Breastfeeding is as natural as mud. It's the supplied way of feeding our infants and we grow special appendages purely for this purpose. I did 8 years of it all together and I'm really quite lazy, so it must be easy. Of course I wouldn't have managed more than a single day if I hadn't been ridiculously stubborn, and I'm mostly remembering the experience of someone who had 8 years practice, but I can practically do it standing on my head...

I was 22 when I had my first child and I was some sort of rebellious amateur hippy. I was that person who hooked my plastic bottles over the handlebars of my pushbike and cycled to the single town recycling centre to drop it all off. I read all the pregnancy books and wanted everything as natural as possible. My partner was asthmatic and I was determined to try and protect my kids from that. I was also paying a 15% mortgage rate on a council worker's wages and very broke. A tenner a week on baby milk was an expense I didn't want. Of course I was going to breastfeed.


I had a long labour, but no need for sympathy. We played Rummy for 22 hours of 5 minute contractions and I won every hand. I'm pretty good with pain, so when I started to say I'd had enough, given up and wanted Pethidine, the midwives didn't realise my increased discomfort was due everything getting suddenly exciting and the baby wanting immediate exit. I had my injection less than half an hour before delivery.

3rd Monday of the year. January is 217 days in and still no sign of payday. It's cold and damp, with no exciting snow or pretty Winter sun. This is officially the most depressing day of the year, which is especially harsh if it's your birthday.

Our day started on form. Before 7am the doorbell went, and surprisingly it was my partner, who had only just left for work. I say 'left', because he'd made it as far as the drive. where the van wouldn't start because of a flat battery. I was just mainly relieved that I hadn't run downstairs in my dressing gown to open the door to a really early postman.


He put the van on charge and made a cup of tea. While he was drinking it he got a call from work to say they'd had a break in - specifically his office.

This week we had my oldest child's 26th birthday, and the very first place I went to buy him anything was Mothercare. His paternal Grandparents gave us the money to get his pram, and I chose a beautiful blue and grey patterned system, which was the poshest thing I owned at the time by far. It would look ridiculously dated now, so I'm almost glad I don't have a photo.

I was a superstitious pregnant lady and I never bought any of my children anything until I was past 28 weeks, but when my pregnancy was making me tired, sore, sick or just down in the dumps, I'd go and browse Mothercare to get my happy hormones back on track and become excited about my new arrival.


When we bought our car seats, Mothercare employees showed us how to fit them correctly, and when my boobs inflated to twice their non-pregnant size, I had my first ever fitting at a Mothercare store.

That might have been over 26 years ago, but my earliest memories of Mothercare are a long way before then. I was the eldest of 3 children, and my parents were foster carers for babies when I was growing up. A trip to Mothercare meant we were about to get a new arrival, and my mother would carefully choose everything she would need ready for when she brought them home from the hospital.

It's what you do next that really counts...

If you are a parent blogger in the UK (and even if you aren't) you may have spotted a blunder or two recently. In the past week there have been 3 pretty amazing faux pas from 3 of the biggest websites who work regularly with bloggers. And that's just to my knowledge...


Thing is, no-one is immune. You can only make decisions to the best of your ability at the time. The first week back after the Christmas holidays is manic, and none of us are at our best. Even nature spends half the day telling us we should still be in bed, and without the invention of the lightbulb we probably would be (which helps account for the huge families back then).

When you are busy and working it's easy to press the wrong button or type the wrong word, or even worse, leave half a draft and publish by accident. Gary the cat once published a post while I was on the loo. It was rubbish, but it had 3 viewers and a comment within 5 minutes because he added an intriguing title.

It's back to work proper today for a lot of people, and although this isn't my first post of 2020, I'd drafted the first one last year, so it also counts for me.

I said in my 2019 end of year round up that we'd had a much calmer year. For the first time in a long time, not only did we escape any major disasters, but we escaped them for long enough to start to have time to be a bit 'normal'. I even had chance to worry about the state of my hair and my nails, although don't get too excited - I bought a scrunchie and that's the hair sorted.


I reduced the number of reviews I did last year, and this year I'm reducing it again. I always have great plans to write more personal posts and take this blog back to a record of our lives and a dumping ground for rambling, rather than a safe list of crafted and fairly formulaic review posts. I write much more quickly from the hip and I really just need to pull on my big girl pants, find some of the confidence I used to have, and go for it.