Kelly Pegg: I'm focusing on meeting my beautiful little baby boy..

After spending two and a half hours at the hospital this week for a crash course in C-sections I can honestly say don’t do it!

Sometimes taking the sensible option and learning about what’s coming is not always the best option.

Picture a hot stuffy room full of heavily pregnant women with their partners all hoping to be told the same thing – “It will be ok”. Then picture a rather unsympathetic midwife talking in medical terms, passing all sorts of objects around from a pair of surgical stockings to an actual catheter.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse she offered us all a look at “the massive needle” (her actual words), which would be used to inject us for the epidural, and what a surprise not one of us took her up on her offer. For some of the women in this class they had opted for surgery because they were too anxious to have a natural birth.

There were endless questions from “who watches my baby when I go to the loo?” to “Do we provide nappies or do you?”

Then there was a woman who had such a bad experience with her first baby she couldn’t help but tell the whole room, I mean who doesn’t love a horror story about giving birth? I left feeling scared, anxious and spent the whole drive home chewing my husband’s ear off about how I can’t go through with it.

This was met with the sensible and let’s face it the only advice Chris could give :“You have no choice, he has to come out, it won’t be that bad.”

I’m opting for a C-section after having an emergency one with my daughter. It was a good experience, calm and straightforward but I struggled with the recovery afterwards. So this time super organised Kelly decided to be well informed, knowledge is power after all, or so I thought.

I can honestly say I knew little of what went on when I had Ava-Lilly and hand on heart I wished I’d left it that way. A few months before her birth we paid to do a natal hypnotherapy course and it was the best thing we ever did.

The lady who ran it taught us how all the medical equipment and fancy terms are irrelevant. By the end of the course we had all built mind blockers so what ever happened on the big day we would be able to stay calm and not let the ‘medical’ side of it take over. It worked for me 100 per cent and I so wish that this time I’d enrolled on the course again.

It should absolutely be made available to every pregnant woman out there as it really can work wonders, let’s face it if it can keep me calm then it can keep anyone calm!

The NHS is wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but when it comes to giving help and advice on birthing issues it seems like matters concerning mental and physical health are low on the agenda.

There’s only so much talk about cleaning wounds and changing bandages that can help anyone.

I really felt for some of those women in the class, the look of fear in their faces was still there afterwards which of course it shouldn’t have been. Everyone should have felt more relaxed and at ease with what was coming but I felt we all left a little more petrified than we were at the start.

If you’re reading this and you’re a mum you may have a great birthing experience or sadly you may have not. What unites us all is that we aren’t just baby machines; we are so much more than that, our physical and mental state matter to us and that’s perfectly ok. I’m going to wipe the images of needles and catheter bags out of mind thank you very much and try to just focus on meeting my beautiful little boy.

I’ll also be dreaming of all the food I’ve not been allowed to eat, ooh Brie cheese and how good that Christmas morning sherry is going to taste.

Tough time for TV’s Davina

I feel so sad hearing the news that TV presenter Davina McCall and her husband of 17 years have separated.

At 50 years old with three children Davina has been very honest in the past about how hard she has worked on her marriage.

She’s spoken about having couples therapy because of that “one argument” they just couldn’t get over (we’ve all been there) to using various tactics including an egg timer to help quell heated rows.

I applaud her for being real and so open, let’s face it we all have to work hard on our long term relationships and nothing is easy all of the time.

Davina has called her husband Mathew the ‘love of her life’ and I bet that is still how she feels.

Sometimes we change and evolve but alone so we start to become a different person and naturally that is going to change those relationships closest to you.

I always call my husband the love of my life and he says the same about me however there are no guarantees in life, all we can ever do is try our best.

Real relationships take hard work and dare I say it a lot of luck but sometimes after trying everything you have to accept there is no more you can do.

With Christmas just around the corner it will be a tough time for Davina and her family.

She’s one brave lady taking a step away from something so important but that isn’t working for her anymore.

All eyes on fairytale couple

So the news everyone is talking about is Prince Harry’s engagement to the gorgeous actress Meghan Markle.

The world is gripped by what lies ahead, what will Meghan wear on her big day? Will she get on with the Duchess of Cambridge? When will she and Harry have children? If I were Meghan I’d be running as fast as I could in the opposite direction. I’ve never seen the appeal of becoming a princess, and especially after what happened to Diana, I couldn’t think of anything worse. The media being on you 24/7 and giving up what you effectively are to become someone who shakes hands and waves a lot. No thank you, I would hate it if it were my daughter marrying into a royal family. I hope Meghan knows what she’s getting herself into, I very much doubt life will become any easier once she signs up to being Prince Harry’s wife. If it’s genuine love then good for them and I hope the fairytale that they are both clearly experiencing stays that way.