Pregnancy is a beautiful time for you to bond with your unborn child and for your body to prepare itself for the unique experience of birth. It is a special journey during which your mental, emotional and physical self will undergo miraculous changes.

Embrace the natural process of gestation as one of the most amazing of your life.

Take the time to enjoy it. Listen to what your body is trying to tell you.

Well right now my body is telling me to fart. Again. 

And while listening to the sweet sound of flatulence is one thing, embracing the excessive passing of wind as the most amazing time of my life isn’t going to happen.

The pregnancy apps, the pregnancy books, your mother, your mother-in-law, your aunts, women on television and radio and – heaven forbid – on mothers’ forums, all present the same rosy view of pregnancy outlined above. It’s a sterilised Hallmark version of the truth, one designed to hoodwink the unsuspecting into believing that pregnancy is actually a delightful time.

Your friends who have had children will generally be more honest than the above mentioned covert lying bitches; quietly admitting that yes there are some less than pleasant bits like the morning sickness thing. Oh and the not fitting into any of your clothes thing. But there are some facts that even they keep secret from the uninitiated newly pregnant or hoping-to-be-so types.

Today however we will keep you in the darkness no longer, revealing the nine things about pregnancy nobody ever tells you.

1. Your boobs will get bigger but so will your nipples. They will become so large as to be able to scare small children and animals away from you if accidentally revealed.

2. They will also be itchy. Itchy nipples. Delightful.

3. That youthful smooth and glowing skin will absolutely happen for you. But it will also be coupled with the red and white dots of your teenage years as you break out in pimples you thought you had said goodbye to a decade or two ago.

4. You will fart more than you have ever farted in your life. And it will smell extremely bad.

5. Going to the bathroom to wee will become the soothing highlight of your day. And night. And you will have endless highlights.

6. Morning sickness was named by a man. That shit is not time-specific, it lasts 24 hours of the day.

7. People will start touching you constantly, even before you have a nice taught basketball like bump. So yes, strangers will begin poking and jiggling your belly flab. Hot.

8. You will sweat like a racehorse at the Melbourne Cup. Prepare to change the sheets 2-3 times a night before giving up and learning to sleep on a towel or investing in special sheets for children who wet the bed.

9. Just like your hair never seems to sit quite the same way as Blake Lively’s, you will not look like a watermelon stuck on two toothpicks. You will regularly find yourself looking at your bulging thighs/arms/back and wailing “but the baby isn’t in THERE is it?”

10. You will be very sleepy and will give into that tiredness for 10 or 12 hour stints. When you are asleep it won’t be in a cute labrador puppy kind of way but a snoring, passed-out, open mouthed drooling performance to rival Homer Simpson.

In short? Pregnancy is a little like reality television, it looks interesting, maybe even fun, certainly unlike anything you’ve done before. But once you’re in the middle of it and the producers have cast you as the bitchy manipulative one and you spend your days talking to hidden cameras – you really just want out. Stat.

Yes, you get a baby at the end and that makes it all worth it blah blah. But don’t be fooled friends, don’t be fooled. The path to that little bundle of joy will be neither smooth, nor sweet nor magical. It will just be stinky, sweaty, and awfully uncomfortable.