Up the Duff

The Real Guide to Pregnancy

Author: Cooke Kaz

Booktopia Comments Book Description

AUSTRALIA'S TOP-SELLING, MOST RESPECTED PREGNANCY BOOK -REVISED AND EXPANDED

KAZ COOKE gives you the up-to-date lowdown on pregnancy, birth and coping when you first get home. No bossy-boots rules, just lots of cartoons and the soundest, sanest, wittiest advice you'll ever get. Everything you need to know about the scary parts, the funny parts and your private parts.

• Week by week: what's happening to you and the baby
• Hermoine and the Modern Girl's hilarious pregnancy diary

AND

• How to prepare for pregnancy and the baby
• Info on conceiving, and IVF
• Crying, eating, weeing and working
• Blokes, bosoms, busybodies and bunny-rugs
• Nausea and other 'side effects'
• Tests: what they're like and what they are for
• The best services, websites and books on everything
• Stretch marks, 'natural childbirth' vs medical intervention, baby clothes and nappies, travel, safety, and how to be rude to complete strangers
• Labour, caesareans and pain relief

Intro

Well, here it is: the new edition of Up the Duff.

'Wait a minute: I hear you say, rather suspiciously, with nar­rowed eyes, pausing in your reach for another Tim Tam. 'What's wrong with the first edition? Did it tell women a baby was going to come out of their ear?'

Nope, although I think I may have thought it would before I started my original research and writing for the first edition. Since it first appeared, Up the Duff has reprinted every five or six months, and I've always updated it with new medical info. (And will con­tinue to do so.) Eventually, though, it was time for a big overhaul (and a new cover colour - sunshiny yellow instead of limy, well, lime).

I've added new stuff for partners (signalled by a heart in the book's margins), and made sure all the latest on medical tests is included, covering what they are, when to have them, why they're done, and how to interpret the results. I've badgered a whole new lot of experts working at the coalface of caring for pregnant women, helping them through birth, and looking after new babies. They've checked the facts, provided all the latest info and made suggestions.

The book now kicks off with a new chapter on getting ready for pregnancy and closes with a bigger, better Help part at the back, featuring added chapters on fertility troubles and assisted concep­tion (including IVF) as well as an updated contacts and resources chapter for pregnancy and after the baby is born. Throughout the book there's also loads more info on everything from which fish you can eat safely to when you can have sex after the baby's birth (any time Johnny Depp knocks on the door).

But back to basics: why did I write this book in the first place? Aren't there enough pregnancy gurus already? For a start the last thing you need when you're pregnant is a bossy-boots insisting you 'should' feel this and 'must' do that. Who wants to have, or be, a guru? Not me.

Okay, so first, I got up the duff. Then realised I had no idea what I was in for.

I bought a squillion pregnancy books and discovered they often contradicted each other on key points; they're only relevant in Idaho or Shropshire; or they're written by rich women who think you should get a sink installed in your child's 'nursery' (I ask you), or by people pushing their own personal theory, which may or may not involve giving birth in a wading pool full of lavender water and the dog.

The other thing pregnancy books tend to do is describe the size of the developing fetus in comparison with food. One week it's a brazil nut, then a plum, then an eggplant. At one point I became convinced I was going to give birth to a giant muesli.

And most of the books finish at exactly week 40 when the baby is due. In real life, while you're pregnant, you can't think any further than the birth. But the very minute you have a baby you can hardly remember a thing about the pregnancy. It's suddenly entirely irrel­evant and you have to deal IMMEDIATELY with a tiny person who depends on you completely (and also do stuff with your bosoms they don't even ask from exotic dancers).

For some reason I had always imagined that being pregnant would just be like being me with a big bump out the front. It hadn't occurred to me that the reality of being pregnant would eventu­ally be felt constantly in every physical part of my body, and in every recess of what I fondly used to call my mind. Even though I had heard about nausea and fluid retention and vagueness and a ferzillion other things, for some dumb reason I thought they were part of an old-fashioned pregnancy, relegated to history along with the concept of 'confinement' and Mrs Spinoza's mechanical home­perm-and-gherkin-bottling machine.

