Mummy's Coffee Morning

Until very recently Christmas was my ultimate favourite time of year. The entire season filled me with so much overwhelming fizzy excitement that at times I struggled to physically contain it and simply burst with festive cheer. The feeling always begins around about mid September with the gradual arrival of Autumn. The trees begin to shine with a vast array of jewel like leaves and the landscape becomes a glorious golden display of mother natures most glorious colour palette, I gaze endlessly at the view unable to walk anywhere without looking up in wonder at the enchanting leaves or scrunching my boots through the technicolour debris.  The warm summery smells of cut grass and sun baked earth surrender themselves to the deep earthy scents and woody acrid smells of leaf mulch and bonfires, a wild and more natural smell. I begin to feel the wild stirring within as I inhale deeply on misty autumn mornings or scrunch my way through woody pathways, I feel completely connected to nature

It's 5pm, I'm frazzled. It's late November and I have only been properly back at work since September after a frighteningly fast maternity leave but it's the longest term of the year and I'm stressed. Work is stressful, being a working mum is even more stressful, being a working mum who yffers from anxiety and PCOS is, at times almost unbearable. We have just arrived home after running about here there and everywhere to stock up on boring household cleaning products  and other paraphernalia such as toilet roll and scented candles, we also stopped by the shops to pick up our weekly food shop despite this we still picked up take away as neither of us could face cooking. I gather up as many bags as I can, including the warm carrier bag containing our dinner, I can't face having to traipse back out again to do another trip up the stairs so I'm determined to do it in one. My Husband gaps a few bits and I take my son's hand loosely. He has been getting more

One month ago I made a shockingly overdue trip to an actual underwear shop to by some womanly underwear! Yay! Pre baby I was the type of woman who owned more underwear than clothes yet somehow I found myself muddling through pregnancy with two slightly shapeless (but oh so comfortable) maternity bras from my second home (mothercare) and one largely useless sleep bra that barely contained my giant boobs. Post baby I lived in a couple of unsupportive sleep nursing bras for a couple of weeks before making a tentative trip back to mothercare to purchase my first real nursing bras! I was too scared to ask for assistance so just tried a few on until I settled for the biggest size they had in stocked which I still had to add an extender too! 😐 I always meant to go back and get measured again once my milk had settled down but...well motherhood haha. Anyway, over a year later I have purchased some bras that feel like real underwear! I am still breastfeeding occasionally but no longer h

I have a 9 month old. He has been here for the same amount of time I cooked him in my belly for. Wow. I literally have no idea what has happened to the last 9 months, but they have gone somewhere and now the date of going back to work looms over me like a dark cloud. It is not that I didn't like my job or work place, far from it I have always rather enjoyed them both especially in comparison  to  some of my other jobs. No it's  not  that. I am truly heartbroken that I have to leave my baby for three days every week. I never knew what it was that I wanted to do, I remember wondering how girls I was at school with could be so 100% sure and focused in what they wanted to do in life! They had some inner voice which told them their purpose, their calling in life. I never really experience that, I had things I was good at and ideas of ventures and projects I might begin, jobs I was good at and jobs I am still good at but I never had a calling as such until now. I feel like finally

Previously I have had a moan about all the things people fail to mention when you are pregnant. Despite still agreeing with SOME of those points I have now reached a point in motherhood where I am around other new mums or pregnant ladies and find myself (increasingly) omitting various things from our conversations. (sorry!) With progression up the motherhood ladder you realise that a) there are some things which you do not want to be the one to tell a glowing expectant mum or a stressed new mummy. b) You don't want to be THAT person and sound like a know it all even if you are only trying to help! c) some things people just need to find out on their own. d) every baby and every situation is different! That being said I do wish more people talked about certain things! Sometimes it feels as though you hear and read non stop things about pregnancy and birth and the first few weeks post baby and then you are thrown out into the wilderness. The information, at least the accurate

