10 Worst Things About Being Pregnant On Hot Days

I'm not pregnant this year, but I was last year. Those boiling hot summer days you enjoyed last summer? Yeah, I cried through them. I was so pregnant and so sweaty and so swollen. If you are thinking of having a baby in the future, try to time it so that you are at your most pregnant in the winter months. Trust me, a summer pregnancy is absolutely no fun whatsoever. Here's why:

1. "You must be hot, love!" 
There are only so many times you can politely smile at this in 30 degrees heat. I was eight months pregnant when the weather was at its worst (best, to non-pregnant people) and I was having to leave the house to do the nursery run twice a day. I couldn't get down a street without at least one person saying this Whilst Laughing At Me. Builders, old ladies, a guy cutting down a tree, everybody said it and Laughed At Me whilst I waddled along pretending pregnancy thigh chafe wasn't the worst thing ever. 

2. The sympathy
And when people weren't stopping me to laugh at me, I was getting sympathetic looks from little old ladies who 'had summer babies, too'. Great. I was then told in detail about the heatwave of 57 or whatever with the added warning that the weather might be like this during the birth! Isn't there a heatwave coming? Chuckle chuckle. Now, old lady, get lost and leave me alone because I'm very close to punching somebody and I'd rather it wasn't you. 

3. The swelling
I had to stop wearing my wedding ring when I was about five minutes pregnant anyway because my bit fat swollen fingers could no longer house dainty jewellery. By the time summer rocked around, I couldn't even wear my maternity skirt as a ring around my finger because the swelling was so grotesque. Not in a pre-eclampsia way, just in a look-how-fat-my-repulsive-hands-are way. 

4. The shaving standards
Normally, I wouldn't want to go out in a skirt without tights on. Period. Especially if I was on my period. Nobody needs to see my legs. On the rare (and always sunny) occasions I do drag my blindingly white legs out onto the streets, I like them to be shaved and moisturised so that I can tell myself they look like the legs from a Venus advert (though they definitely don't). All of this went out of the window (along with my self respect) when I was pregnant. Shaving takes about three days when your legs are a) the size of Scotland and b) completely hidden from view so I just gave up. Sometimes I would run a razor along my shin as a sort of polite attempt at shaving but this probably just gave the effect of a foot-made path through an overgrown meadow. I couldn't see if they were hairy or not so what did it matter. 

5. The sound of flesh squeaking against a birthing ball
There is nothing quite like the sound of sweaty ass flesh squeaking against the rubber of a birthing ball as you bounce all day long in a desperate attempt to get the damn baby out. It didn't work. If anything, I think the high-pitched wail of fat rubbing on rubber echoing from the only way out probably put her off coming at all. And who can blame her. 

6. The size of your feet 
If you thought your swollen fingers were extreme, try having a glance down at your feet. I know, you can't see them, but take a photo with your phone and then look at it. No, you aren't wearing your novelty shrek feet slippers, those are your actual feet. That's what your fingers would look like too if they were carrying 14 stone around all day long. Your poor feet, don't even attempt to force them into shoes, just embrace sandals. Flip flops for the win. 

7. You fantasise about fans
I wanted a fan so badly last summer. It was all I thought about. I once went to a friend's house and she had a fan and, even though my friend was taken ill and ended up puking into the toilet, I wouldn't leave because I loved the fan so much. I was cool for the first time in weeks, I wasn't going to let the smell of vomit and the risk of catching a sickness bug put me off. One evening, I sent Laurie out to buy a fan. He came home with a new hosepipe but forgot the fan. He is lucky he survived to tell the tale. 

8. You don't wear any of your maternity clothes
Maternity clothes cost a fortune for something you only actually get to wear for a couple of months. Less than that if it's summer because you will mostly be naked and crying in a cold bath in a desperate attempt to cool the fuck down. 