I'm a career woman, I thought. I'm over 30. I've always pre­tended to be in control of my life, and that doesn't have to stop just because I'm pregnant. I'll just live my life the way it has always been (without getting shickered and having a few fags at the weekend). Work will go on as normal, life at home will be just the same, only I'll need bigger shirts at some point. My life will only completely change once the baby comes out.

WELL.

Apparently not.

I had not bargained on the body taking control of itself. The power of the mind? Pah, and furthermore, snorty snonking sound. As far as my body was concerned, its major priority was growing a healthy baby. Several times I felt my legs going off along the cor­ridor for a lie down when I thought my torso should have been elsewhere. I woke up in the middle of the night compelled to eat banana sandwiches and drink glasses of soy milk. I had become a host organ.

My first thoughts every morning and my last thoughts at night were about being pregnant, and there was a fair whack of it in between. (This is as well as the other stuff you usually have to be on top of in your normal life.) Would I be a good mother? What if something went wrong? Was it too late to have second thoughts? Should I feel guilty about having second thoughts? Where do we stand on third and subsequent thoughts? Where the hell are my keys? Why is the Vegemite in the freezer? Did I do that? What the hell has happened to my HAIR? What's that weird bump forming on my gums? Do stretch marks stay that fetching shade of royal purple forever? Will I ever want to have sex again? What do peo­ple mean when they say 'pregnancy hormones'? Is it true some aromatherapy can make you have a miscarriage? Is it any wonder they keep making horror movies about motherhood and creatures inside us? Isn't this miraculous? Isn't this uncomfortable? Isn't this terrifying, and wonderful, and fascinating, and boring as batshit, all at the same time? Am I supposed to feel serene, or just seasick? If you don't do your pelvic-floor exercises will your fanny fall out? Why can't I feel the baby move yet? Could the baby stop moving for a while and give me a rest? What about those cigarettes I had before I realised I was pregnant? Will I ever be able to be alone again? How can I tell people I don't want my career back? How can I get my career back? When does a fetus become a baby? Does that mean if it's born then it will survive? Could I get any fatter? What's pre-eclampsia and how do you get it? What can you see on an ultrasound screen? What if labour goes on forever and nothing comes out? Could somebody get me a cup of tea?

And then when I had a baby the questions really started.

So to find out what's what I wrote Up the Duff (and followed it with a sequel, Kidwrangling: The Real Guide to Caring for Babies, Toddlers and Preschoolers). The researchers and I went to work, and then experts checked everything written about their special area and suggested new bits, and then the editor asked a gadzillion questions and in the normal course of events I would have had a huge tantrum but I was too tired because by that time I'd had a baby, so instead we checked it all over again and took bits out and put bits in and waved it all about. And now, ten years later, here it is still - updated to the eyeballs and raring to go.

If you read everything in the book you might think pregnancy is a terrible minefield of bizarre health complaints. Don't freak out: lots of the pregnancy problems are rare - they're included 'just in case'. If you do have a special interest or problem, though, this book will give you the basics. And if there's something you need to know more about, you can find a phone number, web site or book, point­ing you in the right direction, recommended in the More Info lists at the end of each chapter or chapter section, or in Contacts and Resources at the end of the book.

Kaz

PS One last thing: the Diary of Hermoine the Modern Girl's preg­nancy includes many aspects of my own experience, with a few stories from other people thrown in and the odd embellishment, but it is not quite my story. A girl has to try to cling to some sense of mystery (especially when she's got baby vomit up her nose). (Oh, don't ask.)

ISBN: 9780670072347
ISBN-10: 0670072346
Number Of Pages: 560
Publisher: Penguin Australia
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Dimensions (cm): 23.000 x 15.2  x 3.300
Weight (kg): 23.0
Audience: General