Product Description

This book is the antidote to the rather wholesome, oh-so-serious and often smug range of pregnancy literature currently on offer. It's a story for women everywhere who have been, are or want to be pregnant. Mel Giedroyc, from Mel and Sue, has based the book on her own experiences of pregnancy and birth and the dramas which ensue, and it covers everything from the usual morning sickness, food cravings and getting a seat on the bus, to the not-so-usual talking in Latin to the foetus through a shower attachment and falling in love with the Epidural anaesthetist. It's a witty and insightful narrative of events leading up to the birth of a first baby through the eyes of an excited, shambolic and slightly at sea, thirty-something who pens the trials and tribulations of her journey to motherhood.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33628 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From the Publisher
Mel Giedroyc's 'mumoirs' - a hilarious and hectic nine-month spiral towards motherhood

About the Author
Mel Giedroyc was born in Epsom District Hospital in 1968. She looked like a frog and none of the midwives would pick her up. Her first word was 'Leatherhead'. She now lives in London with her husband and their two daughters, and does her bit in the comedy duo Mel & Sue.

Excerpted from From Here to Maternity: One Mother of a Journey by Mel Giedroyc. Copyright © 2004. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Sunday

THERE IS NO DAWN CHORUS in our part of London. It's more of a solo performed by a lone pigeon bemoaning his gnarled feet. This morning I was unfortunate enough to hear it. You see, I didn't sleep very well. Rather tossy and turny. I dreamt I was being chased by a strange man with long, sandy eyelashes. I was in a pair of concrete-filled waders, so I couldn't run away. I woke myself up and couldn't get back to sleep because I kept seeing the sandy eyelashes whenever I shut my eyes. I eventually realised they were mine. Must get them dyed.

Some might say that I am obsessed with sleep. Before I retire each night I like to work out how many hours I'm going to get. If it's between ten and twelve, I'm positively gleeful and jump into my bed like a toddler into a puddle. If it's in the eight- to ten-hour ballpark I am serene, verging on smug. Pulling back the covers, I'll give them a little pat and head for nod with a self-satisfied smile, like somebody at a classical concert who hums along to the music. If I know I'm getting less than eight, I'm resentful. Fewer than six and I consider putting in a morning call to Amnesty International. It's quite simply inhumane.

For as long as I can remember I have slept like a baby - seriously deep, Sleeping Beauty-type slumber. Of course, I don't for a second mean that I look like Sleeping Beauty when I'm out - a chloroformed chipmunk would be more accurate.

I take after my Lithuanian dad's side of the family - the hardy Baltic ability to hunker down and sleep any time, any place. I have slept standing up. I have slept in a shower. I have slept under a thin layer of felt. I have slept on gravel, on a bicycle and next to a man pleasuring himself in a sleeping bag. (I was not in the sleeping bag with him, I hasten to add.) I have slept in the dentist's chair undrugged, while the dentist filled a tooth. I have slept in a ferry terminal loo, a cinema foyer and a canoe. I even managed to grab a few winks onstage in a production of King Lear. While Gloucester was having his eyes put out, I was closing mine at the back of the stage. No location is too difficult for me - if there's an equivalent of the Mile High Club for kippers, then get me a membership card. My God, I love to sleep.

So I'm terse today and can't work out why I didn't sleep. Was the temperature wrong in our bedroom? Pretty clement, I'd say. Was Dan nicking the duvet? No more than usual. Had I eaten any cheese just before going to bed? Was it noisy? Who am I trying to kid? I once had a nap at a rave. Curled up for two hours. Right by the speakers.

Monday

I DID ALL MY PREP LAST NIGHT. Went to bed nice and early, around the ten o'clock mark after a relaxing Tension Tamer Tea, safe in the knowledge that I was on for at least nine hours. The previous night's blip had left me feeling nicely tired. Not dog tired, just a comforting ache around the shoulders. Jim-jams on, slippers off, lights out.

I woke up at 2 a.m., then at three, five and half six. A ruddy joke. Restless, bored and shockingly awake, I finally whispered to Dan, 'Are you asleep?' really loudly so he'd have to wake up. He mumbled, 'Mmm thirsty? Water ... go to the loo,' then turned over and immediately made contented, rodent-like snores.

This morning has been rather too long for my liking. Both of us are working at home this week, which can be trying at the best of times. Although Dan's real ambition is to write film scripts, at the moment he is working as a subtitler - translating other people's films from English into French and German. Which makes him a bit of a swot really.

Dan and I met when we were at college, both studying French. I knew instantly it was love when I saw him smoking a Gauloise. So laid-back and sophisticated - sitting on the steps outside the library, his eyes squinting into the middle distance - he could have been in an Ultravox video. True, the impact was lessened by the fact that he was also wearing patchwork trousers and white socks, but still, a filterless French cigarette!

One of the key differences between us since that day is that Dan has actually gone on to make use of his education, while I have forgotten everything I was taught. Recently, in Paris, I couldn't remember what the French was for 'weekend', until Dan, rather smugly, reminded me that the French for 'weekend' is 'le weekend'.

So while Dan's poring over a French dictionary checking the best way to phrase 'The geezer's tooled up ain't he?' for the gangster flick he's working on, I'm pretending to be busy at the kitchen table. I'm supposed to be researching the Male Pill. I'm not a scientist or health worker. In fact I don't do anything remotely useful. I'm a presenter. On radio and TV. I have to come clean and say that work's been a bit slow of late. But hurray! I've been asked to present an item on male contraception in a health show for Bravo cable channel. My brief is to make it 'pithy, wry, amusing, but not smutty'. But at the moment I feel about as pithy as a very old orange that should be thrown out of the fruit bowl.

Dan's work is obviously going very well. He keeps repeating French phrases out loud to himself and laughing. Feeling tired and sorry for myself, I ask Dan for some help, but his only comment is 'The Male Pill? Make it lager-flavoured."

Customer Reviews

Buy it, you will not be disappointed!
I immediately bought a copy of this book after reading about it in a pregnancy mag, and it never failed to impress. I knew it would be funny having spent my college days watching Lite Lunch, but this book was something else.
I'm currently 39 weeks pregnant with my second baby, and it has been a pregnancy from hell. I was at the end of my tether when the postman brought me my copy of From Here To Maternity, but I can honestly say I haven't laughed so much at a book in all my nine months of "nightmare". Even my fiance was impressed. It'll have first-time mums relishing the down-to-earth honesty of Mel's pregnancy and labour (which is were so many baby mags fail) and it'll have the rest of us laughing through our labours. And that includes the fathers!

Funniest Book Ever
I bought this book early on in pregnancy along with a pile of worthy academic guides. This is the one I've finished - in about 24 hours. The book made me cry laughing. It was hilarious, mirrored my own experiences and made me look forward to the whole thing. Thanks!

A Must Read When Pregnant
I'm not a Mel & Sue fan but this book is fab, I read it when I was pregnant last year and found myself laughing out loud. I will now buy this book for any friends who become pregnant in the future.