Liz Fraser - The Yummy Mummy’s Survival Guide

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.

Cover Page

Title Page The Yummy Mummy’s Survival Guide Liz Fraser

Dedication 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.

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

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!

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.

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.