Excited, or just weary?

[satyricon]

Cards on the table here, ladies. I'm not a mum, nor the proud partner of a lady with incoming bump. I've been asked to do some writing about the build-up to birth and I have a question.

Can't help noticing that a lot of the TV ads depict this whole time as one of excited anticipation. Anything new-baby-related, on TV or in mags, seems to be Disney-fied and cutesy and isn't it all just wonderful.

Then I turn up to take a look around Mumsnet and it strikes me that a lot of you ladies would appreciate a bit more straight-talking and a little less Donald Duck.

Am I right? Or does everyone just need a bit of a moan now and then?

Huge thanks, in advance, for answers / abuse / hysterical laughter.

Hmm. I would definitely say that there's a massive range of emotions involved, of which about 1% is represented in the everyday media.

Going off at a bit of a tangent here, I'd really like there to be less dead baby storylines in soaps. It would be great to see two characters in a soap conceive a child, go through the pregnancy with all its ups and downs, have the baby in a non-emergency scenario and then settle down to life as a family. After all, soaps started out as a reflection of everyday life, and while sadly these things do happen it's unfair to depict every pregnancy situation as one massive dramatic trauma from start to finish.