No more babies!

Why is it that when we are in new relationships the baby chemicals in our bodies try to tell us it would be a brilliant idea to have a baby?

Not just in women as I have found out the men can catch a dose of the baby making chemicals too, and I do not just mean the taking part in making one bit.

After many discussions some joking (from me) others I am not so sure about (from him), me and my boyfriend have agreed four children is enough for us.

Many of our friends have rolled their eyes and said ‘No, in a couple of years you will have another one.’ Although there is a flutter of a yes somewhere in my body, my brain is sensibly taking over and saying no.

I am done with the getting up in the night, with the potty training and crying. I have no desire to go back to the constant worry of having to watch a baby and pretend that i have a clue what I am doing- or so I thought until yesterday...

We have expanded our family, a baby peeing and keeping me up at night has entered our home in the form of a puppy.

Yesterday my boyfriend said he was going out, he told me he was going to get a puppy but I didn’t actually really believe him until a bundle of fur wrapped in a blanket was cradled in his arms after a seven hour round journey.

Hades (yes named after the ancient Greek God of the underworld, we are not ones for standard names obviously), became my new baby the second I set eyes on him.

He is the most beautiful Siberian Husky who has ever existed and my mothering instincts of looking after a baby have come flooding back, much to his and my families bemusement.

When the kids came and stroked him when he was on my lap, I was instantly protective when the little creatures were putting their hands all over my precious newborn. Me and my boyfriend agreed Hades should sleep downstairs- ha yea right!

Obviously the first few hours were going to be hard for him, so the second we heard him whimpering, we ran downstairs and brought him into our bed. We were making sure the kids got a good night sleep and did not get disturbed by him- that is what we told ourselves.

We played with him for about 10 minutes when he wriggled up next to me, aww we are bonding I thought-then the smell came. If you have ever smelt a dog fart you will know the stench is enough to make you sick, well, try having a dog poo literally 2 inches away from your face.

Off came the dog, bed sheets and duvet, I laughed, forgave the little monkey and crawled back into bed. We kept the en-suite light on in our bedroom so he would not be in the dark, however I can’t sleep with any sort of light near me, I moan when it creeps in through the crack in the door between the frame, so I turned it off- bad mother.

Hades decided he wanted my side of the bed, so I shifted down it until I was in the foetal position and told myself I was comfortable. Then the whimpering started, he got up had a wee and the settled back down again by my feet.

I won’t bore you but basically it was a very broken night of sleep with a lot of getting up and crying, but as a somewhat experienced mother (ha), I knew it wouldn’t last.

At ten to six I got up as he was hungry, (it was actually ten to seven but the clocks went back so I lost an hour and feel ten to six better describes the lack of sleep I had.

Now, our puppy is not just any puppy- there is no cheap dog food from a tin in our house. His diet is freshly cooked chicken and rice- yes I was cooking chicken and boiling rice at TEN TO SIX for a dog. They may be a man’s best friend, but he was not really mine at that moment in time. Luckily he has the cutest face, so my grumpiness did not last for long.

An hour later with Hades asleep in his bed in the living room with me, the pitter patter of tiny feet came down the stairs. Three very excited little girls came in squealing at him, I literally had to bat them away from him.

When a more normal time of day arrived and I felt more alive (12pm), I was ready to face the day and mummy my puppy.

I had the overwhelming urge every time one of the kids went near him to push them away from him, the pressures of being a mother to a baby hit me. If someone else held him, I had to stop myself from grabbing him off them. Every time he did a wee on the newspaper laid out for him, a sense of pride took over me. When he slept, I gazed at him and when he whimpered a cradled him like a baby and sang him a lullaby.

Writing this has been hard as I have had to tear myself away from him and I am dreading going back to work.

It seems the baby chemicals in my body have taken over, tomorrow I writing a blog called ’10 things to never say to the mother of a new puppy.’ Am I weird, or does this happen to every new puppy mother?

A Little Mix up

Little Mix have got themselves into a bit of bother recently while on tour due to their outfits on stage.

Parents and concert goers have blasted the sexy outfits raging about them all over the internet.