9. Ice is too slow
When you're pregnant, you should be sure to a eat a healthy, balanced diet rich in fresh fruit and vegetables. Unless it's summer. Then you should eat ice cream and iced drinks and forget everything else. The only problem is, it actually takes ages to make ice. Water freezes so slowly. If you've never noticed this, it's because you've never been pregnant in the summer. Ice is too slow. Somebody needs to figure out a way of speeding up ice for pregnant women. 

10. You spend your time obsessively checking the weather app
Please, please, please don't let the baby come on a hot day, you think, checking the app to see when the weather is going to cool down. Not that the baby gives a shit, they come when they want. They can't even read the weather forecast anyway. 

What's missing off this list? 

My 5 Favourite Things About Working For Myself

I have been working for myself for just over four years. I am a pregnancy and parenting writer and I create content for a lovely pregnancy website which focuses on empowering women to make informed choices. I love it and feel really proud that I've managed to find work that fits around my family. There are downsides to working for myself, for example, last week when my laptop broke I couldn't just call the IT department and get it fixed. Nope, I had to fork out bazillions of pounds for my new fancy laptop which I am now besotted with even though I definitely can't afford it. But, macbook-induced poverty aside, working for myself is pretty awesome. Here's why:

1. I can bring my baby to work

I don't work full days, in fact, I'm pretty sure I've lost the ability to do that. Over the past four years I have perfected the art of working during naps and after bedtime and I just don't think I could work any other way now. I first started working for myself when Ebony was a little over one. When she went down for her nap, I would scurry downstairs and open my laptop to start work. When she woke up, I usually tried to find something to distract her for five or ten minutes so I could finish what I was working on. It's not always easy to finish an article when there is a small child trying to whack your keyboard, but it's great to have the opportunity to try. 

2. I don't have to wear a uniform

I haven't had to wear a uniform since my terrible, terrible part-time job at a bingo hall when I was at uni. If I did have to wear a uniform, I would probably go for one of these bad boys from Engelbert Strauss's PPE clothing range. I am a big lover of all things yellow. I used to work in my pyjamas but now I have a school run to do so I am usually dressed like a fully functioning human being by the time I sit down to work. 

3. Nobody judges me for the mess

Back when I worked in offices, my desk was a health hazard. It was always stacked high with abandoned papers, forgotten to-do lists and empty bourbon biscuit wrappers (I love bourbons). It wasn't a nice sight and there was some definite judging going on. Whatevs. These days, I am  my only office mate and I am totally ok with the mess. Sometimes I even tidy up. Or, and this is the best, I just work in a room that isn't my office. Ah, freedom. 

4. I don't have to answer the phone

You know what would be great? If we all only used emails and text messages to communicate. Only psychopaths want to have phone conversations. I can talk to my friend and family on the phone but I have no desire to talk to anybody else. JUST EMAIL ME. Stop being weird. I don't want to speak to you on the phone. I want the conversation to happen via email so I can reply at will and control the conversation. Don't ring me. Ever. I wasn't allowed to say that to people before I worked for myself but now I totally can (not that I ever have because, luckily, most people I come into contact with seem to share my love of written communication). 

5. The flexibility

One of the bestest most amazing things about working for myself is the flexibility. I don't work full-time, I just work as and when I can. If I miss a day because Ebony was off school sick, that's fine. If I manage to squeeze in a couple of extra hours because Laurie took the girls out, great. If it's sunny and I want to skip work and soak up some rays, that's fine, too. I get to control it. I have the freedom to enjoy life whilst still earning a living doing something I love and I couldn't feel luckier. 

This is a collaborative post. 

Talking About The Bad Things That Happen

It's not easy to make sense of some of the things happening in the world right now. And by right now, I mean always. There is always something horrible and upsetting in the news. From equality to violence to terrorism, there is always something that is painful, upsetting or scary to read about it. I don't usually share those news stories with Ebony. She's too little, really, to make sense of a lot of those news. I can't make sense of them myself. I didn't tell her about the Westminster attack a couple of months ago, I wouldn't have known what to say. 

