Challenge Accepted!: 253 Steps to Becoming an Anti-It Girl. Celeste Barber

Parents

       Endnotes

       About the Publisher

Pilot

      WELL HELLO, YOU CHEEKY LITTLE SAUCEPOTS. Thank you for buying my book (or thank you for acting excited when it was given to you by your sister-in-law, who probably bought it last minute while running through the airport trying not to miss family Christmas).

      I bet you’re thinking, ‘She’s just like me!’ – except when you saw the cover and probably realised that I’ve completely got my head up my own arse. And I know for sure that my primary school tutor – let’s just call her Mrs Fleet – is thinking, ‘Oh my God, if this chick can get a book deal, then anything is possible.’ And you’re right, Mrs Fleet, anything is possible, even though you treated me like I was illiterate when we all knew I was dyslexic with ADD.

      This book is a massive deal for me, not only because the profits will help keep my grey hair under control, but because y’all have been super-kind and supportive of me and my stuff, and buying this book is a part of that. (No, you shut up; you’re getting emotional in the intro.)

      The closest I ever got to writing a book was at primary school, when most recesses and lunchtimes were spent writing lines: ‘I will not talk back to the teacher. I will not talk back to the teacher.’ And I filled up those pages pretty quickly. So I’m hoping this will be pretty similar.

      I love writing. Even though I’m no wordsmith – I spell and read words phonetically, and autocorrect can’t fix or find replacements for 98 per cent of what I write – I’ve always enjoyed expressing myself with a pen and paper. That was until I started writing this book, and now I’m so fucking stressed that I want to go and scream into a pillow. But how good is the cover, right?!

      Now, for those of you thinking, ‘Oh God, I just spent actual money on a book by a girl who is only good at taking inappropriate unflattering photos of herself’ – never fear! I’m going to tackle a lot of big issues in this book, from how rich Bill Gates really is to why laser hair removal is more effective on dark hair than on fair hair.^*

      Here are five reasons why buying this book was a good idea:

      1. You went into a bookshop to get it, yay! Everyone wants to fuck someone who pretends to be smart. Or if you got it online, you can just click straight back over to Pornhub^* after purchasing it and get your fix there – whatever blows your hair back.

      2. If you hate it, you can totally regift it to a middle-aged woman named Beverly – they seem to think I’m pretty cool.

      3. By purchasing this book, you have helped me buy school shoes for my kids. They say thank you for that.

      4. People will think you’re a feminist, and everyone loves a feminist. Just ask Germaine Greer.

      5. If Brandi Glanville (google her, she’ll love it) can write a New York Times bestseller, then so can I.

      What a magical experience.

      @ciara

      @bondsaus

The One Where I Thought I Would Flip Inside Out

       I’ve never really known how people start books, especially memoirs. And especially not one by someone who is 36, which is kind of weird considering I haven’t even started my second and chosen career as the new and slightly less busty Michelle Visage. So I thought I’d just jump straight in with one of my favourite stories. Here it is, the story about the day I met my first son and how my once-neat vagina became one big hole.

      * * *

      DOES ANYONE REALLY PLAN PREGNANCIES? I mean seriously? In my experience, they have been a bloody big surprise, and not the delivery-guy-turned-up-with-something-you-forgot-you-bought-online-weeks-earlier kind of surprise, but more of a ‘sorry we are out of bacon today’ kind of surprise at your local café. It’s unnerving at the beginning, but you know it’s the best thing for you in the long run.

      I have four kids. I have two boys of my very own who came tearing out of me, and I inherited two girls as a package deal with my husband, Api. Sahra was two and Kyah was four when I first met them. I have been a stepmother since the age of 21.

      I had my first boy, Lou, in a small town on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. Api had bought a house there after his first daughter was born and, when I found out I was pregnant, I moved up there with him. For those of you playing at home, who have no idea where the hell I’m talking about, the Mid North Coast is an area on the east coast of Australia about 45 minutes south of hygiene and approximately 1 hour 20 minutes north of where all forms of inspiration go to die! Imagine Paris, take away the culture, the art, the amazing food, the bustling metropolis and the traffic, and then add trees, a beach, teen mums, two pre-teen stepdaughters, narrow-mindedness and a Woollies and you’re there!

      There was nothing to do on the Mid North Coast. Nothing. This is the appeal for a lot of people but I ain’t one of those people. I had to do something to stay occupied. I was living in the middle of nowhere, pregnant and raising two girls, my hormones were on a rollercoaster and I needed to focus on something to avoid the temptation to pack my shit up and waddle as far as possible away from my situation. So, I decided to not only be pregnant, I was going to throw myself so far into this pregnancy that I would be too busy to do anything other than create life, goddamm it!

      I enrolled us into a Calmbirth course and we quickly became one of those couples who acted as though we had invented childbirth. Calmbirth is similar to Hypnobirthing and Active Birth and it is fantastic. It’s a childbirth education programme that prepares future parents mentally, emotionally and physically.

      Calmbirth is all about focusing in on yourself and your partner during the birth, and experiencing the labour for what it is – as opposed to being scared and thinking you need someone else or any intervention. It liberates you to trust and back yourself. I think Beyoncé created it.

      I knew my body could do what was needed in birthing a baby, but it was my over-active mind that I feared would sabotage me. I wanted as natural a birth as possible, but I wasn’t as free-spirited as I needed to be to facilitate this. When my midwife asked me what sort of birth I wanted, I said: ‘Ideally, I’d like to have a baby in a rainforest, and by “rainforest” I mean “a place where no drugs are needed and everything is done naturally and in harmony with the surrounding trees and possums”, but the rainforest will need to be heated, with the quite hum of traffic outside and the smell of culture. Along with this, I’ll need an express door to an operating theatre full of drugs and all the numbing cream in the world if I change my mind, ’K?’

      The closest hospital, where I had all of my appointments, was a tiny place in a nearby town that had no drugs, no heated floors, very few possums, and definitely no doors leading to operating theatres. It was just a birthing ‘rainforest’: a cold birthing rainforest. And no one wants a cold rainforest. No one. But because of my heart history – now, if that isn’t a reason to keep reading, I don’t know what is! – the doctors were worried that with all the strain on my heart during the labour it could totally explode (this is the official medical speak). So I was classified as high risk and wasn’t allowed to birth at Rainforest Hospital. I had to go to the bigger hospital, Drugs Hospital, where they had A-grade morphine and some street-level shit on standby.

      Drugs Hospital was an hour away, so our plan was that we would do all the appointments leading up to the birth at Rainforest Hospital and I would do all the tearing and screaming at Drugs Hospital.