PUSH!!!

By                                              

 J.L.Jones

                                                                 Preface

Everyone on the planet has experienced being born and although it is not an experience we remember it is the one thing that connects us all, the one thing we all have in common.

Out of the billions of sperm that enter a woman’s body, only the best swimmers survive the epic and merciless journey. Battling against each other, they push and shove to the finish line. Like man like sperm!

They have one goal in life and that is to be the first one granted VIP entry to the egg. 

The fact you are reading this book means that one microscopic sperm did exactly that. Your mum and dad succeeded, whether planned or not, to create you. However, it is probably best not to think about that process too much as it does involve your parents doing ‘it.’

What happens once the fittest and strongest sperm has reached its goal? Well it is nothing short of a miracle. It beat the odds and now the two single cells join and create from within it a tiny little human. A fully formed, lovely smelling, soft, pink baby will develop and cook over nine long months.

The man’s part in this process is done, finite, finished. But you, as the woman, must now take on the task of carrying this tiny developing human around on your front watching as your body swells and expands beyond recognition. It will even takes on a life of its own as it bubbles, bulges and pulsates from the inside.

This nine-month process can be easy for some and seem to fly by or it can be hard and seem to last forever. However, no matter which way it goes, no two women experience it in the same way.

You have the hardy women where nothing fazes them. They can balloon to the size of a humpback whale and still enjoy pregnancy. You get the sickly ones that puke at the thought of food and this is not just restricted to the morning, have constant heartburn and terrible flatulence. You have the glowy ones with silky shiny hair, great skin and a no stretch marks and then you get the ones that seem to suffer with everything going from piles to gestational diabetes.

However, it does not stop there. When there is no room left at the Inn, your baby wants out and there is nothing you can do about it. Birth is inevitable.

If you are lucky enough to be up the duff, have a bun in the oven, be with child, then you absolutely have to give birth. There are no two ways about it, and unfortunately, your baby will not come out the same size as it went in. You have unknowingly been supplying your unborn baby with oxygen rich blood and nutrients that have enabled it to grow and develop so it will eventually be able to survive in the outside world. Just to add to the fact that your baby has grown from the size of a poppy seed to the size of an over sized Christmas turkey, at the end of your pregnancy you will have to squeeze it out of …….ahh now hang on, I have a name for it, my daughter has a different name for it, I am assuming you do too, so what do I call it?  I apologise now but I do not and will not call it a vagina. I just can’t, it’s too formal and reminds me too much of the not very helpful sex education classes. You must remember them; they consisted of a cucumber, a condom, a dodgy film and the dramatic overuse of the words penis and vagina.

I don’t like offensive names like fanny, minge or pussy, I am actually cringing as I type them. So I am going to go with a name that think is the least offensive. So where was I? Oh yes, you will now have to squeeze your bundle of turkey sized joy out of your Minnie. Please note that this is not a good name to adopt if you are ever planning to take your children to Disney World. Many awkward questions about Minnie having a Minnie will need to be answered or avoided, whichever you find easier and I speak from experience.

If you are new to this birth lark, I am sorry to have to the one to break it to you, but it is not how you see it in Hollywood films. We have all seen the far-fetched movies with a woman in full makeup lying in a bed unconvincingly trying to show pain. Her perfect hair matches her bronzed skin; her non stretch-marked bump is perfect in size and perfectly enhances her Miami Beach figure. So there she is in all her perfectness having her brow lovingly mopped by her attractive, attentive husband. She sits forward and gives one last little push and out glides baby Brad bathed in a warm glow, giving the whole experience an easy peasy, no effort required feel to it – Pah! Clearly, the directors of these films were men. I don’t get it, they can recreate the Titanic sinking, the chaos and drama of a World War or the shooting of a president down to the last realistic detail and yet they cannot recreate a woman realistically giving birth.

Pregnancy and childbirth are amazing, the whole process from start to finish is mind blowing and complex but it is far from being easy.

When I first started the book I thought I would focus on childbirth but the more I thought about it the more I realised that the birth is only a small part of it. It is but one part of an amazing process. Surely, I wouldn’t be doing anyone any favours if I skipped the part that leads up to the squeezing out of the baby, and I don’t mean the sex part, sorry to disappoint. I mean the pregnancy part, the actual carrying of your tiny human and having very little control of what goes on inside your body. The different experiences must be endless. Then what if women wanted to tell me about their experiences after the birth, surely their story deserved to be heard too?

So how was I going to structure it?

I decided to make it my quest, my mission in pursuit of truth to reveal real stories of women who were prepared to set dignity aside, bare their souls and be honest about pregnancy, childbirth or the bit after. I wanted to leave it up to each individual woman to decide which part they wanted to share. Their experiences were precious to them so who was I to dictate which ones deserve to be heard.

Just a warning, some of the stories will make you laugh, some will make you cry but most of all I want to give you honesty and not unrealistic, fluffed up poop so read on with caution!

I decided that the obvious place to start would be the birth of my first child and believe me it will not be fluffed up in the slightest!

 NEXT CHAPTER TO FOLLOW SHORTLY. BECOME A FAN AND READ IT FIRST!

JUST A WARNING. THE STORIES YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ ARE REAL EXPERIENCES BY REAL WOMEN THAT SOME MAY FIND UPSETTING.