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parenting blog

5 flexible jobs for stay-at-home mums

Want (or need) to bring in an income but also want to stay at home with your little one? For many mums there comes a time, after the visitors have gone, the baby is no longer attached to you 24/7 and you’ve settled into some [...]

7 fun ways to treat kids’ colds

Blocked nose, dry lips, sore throat. We’ve all been there, done that and got the t-shirt but coughs and colds always seem infinitely worse in a poorly child who can’t necessarily tell you what’s the matter. We seem to have veered from one bug to another [...]

5 ways to childproof Valentine’s Day

Forget swanky restaurants and weekends away - the chances are since becoming a parent Valentine's Day means a date night in rather than a romantic evening out (yet another thing they fail to tell you about being a parent). Which is easier said than done [...]

10 things they don’t tell you about being overdue

I’ve been overdue with all my babies. The first was 15 days late, the second was three days late and at the time of writing the third is at least a day late. Apparently 80% of babies arrive between two weeks before and two weeks [...]

The trouble with the ‘perfect’ birth

They say no two babies are the same, and no two births are the same either. So far the saying has certainly rung true for us: BB and Little B couldn’t be more different, and nor could the way they entered the world. The trouble [...]

10 superpowers all parents develop in the first year

They say parenthood is the steepest learning curve there is. If I think back to my pre-baby days and compare them to life post-babies, I’d have to agree. There are just so many things they don’t tell you, things you learn on the job and suddenly [...]

Why I’m not writing a birth plan

What you want to happen and what you don’t. That’s the point of a birth plan, the one single page in your otherwise extensive maternity notes in which you’re supposed to convey your hopes and fears for labour and birth to a midwife you’ve probably [...]

The only 10 things you need in your hospital bag

From hair straighteners to a pillow from home, there are more things I’ve packed in my hospital bag and haven’t used than things I have on the two previous occasions I’ve been into hospital to have a baby. In fact I was so loaded down [...]

#MySundayPhoto

At long last I am finally on maternity leave! I've set my out of office until May (such a good feeling!) and I've got 10 days before the due date to try and do all the things mums should do before giving birth. It occurred [...]

5 easy ways to detangle kids’ hair

If wails at wash time, shrieks at story time and sobs at school time sound familiar, read on. In our house we’ve all been ‘blessed’ with thick hair, the sort that people who don’t have thick hair marvel at and say they’d love. I say be [...]

How to pick the perfect pair of glasses

One of the first blog posts I ever wrote was about my new plastic glasses being the thin end of the wedge. Four years on, having just celebrated our 4th blogiversary, not much has changed. With two kids now in tow and one on the [...]

10 things all mums should do before giving birth

The countdown is on! There’s just one more week of work to go and that’s it: I’m officially on maternity leave. I finish work 10 days before my due date so with a bit of luck I’ll have a week or so to wind down, [...]

#MySundayPhoto

Regular followers will know that this week I appeared on Good Morning Britain talking about wheelchairs and buggies on buses ahead of a Supreme Court judgement deciding who should go where. I instragrammed this image of me in hair & make-up before going on the show, and [...]

14 things I’ve learnt in 4 years of blogging

Is it me or does everyone celebrate their blogiversary in January? Everywhere I look people seem to be marking the birthdays of their blogs and guess what – this week it’s mine!   I guess the new year is the perfect time to start a [...]

My Good Morning Britain TV debut!

Posh hotel rooms, cars to whisk you from A to B and hair and make-up artists transforming you from a knackered mum into someone you don't quite recognise: I've had a taste of how the other half live. I'm writing this after appearing on ITV’s Good [...]