Posts

Self love and honesty. Life with pnd.

What happens when you get set a challenge on what you love about yourself and you can't think of a single thing. I sat and I wracked my brain, I couldn't think of anything, I can barely look in the mirror, my hairs still falling out, my acne is awful, I am uncomfortable in my own body.  So I thought about my personality and started putting myself down again.  What is wrong with me, surely I have something I like about myself. But I don't. It's time to stop suffering in silence, it's time to face the facts, that nearly a year on, I'm not feeling any love, I have ptsd, anxiety and yes the dreaded shame to be spoken about Post natal depression. Like any woman falling pregnant your full of excitement, elation and uncertainty. But what happens when things go wrong? How do you cope? What happens when your experience of motherhood is a challenge and traumatic. So  what happens when you get Gestational Diabetes and your pregnancy turns into a tim

Breastfeeding and coming to terms with failure

This post is going to effect many people. Breastfeeding is a huge debate in the parenting community. Everyone has their story and it is a journey for many and for me it left me with post natal depression and I feel finally ready to talk about it. For every mum how you feed you child is always discussed in your pre baby clinic. Some don't wish to breastfeed and some do, for me I said of course I wanted to, it was so important to me. I attended the bf clinics, I bought the tops, the bras, the nipple cream and nursing pillows, I even had a bulk supply of nipple pads and Jaffa cakes for those late night feeds, I was completely ready wasn't I.?? I even harvested colostrum before she was born so I was ready with super special milk incase she was poorly. Well I didn't expect this. I had a super speedy birth ( that's not a good thing) after practicing hypnobirthing and calm births I was induced due to health complications and my body effectively did in 4

Our first holiday

ok so it's a month late but I wanted to write a short post on our first holiday. When we decided to plan our first holiday we considered going abroad ( for 3 seconds) and decided we would holiday at one of our pre baby favourite places Padstow. Cornwall is amazing and although it's miles from North Yorkshire having my parents in Buckinghamshire ment we could stop half way and break the journey up. We didn't want to holiday abroad because of the stuff, all the stuff you pack for a baby and setting off on our Cornish adventure with Martin's very large skoda superb overloaded made me thankful we weren't on a plane. We had pushchair and travel cot, baby bath and bath toys, a carrier and a backpack, a steriliser and perfect prep, way too many clothes and a ton of nappies plus toiletries, milk, food  and snacks, oh and the toys of course. I mean babies have stuff. No more packing a suitcase the night before we go this toook preparation and planning. The journey wa

Weaning adventures

I have been asked to blog about weaning. So let me start and tell you that I am not a doctor, a health visitor or any kind of nutritionist or professional to offer advice on weaning. I am here to tell you what we did and what has worked for us so far. I do not want to hear from any weaning warriors or from the baby led mafia about how I chose to wean my baby. My baby is now weaning baby led. I started on the traditional method of first tastes and it didn't work for us so at 6 months I changed to baby led weaning. I will explain the process of this and what worked for me. I have unfortunately seen many a mummy criticised on social media for saying her baby is baby led and is given purees. This combination is understandable and works for so many. I would have preferred this method but my strong willed child takes the spoon and feeds herself creating a marvellous mess. My weaning method is we started traditional and now use baby led it was a slow swap and was done with professio

What is a mother?

I have recently relocated and made it to a local playgroup. I was petrified walking through the door. Who would I meet? Who would like me? Who would judge me? I read an appalling article in the daily mail this week and it brought to my attention how many mummies are out there and being judged and I thought I would put my opinion on this down on paper for people to read if they fancy it. Becoming a mother is hard! It's mentally and physically exhausting. You suffer hormones and often many complications that you just were not prepared for. No one gives you a manual and no one warns you how hard it really is. When I saw myself as a mother I wanted to be just like my mum. In my eyes she's perfect. I have memories of a childhood where my mum was at home, we made things, baked cakes, had adventures, we danced and watched films, in my eyes my childhood was the best. This is what I wanted to give my daughter too. I researched when I was pregnant the best ways to be a mother,

Making mummy friends

So I expected during pregnancy I would make loads of new mummy friends and it would be fun sharing stories,  advice, coffee and wine ( postpartum). In reality My only new friends were on Instagram, I documented my whole pregnancy and shared everything, it was such a support and took it so personally if gave people nice comments and they didn't reply (still think that's rude) but I have actually made some really real friends because of Instagram. I'm sure gemslittletreasures is my soul sista and there's some special mummas from Scotland, the north, south, Ireland and Wales who I have never met but feel like I know and I would love to meet. But I have to give a huge shout out to Instagram and the support it gave me. I know not everyone agrees with sharing your life online but it's what's kept me sane somedays. It's also got me in touch with some old friends and that had also changed my life . But I was desperate to meet new people face to face. When squeak

Moving day

Goodbye first home. They say a house is made of walls and beams a home is made of love and dreams. This is very true. This wasn't our first house, we rented many a house but this was our first home. We saved and searched and went looking for a house, we wanted a deteached, 3 bed with off road parking. We purchased a 2 bed cottage without the desired parking and it was end of terrace. I might be crazy but we just fell in love at first sight, the pub three doors down might have also been an influence. Four years ago we were living in the north west in a house with a awful neighbour, the hubby was working away all the time and we decided to move back to the north east. Back to all our friends from uni, back to nights of fun and most importantly back to the parmo. Well that didn't go to plan, friends from uni grow up and move on, there are some I've not even seen in the three and a half years we've been back. Parmos also make you fat. What did happen tho was we mad