I talk to her about upsetting news stories sometimes. Not because they are in the news, but because they get stuck in my head and I feel it is my job to educate her. I have spoken to her about famine, about inequality, about climate change. I talk to her about the issues I feel are important and which I feel we have even just a little bit of power to do something about. I can talk to her about climate change because I can teach her things to do that can reduce her impact on the planet. I can talk to her about inequality because I want her to grow up and see for herself that things aren't fair and that we need to force change. But how can I tell her about horrible things we can't control? 

"Oh fucking hell, there's been a blast in Manchester." Those were the words out of Laurie's mouth at about quarter to eight this morning as we were all sitting in bed. Ebony was playing with her sister, but she paused when he said it.

"What's a blast?" She said to me. I guess I should be thankful she didn't ask what fucking meant and that she instead focused on the word blast. I shot Laurie an angry glare before realising that, actually, I would have to tell her about it this time. Kids at school would know about it, they would be talking about it in the playground. We don't live far from Manchester, it was possible that someone from her school could have been there last night. 

I answered her question. I told her that a blast was another way of saying a bomb had gone off, that somebody had let a bomb off to hurt people and the police were trying to work out why. She had questions, of course. She wanted to know if we knew anybody that lived there, if people had been hurt, if children had been hurt. She wanted to know who did it. She wanted to know why. I couldn't answer that one, but I did my best, explaining that sometimes people want to hurt other people. 

We got dressed, we read her school reading books and we sat down to eat breakfast. Then she brought it up again. She said people would probably be feeling sad about it today. That even if they didn't know the people who got hurt they would still feel sad because it was a sad thing to happen and it's not nice when people get hurt. And that even if the person who did it got hurt that was still sad because nobody ever deserved to be hurt. And then we cleaned our teeth, we put our shoes on and we walked to school. 

7 Family Kitchen Essentials

‘Family kitchen’ is just a polite way of saying ‘messy kitchen’, or is it in my house, anyway. There are always letters from school cluttering up the side, abandoned hair bobbles and clips (the few that actually return home) on the breakfast bar and dirty cups and plates that have been dumped on the worktop. It is a lived in kitchen. Like, really lived in. Sometimes, it’s clean and sparkly and lovely but most of the time, it’s lived in. I thought I would write a post sharing some of the things I consider to be family kitchen essentials. They’re the things I think make life easier or prettier in a family kitchen. I’ve left out the obvious like wooden wine racks to store All The Wine you need to devour at bedtime.

5 Ways To Encourage A Love Of Space

The idea of space is somewhat terrifying, nothing makes me feel more insignificant than looking up at a star full of skies and realising just how small I am. I am scared of the deepness of the sea, but space is a whole other kettle of fish. It’s just so big. Too big. So big I can’t even begin to comprehend it. But, I want to encourage Ebony to enjoy science and so I’ve been thinking of ways we can learn more about space together. I don’t want her to be one of the many girls who, by the time they leave primary school, have already given up all hope of ever conquering maths or science. I don’t want her to be limited by her gender. I don’t want her to conform to society’s view that science is for boys.

So, I have been plotting ways to get her enthralled in science. She loves learning about how the human body works, she’s fascinated by animals and she really likes ‘making potions’ (these are, almost always, 99% my fancy conditioner). Here are a few of the ways I am, or wish I was, trying to get her into space (har har har):

The Broken Bed

Every so often, something happens which reaffirms to me that I am not exactly killing it at this whole adulting thing. It might be the frantic search for matching school socks approximately five minutes after we need to leave the house every morning (even writing this won't motivate me to seek out socks in advance of tomorrow's pre-school panic) or the fact that we sometimes have to go and buy ingredients for dinner at dinner time because I forgot to organise it in advance. 

