happen easily and then surprises you every day with unexpected shit. But it’s pretty awesome, vag hiccups and all.

How To Punish A Child Who Squeezes Your Cat So Hard It Farts

Mamamia recently published an article entitled “Things your family does that you didn’t realise were weird” cataloguing the things that the author, Lucy Gransbury, thought were normal but upon leaving home discovered they were actually super weird. I’m calling bullshit a bit on this article because it lists things like Dad Tax and Wish Chips, which also existed in my household, and undoubtedly thousands of others. Compare this to, say, when I was little and every morning without fail my dad would tell me that while I was asleep he and my mum put me on the road, put yoghurt on my face and a truck ran over me and then I think we can discuss what constitutes weird family shit. Yogurt Truck would stress me out to no end. My parents loved my adverse reaction to their story and no explanation for the yogurt part was ever given. So, sorry Lucy, but you can take your frozen cheese and shove it, because I have a list of things that my family did that were actually weird.

• At 5 years of age I squeezed my cat George so hard that he did a terrible fart. As punishment my parents made me ring the vet and apologise, the vet sounded confused and just told me not to do it again.
• My dad used to take out his two false teeth and chase me around the house yelling “I am Gunkafore, you are Labrador” it used to horrify me and I still don’t know what it means.
• On long road trips my parents would buy us cheap little items to keep us entertained. To prolong the excitement and to keep us quiet for as long as possible they would give us these items piece by piece. For example, one year on a road trip to Uluru we were bought walkmans. At 5am we were given the Walkman. At 7am we were given the batteries. At 9am we were given the tape. And at 11am we were finally given the headphones – the puzzle was complete and we were over the moon! I’m still amazed that these little bits and pieces, which did fuck all until all put together, sustained our excitement for six or seven hours. Ah, times before the internet…
• My mum used to make crosswords for us to do at our birthday parties as they offer some “quiet time”.
• My dad wore a night gown instead of pyjamas.
• Until I was 20 I thought yellow was pronounced “yallow”.
• My dad used to pretend to be the ten year old version of himself and tell us all about his life in his hometown of Guilford. This was done at night, in a high pitched voice while walking around on his knees (in his nightie).
• My dad also used to do this character called “Marty Mosquito” (basically his hand scrunched into the shape of a “mosquito”) who would wake us up in the morning. Marty was friendly, but if his friend Boris showed up instead of Marty, you were liable to get pinched incessantly. Like, really pinched HARD.
• My dad thought it was HILARIOUS to make incest jokes. Nothing too rough, but still pretty blue. Eg. When I was asked by a girl in the grade below me why I had been performing, alone, alongside a teacher (my dad, who taught at my school) at the end of year concert, my dad felt strongly that I should have responded “because he’s my boyfriend” and walked off. Just to freak them out.
• I think this may be something that lots of peoples’ families did, but my family used to speak the internal monologue for our cat Jeffrey. If he was hungry or in a mood, we would voice his opinions or disdain or even just his general thoughts on the weather (he hated the wind). For a really stupid cat, I was always amazed at how articulate he was.
• Speaking of Jeffrey, we used to have a theme song we’d sing for him when he came into the room, along the lines of “Jeffrey the cat, the wonderful, wonderful cat”. Not lyrically superior, but effective enough.
• My brother and I used to have a song that we sang AT each other when it was the other person’s turn to wash up, a sort of musical bullying. It went “Guess who’s turn it is to wash up? You-rs. Yeah yeah. Woo.” It drove my mum insane and was eventually banned in our house under threat of being made to do the washing up when it wasn’t your turn.

Who knows what repercussions these oddities have had on my life, but I’d be intrigued to meet the Maz who had never experienced any of them. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be writing this blog though. Or gently feeling Nick’s eyeball through his eyelid whenever she got a chance.