'Get and discard all pending updates before first poll of the bot
:return: total updates skipped'

def __skip_updates(self):

    total = 0
    updates = self.get_updates(offset=self.last_update_id, timeout=1)
    while updates:
        total += len(updates)
        for update in updates:
            if (update.update_id > self.last_update_id):
                self.last_update_id = update.update_id
        updates = self.get_updates(offset=(self.last_update_id + 1), timeout=1)
    return total