We live in a flat and have a short but awkward flight of stairs to climb every time we wish to exit into the big wide world or return with snoozing baby. This has presented many problems. Not to mention giving me hours of standing around in the communal hallway trying not to look wierd whilst I wait for snoozing baby to wake up. The luxury of simply wheeling pram and sleeping baby into house was sadly not ours. I was also faced daily with the effort of lugging all the pram components and bags downstairs whilst baby, inevitably in the early days, cried from his safe deposit area (the floor.) We bought a glorious pram, the urbo 2 in limited edition liberty print (on sale I might add)   It is a beautiful pram and wonderfully smooth to push and operate however Baby Cremore rejected to tradition carry cot part (later we discovered due to reflux in the early days and general nosiness laterly)  So we switched up pretty quickly to the pram which incidentally  lies flat anyway so we pr

7 and a half months postpartum. OH MY GOD I'M A MUM AND I HAVE A 7 MONTH OLD! Something astounding has happened.  I cannot pin point exactly when it happened but I know that it has. There has been a shift in the world and it's as if a curtain has been lifted, all of a sudden it feels like I have (finally) started to adjust into my new role as mummy. It's strange and I can't describe it particularly well but I feel different. It's almost as if I have been watching my life for the past 7 months and now I am actually in it rather than floating above it. As I write that those little words 'post natal depression' pop up and believe me I have heard them SO much. Whilst I think it's good health care professionals are a bit more on the ball about it, people asking you every chance they get if 'you are feeling alright in yourself' does make you a tad paranoid that maybe you arent. So having spent the last few months wondering if I did 'feel alrigh

When I was pregnant I distinctly remember reading first an article in gurgle magazine and then a few blogs about mummy guilt. As I perused the articles I remember naively thinking that will never be me! These silly women who can't go out or buy a dress or get a massage etc. I won't be like that I thought as I stroked my huge belly. I imagined loving the child I birthed but still a bing plenty of opportunities  to  be me and whizz off on regular date nights and mini breaks with the hubby. Oh how the reality differs! Now I actually am a mummy I am shockingly riddled with heartbreaking guilt all the time! I'm guilty about things that haven't even happened yet like going back to work and leaving my tiny human with various grandparents for 3 days! What if he cries and needs me! I have been out out exactly 0 times in 6 months and cam count the times I have been away from my child for a few hours on one hand. Mum guilt seems to be a special and specific type of guilt, ac

Yay! We made it to 6 months! (If um being honest O us actually  nearly 6 1/2  months it's taken me two weeks to write this.) Everyone always says 'it gets easier' and if I really stop sit down and think about it then yes I suppose it does. Gone is the screaming inconsoleable creature we had to dose up with gaviscon abd reflux milk to stop him throwing up which led to us using gripe water and fennel tea to treat the wind and constipation they caused. And the infacol jow could I forget that!!  So in short yes a lot of things have become easier.  However, it does not always feel easier as whilst certain challenges disappear with a new age bracket, new ones arise which sort of cancels out some of the newly discovered ease. Despite the fact that we are dealing with new challenges this is my favourite age so far! Oscar's personality is really shining through now and he is a funny, cheeky boy who laughs at the mostmost random things. He is absolutely  gorgeous and gives

So we are heading towards the 5 month mark and have finally found something  to  take Oscar to that we have successfully  made it to more than once! We are out of the newborn stage and into a different stage, Oscar changes everyday, I can successfully  wash and almost dry all of my hair 8n the mornings and he's loving his first tastes of food. BUT it was still just him and me! After a traumatic experience  of  a  mother and baby group where no one spoke to me and I spent 15 minutes rocking back and forth in the corner, whilst Oscar slept and various too happy religious songs blasted out into the run down church hall full of toddlers and some very dated and slightly manky toys(Not to mention the very clichy psrents) we decided to hibernate for the rest of winter. Preferring long walks in the woods on our own instead. Our next experiment was a sensory class. Great in theory.  The reality was an hour of torture. Crammed into the corner of a cafe too many of us like sardines in a p