While I agree the outfits leave little to the imagination, what do fans and parents want to see Little Mix dressed up in, T-shirt and jeans?

Perrie defended their choice of clothing and said: ‘We put on such a big show and there’s a lot of dancing and it gets really hot out there.

‘I like to feel free and have something I can move around in.’

I can understand both sides of the argument, the critical parent in me is screaming at them to put some more clothes on, and the other more understanding part of me agrees with Perrie’s explanation.

As parents we have to explain a lot of things to our children and that is exactly what needs to happen in this situation.

We need our children to understand they are performers, they do not go around in their everyday lives dressed in these costumes.

While Little Mix have a lot of young impressionable female fans, as long as they understand that the clothes they are wearing are so they can jump around on stage and show off their dance moves and not what they would wear wandering down the street then where is the harm in what they wear?

We are all too quick to slam each other but when was the last time you saw a young girl group parading around the stage all night in tracksuits?

Flipping the coin, maybe the outfits don’t need so many bits cut out of them and they could show a tad less flesh, but I don’t feel the need to send my daughter to a convent because she has seen a bit of leg.

If she asks me why they are wearing clothes like that, I will just explain to her that is what they wear on stage while they are singing and dancing so they can move around and not get too hot. Then I imagine she will go back to playing with her Barbie’s without giving it a second thought.

As usual, it is just something else that has been blown out of proportion.

What do you think?

(Original article in Star magazine, I took a photo on my phone of the above as I have not actually been to the concert myself, so did the next best thing!)

Jamie's boobie bashing campaign

This morning while laying in bed listening to the squeak of the newly erected trampoline in the garden with my daughter jumping up and down on it, I came across an article about Adele’s four-letter tirade at Jamie Oliver over his intention to launch a campaign on breastfeeding:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/adeles-four-letter-tirade-jamie-7631999

If you don’t want to read the article, or think it may anger you too much, his wife is now expecting their fifth child so he has turned his attention to boobs.

He said: ‘We have the worst breastfeeding in the world. It feeds into all sorts of things like stunting, obesity, ill health.’

Speaking on a radio show he added: “If you breastfeed for more than six months, women are 50 per cent less likely to get breast cancer. When do you ever hear that? Never.”

"It’s easy, it’s more convenient, it’s more nutritious, it’s better, it’s free.”

Initially after reading the article I was outraged and determined to find out more so I researched his ‘campaign’ further and have found out he has now backtracked and said he is not starting one, he simply wanted to ‘support women who do want to breastfeed and make it easier for them to do so.’

Sorry but you have a P where you would need a V to make comments and support WOMEN who breastfeed.

Unfortunately Jamie is not alone in misunderstanding breastfeeding and he is not the only one in the world making ill-judged comments. So this is for all of those who are breastfeeding bashers, an education for small minded people who should really know when to keep their mouths shut.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all new mothers could whip out their breasts in Costa, latch their babies on while laughing with their other yummy mummy friends about how ‘easy’ everything is in between sips of an ultra skinny mocha chocha latte? Ah, the ultimate mummy dream.

Pregnant women and new mothers are not stupid, we all know how important breastfeeding is, our bodies make the milk, we don’t look down at our leaky nipples and say oh, what is with all of this white stuff?!

Jamie’s experience with breastfeeding is I imagine (correct me if I am wrong Jamie), through watching his wife feed their 4 children, now she is pregnant with her fifth he had decided to add this two pence about how he thinks women should raise their children.

I have taken his initial aim to launch a campaign about breastfeeding as a personal insult, and I imagine so have many other mothers. He may have now back-tracked but he said what he intended to do and has only backed down because of the backlash he has received.

Us mothers have all been through our own personal breastfeeding journey, my baby was in special care 7 hours after she was born. I tried to breastfeed and she would not take to it. She spent the night in SCBU, my eyeballs felt like they were going to fall out of my head as I had been in labour for days but still I tried to feed her myself at 1am, and 2am.

I was told to go to sleep and I would be woken in a couple of hours to try again. At 6am a nurse came in with my baby, they had decided not to wake me as she needed milk and was not taking it off me so they had to bottle feed her.

