paternity-leave-interview

A husband’s view of paternity leave and returning to work

Going back a couple of generations, looking after the home and children was very much thought of as “women’s work”. However, with the rise of stay-at-home dads and dads seeming to be more hands-on in general, I wondered what my husband’s thoughts were. He’s wonderfully hands on with Autumn and has expressed in the past that he is worried about missing her doing different things like crawling and walking for the first time. I thought I’d do a little interview with him about his thoughts on paternity leave and working, leaving his baby at home.

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tudor-falconry-dover-castle

Tudor falconry at Dover Castle

On Saturday (9th September), Dave and I decided we’d visit Dover Castle with Autumn. Birds of prey, particularly owls, are one of my many interests. As such, I really wanted to go and watch their historic falconry displays. Whilst I’ve watched several displays before, this one is different as it looks at the historic elements of falconry. In this case, the focus was Tudor falconry.

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Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and Charity

Less than a year ago, I had a seriously ill child. I know first hand just how awful it is to be in that situation as a parent. You just feel so helpless. In many ways, I expect it’s worse when your child is older and actually aware of everything that’s going on.

I’d like to bring your attention to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and the amazing work that they do. They care for over 270,000 young people and their families each year, as well as carrying out important research. This research includes children’s medicines, infection, inflammation and oncology.

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Vintage silk christening gown

Autumn’s Christening and how I planned it

On the first Sunday of August, we finally had Autumn christened! When I was pregnant, I thought I’d have her christening in the first 6 months. However, if you’ve been following our story, you’ll know that things didn’t quite go as we thought they would in the first few weeks of Autumn’s life. It took a long time for me to recover, so the stress of a social event was not something that was on the cards for quite some time.

However, in her 10th month, the time finally came. I had so much fun planning it all, although it was quite stressful! I planned it all in the space of about two weeks. I’m usually far more organised than that, but after a bereavement last month, the christening kind of sneaked up on us.

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5 ways to help an early teether

Collaborative Links¦ Autumn has been teething since just before Christmas, when she was 3 months old. I felt sorry for her, even more so as she didn’t quite have the coordination of babies who are of average teething age (around 6 months) to hold teething toys in her mouth herself.

Here are my top tips for helping a little one that is teething and lacks the coordination to help themselves very much:

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