Within moments of speaking to Nancy, two things become clear. Talking to her is like chatting with your best girlfriend over a cup of coffee and she’s a woman who likes to be prepared. So when she became pregnant with Ashby, now almost two, she wanted to know what to expect and devoured every pregnancy book she could find.
The problem? None of the books she read said anything about her boobs leaking before the baby came. Needless to say, she was quite surprised when midway through her pregnancy while taping a show, two stylists descended upon her with hairdryers and Kleenex to dry the wet spots that had appeared on her blouse. 
Not to mention the time she showed up on the Grey’s Anatomy set with her headlights on high (a.k.a hard nipples), the scream inducing leg cramps or the morning she woke up with red splotches on her chest and thought she had contracted the measles.
A self-professed huge scrapbooker, “I save everything. Everybody in the house laughs at me but I love to save memories”, Nancy spent her pregnancy writing notes and thoughts about her experience to give to Ashby when she was older.
At her baby shower seven months pregnant, friends played a game where they wrote down their experiences and tips about pregnancy, labour and delivery. As she read through them, her thoughts ran the gamut from “Really? I didn’t know that” to “That happened to me. Y’all couldn’t have told me about this sooner? It takes a baby shower game for it to come out?”
She goes on to explain why she felt compelled to write her book. “By the time I had all the notes written down for Ashby, it wasn’t that it was just time for me to write a book. I literally felt these were things fellow moms needed to know. Pregnancy can be surprising, shocking and embarrassing enough, there’s no reason for this stuff to not be out there."
It’s Nancy’s honest, down to earth, observations that leave you feeling you’re getting advice from one of your girlfriends rather than reading a book.
…Like when she talks about trying to breastfeed. “I did it wrong from the very beginning and was so sore for about three weeks that I would scream when Ashby latched on. It was more painful to me than labour.” The one piece of advice she’d give to a pregnant friend? “If you choose to breastfeed, have a breastfeeding consultation while you’re still pregnant.”
Back to work three months after Ashby was born, Nancy speaks candidly about juggling work with family. “It’s one big guilt trip – I just live in a guilt trip world. If I turn down a work assignment because I’ve been working too much, I feel guilty. If I take a work assignment and Ashby reaches out her chubby little hands and says ‘mamma’, I feel guilty for leaving her.”
Nancy deals with the guilt by making the most of each moment, advice given to her by her husband Keith. He told me, ‘If you’ve turned down a work assignment to be with your family, you’ve made that decision so don’t fret about it and make sure you’re enjoying that time with your family’.
She adds laughing, “Besides, Ashby can quickly bring me back in the moment; like the other night when I was on my laptop quickly trying to return emails and she crawled up on the couch, pointed at the computer, folded the top down and slid it under the couch”.
Life isn’t all work and no play for Nancy. When she does find time to herself, she enjoys a massage and time with her husband.
But getting away with her other half isn’t always easy. On her first overnight trip away from Ashby, she and her husband spent the night at a hotel only a mile away. Was she able to live in the moment? “No”, she laughs. “My mom-in-law, who was looking after Ashby, called me in the morning because she came down with a little bit of runny nose. We went home right away.”
As we’re finishing up our phone call, I ask Nancy if she’s planning on writing another book about what she wishes her friends had told her about the first few years of motherhood.
She chuckles “Don’t think that hasn’t crossed my mind. I could definitely write one on that.”
And if she does, grab a cup of coffee before you sit down because reading it will be like chatting with an old friend and you’ll want to make the most of the moment.
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