Hi everyone, I'm Louise and I became a mum in December 2016 to a beautiful boy who we named Edward, or Teddy as we affectionately call him.
I really wasn't sure I wanted to be a mum at all, to be honest.
Being quite an analytical person I never really saw the benefits.
When fellow female colleagues used to talk about the joys of motherhood all I heard was how time-consuming it all seemed to be.
I mean what sane person takes on the responsibility of a little creature that poos, wees and vomits on you?!
It wasn't until I spoke to a colleague of mine who had two children, that my thinking changed.
While she told me that, yes, they are time-consuming and generally make you want to pull your hair out most of the time, she did say that you just can't comprehend the benefit, because the benefit is a love you only feel for your children.
Thanks to that lady, I decided to give it a go, and can honestly say it was the best decision my husband and I have made.
But it was not all plain sailing because I hated being pregnant!
Am I meant to admit this?
It's not as though I had the most difficult pregnancy either.
I had moderate morning sickness and SPD and was horribly miserable 80 percent of the time.
When it got to 36 weeks, I genuinely felt that I had a lodger that was starting to over stay his welcome.
I ended up having a C-section at 39 weeks as Teddy was breach, so, thankfully, I didn't go over my due date, but I was more than ready at this point to get Baby out!
Now I am considering having baby number two.
And it's got me wondering whether saying that you hate being pregnant is taboo, and we should all make out that we find it the most wonderful and natural experience (having a little being inside me freaked me out somewhat), or if I really am in the minority.
So why did I hate being pregnant?
For me, other than the freaky idea of growing a baby, I found the physical changes quite hard.
I had totally under-estimated how much your body changes: I felt that I just wasn't myself anymore.
If anything, I felt more like my teenage self than my thirty something adult self, which even included sulking in bedroom listening to Portishead (the last time I had done that I was 16!).
I also found that although once you get married everyone nags you to start a family, once you actually get pregnant, everyone tells you what a nightmare having a baby is, and generally likes to scare the living daylights out of you with horrible birth stories.
I literally felt like screaming "it's too late now, people!". It probably didn't help my mood that I was massive and by the time I got to the end the only clothes I could fit in was a pair of maternity leggings and a Christmas jumper I had bought for a fiver.
To be honest, I have a very long list of things I didn't like about being pregnant, which I won't bore you with on my first blog, but I would love to know if any other mums felt like this.
And those of you that have second babies, how did you cope the second time around?
