10 Reasons why I love my husband
Today is Valentine’s Day and it’s made me think about all the reasons why I love my husband. I think as time goes on and when the dynamics of a relationship change after you have a child, it’s quite common for couples to undervalue each other and not appreciate each other enough a lot of the time. Dave usually reads all my blog posts before they go live, he’s so supportive of my blog (and anything I do, actually). He doesn’t know that I’m writing this one though, so I guess this is kind of my way of saying “I might not always show it, but I love and appreciate you so much! Happy Valentine’s Day, darling!” I know he’ll have a huge smile when this pops up in his inbox this morning.
The pressure of Valentine’s Day
I’m just going to come out and say it – I think Valentine’s Day kind of sucks. It’s not that I don’t celebrate it, because I do. I guess it’s just that it’s so commercialised to the point where it makes me cringe and I don’t like the fact it causes so much pressure. Pressure to have a partner, pressure to have a great gift idea (not everyone likes the standard chocolate and flowers), the pressure to be romantic.
When Mummy went crazy with anxiety
***Warning: This post is emotional, discusses mental health issues and may be a trigger to some***
If you’re reading this post, you may have read last Saturday’s post about when Autumn was ill and in hospital. This post is about how I was feeling when she was in hospital, as I was not well myself and it had a terrible effect on my mental health.
Our second sensory room adventure
A couple of weeks ago, I posted about baby Autumn and I playing in the sensory room for the first time. Today we went back to have some more fun and do some more learning. Autumn had her jabs this morning, so the poor little thing has been grumpy all day and almost constantly grizzling. The sensory room seemed to help distract her to some extent for a while though.
Autumn and the ovarian cyst
This post is going to be very difficult to write, but I feel like it’s something I need to do. I have written a short version of this story as a guest post for Rachel Bustin‘s New Mums Series about how it’s never too early to trust your instincts as a mum, but I’m going to go into more detail here. To begin with, repeating this story felt like it hurt me deeper and deeper each time. However, I’ve now had to repeat it so many times that I think it’s now getting easier each time and possibly helping me to heal and come to terms with what happened. Perhaps one day, someone else will read this who is going through the same or a similar situation (thankfully, this is EXTREMELY rare) and can live in hope knowing it gets better.
***Warning: This post is emotional and may be a trigger to some***
A letter to my daughter at 4 & a bit months old
Dear Autumn,
I can’t believe how big you’re getting. Sometimes it feels so long since you were born and you were so tiny, sometimes it feels hardly any time at all. One thing is for sure, I can’t imagine life without you and I’m so glad to have you in it.
Guest Post: My experience of perinatal and postnatal OCD
Today is #TimeToTalk day, a day all about increasing mental health awareness by talking about it and perhaps reaching out to someone with mental health issues to make sure they’re doing okay. Here I have a guest post from a close friend of mine who had her daughter 7 weeks before I gave birth to Autumn and has unfortunately been suffering from OCD since during pregnancy. I’ll be posting about mental health quite a lot on my blog, so I thought it would be interesting to ask her to write a post for me about her experiences so I could find out more about what she’s been going through but also to spread awareness of perinatal and postnatal OCD.
Please be aware that as with lots of things regarding mental health, this may be triggering.
10 reasons I’m #RockingMotherhood
Last Friday I was over at Mummy Miller‘s blog, when a recent post of hers caught my eye; 10 reasons I’m #Rocking Motherhood.
We’re often so tough on ourselves as mothers and parents, so I think it’s important that every now and then we just take a breath and think about all the positive things we’re doing as parents. I enjoyed reading Mummy Miller’s post and at the bottom it said that she was tagging anyone who may be reading it that hadn’t completed this challenge…so, I thought I’d give it a go!
I’m not shy – I’m an introvert
“She’s very quiet, why is that?” I remember my biology teacher asking my parents at a parents’ evening when I was about 13 years old. It was almost as though there was something wrong with me. For as long as I can remember, even as a child, people have called me shy and responded differently to me than they might others because I’m an introvert. It frustrates me somewhat, although quietly, because I don’t think I am shy. To me, I think of shyness as being when someone is afraid of speaking to other people – they want to revert back to that childhood behaviour of hiding behind their parents legs when someone wants to speak to them. That’s the thing…I’m not really afraid of speaking to other people and I don’t see myself as shy.
I quite like Mondays (a post about comping)
“I don’t like Mondays”, sang Bob Geldof in the 1979 The Boomtown Rats song of the same title. Most people would agree with him!
So why do I quite like Mondays?
Well, I’m on maternity leave at the moment, otherwise I’d like Mondays decidedly less. Every other Monday I can get Autumn weighed at clinic, which hasn’t lost its excitement yet – I love seeing how much my little milk monster has grown.