Any mother who hears that know that a baby is highly unlikely to take to breastfeeding after being given a bottle but I tried one last time to no avail, so I bottle fed my baby.

My daughter is not obese, she is not stunted in growth and she does not have any health issues. I was not breastfed, my daughter’s father was not breastfed and by some miracle we have grown up to be fully functioning adults. The only health issue I have is my hangovers are getting harder to deal with as I get older, but I guess that is just my own personal problem.

People who make comments about breastfeeding, and slam mothers who don’t breastfeed need to speak to not one, not 100, but millions of women to hear their stories about breastfeeding.

Thankfully I did not have post-natal depression; the most depressing thing I went through was having to throw away my maternity jeans because they ripped when my daughter was six months old.

Not breastfeeding, either through choice or for any other reason does not make anyone less of a mother. I don’t blame myself every time my daughter gets a cold and wonder if I had breastfed her then maybe she wouldn’t have caught it.

Similarly I don’t blame my mother for me putting my top on backwards twice this morning, I’m not slower because I wasn’t breastfed, unfortunately I have to accept that was just my own stupidity.

So enough of the boobie bashing, my boobs are MINE, they are none of Jamie’s business and your boobs are none of my business, let’s support breasts with good bras, not by starting ‘campaigns’.

Though I am thinking about starting a campaign on making every expectant father wear a pregnancy belly. I wonder who would have the balls support that?

I hate spellings!

Diary of a six-year-old.

Spell this I-H-A-T-E-S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G-S!

So Mother is taking an interest in my homework after saying last year she didn’t agree with it. Apparently now I am getting older and because of my lack of interest in anything to do with school, She needs to ‘push’ me more.

I have been having spelling tests since the beginning of this school year and up until a couple of months ago, She was not even aware of that fact. However since She came back from abandoning me in London for work, She seems to have gained an unnatural interest in what I can and can’t spell.

I tried to make it look like I was interested in stuff to get her off my back. A few times when we went out, I pointed to signs and asked what they said and gave a weak attempt at spelling the words out.

I thought I had cracked it when she didn’t tell me to practice my spellings when we got home but I think it was because she forgot as I keep waking her up at night because I want cuddles.

Then came along goodie two shoes, I don’t mean that with menace, I love my new step-sisters but one of them loves spelling a bit too much for my liking and she is making me look bad.

My older step-sister (MOS for short and code as all cool writers have codes for people whose names they cannot mention), is smart-I’ll give her that and she is only a couple of months older than me. But when Mother is trying to get me to do my spellings MOS wants to join in.

I wouldn’t have a problem with it if she was not good at them, but not only does she spell all of the words Mother says aloud, she also makes up sentences with them so I look doubly bad.

A couple of weeks ago Mother made me practice my spellings twice a day everyday with MOS, when I had my test at school a few days later I got 4 out of 5 spellings right when the previous week I had only got 1 out of 5 because I had not practiced.

I was overjoyed and so was Mother so she was a bit lax with my spellings the following week and again I only got 1 out of 5. So now this week She is on turbo mode, and so am I.

When I came home from school I asked for sweets (standard after a hard Monday), and she told me I couldn’t have any until after I had done my spellings. I couldn’t believe my ears and I decided if she was going to force me to do something, she would see that I could play a game with her too.

I wrote the words so badly, they were illegible- Ha I thought that would show her. I was not expecting her to bark at me and tell me to write them properly.

Reluctantly I did them again, huffed my way through and then cried silently when I got to the end. I knew if that didn’t tug at her heart strings then nothing would.

She told me to stop crying and to pick a sweet for finishing them, but added I would have to do them again before bed so I can show my teacher I have been trying.

I think she wants to show the teacher to prove that my spellings are not down to her lazy parenting but rather due to my unwillingness to practice.

I really must find a way to get out of this horribleness, if any other six-year-olds out there have any advice, I could really use it right now...

#Agonyaunt

(Oh, for those of you wondering, I used spell-check a lot when writing this and the thesaurus is a magical tool!)