Some days, I get the big one off to school on time, whisk the little one home for a nap and then have a productive two hours writing away on my laptop and other days I can't find my hairbrush. Being the adult and being expected to keep family life running smoothly isn't easy and sometimes I find myself failing. 

Take Ebony's bed, for example. Ebony finally got her own room when we moved into this house. She was two and a half years old when we finally transitioned her out of our room (although could somebody let her know this because she doesn't seem to have taken the hint very well). We decorated her room. We painted the walls white, we dug out brightly coloued toys to add a splash of colour and my parents bought her a bed. We didn't go for solid oak bedroom furniture which, in hindsight, perhaps we should have. Instead, we chose a white wooden bed, simple, pretty, perfect. It looked beautiful in her bedroom (bedroom tour here). Or it did until it got broken. 

You see, the problem with young children is that they love to jump on the bed. On all beds. They jump high and far and with enthusiasm. No matter how many times I asked her not to jump on the bed, I would still hear the familiar creak of the springs giving way under her weight as she leapt around the room. Three weeks ago, she had a friend to play. They went upstairs, as they often do, keen to explore the toys hidden upstairs. I was making dinner in the kitchen, the baby balanced in the crook of my arm whilst I cut vegetables one-handed, so I didn't hear the bouncing of the springs. I didn't hear the telltale creak of the floorboards under the bed or the almighty snap when the bed collapsed under the weight of two excited little girls drunk on the freedom of a playdate. 

The next morning, Laurie noticed that her bed was a little more diagonal than it used to be. A snapped slat and some broken screws seemed to be to blame. My dad came round, the man who can fix absolutely anything (just ask Ebony - 'you can try, mummy, but when it doesn't work, we can ask papa and he will fix it') with a bit of wood glue and a few spare screws. The two of them disappeared upstairs to fix the bed and appeared triumphant an hour later. It was fixed apart from the slat. That was all we needed to do, replace the slat. That was three weeks ago. Ebony is upstairs now fast asleep on her mattress on the floor because we haven't replaced the slat. Laurie tried, he claims, but Homebase didn't have the right part. I haven't even done that. If I think back to my own childhood, there is no way my dad would have left me sleeping on the floor for three weeks. He would have replaced that slat straight away, he probably had a garage full of spare slats just in case such a problem ever arose. But poor Ebony, with me and Laurie for parents, she has to sleep on the floor. 

This is a collaborative post. 

Motherhood Is

Motherhood is all-encompassing. Five years ago, it washed over me like a tide, dragging me under and pinning me down on the ocean floor as I fought for air to fill my lungs while powerful waves broke over me. Every so often, I summon the strength to swim up to the surface and catch my breath, I fill my lungs with the oxygen I once took for granted but which now feels special as though my very being depends on it, only to be dragged back down to the sandy floor as the next wave crashes over my head. It is exhausting, to tread water in a stormy sea, gulping huge breaths of air into my lungs and not knowing when I might be able to breathe again, so consumed by my battle with and against the ocean that all sense of who I am is lost.

Motherhood is relentless. Even when my bones ache from exhaustion and my brain is filled with nothing more than a dense fog of tiredness, I still rise in the night without hesitation to take care of my children. They come first, their hunger or nightmares or clammy limbs reaching out for a cuddle always take precedence over my desperate need for sleep. I cannot sleep, I have accepted that, not yet, maybe in a few years, but for now, the tiredness is as much a part of me as my left arm. It is always there and, as a result, I have stopped noticing it a lot of the time, but sometimes, as I stare into the bathroom mirror and look at the pink eyes staring back at me, and the dark circles under them and the age lines creeping out at the corners, it comes rushing back to me so powerfully that I fear I will keel over and be unable to get up.

Motherhood is chaotic. It is the desperate juggling act of trying to look after the basic needs of my family whilst also finding the time to write, to invoice, to do admin, to wash laundry and pair socks and cook dinners and shop so that the cupboards aren't bare. It is the endless chore of picking up toys, of cleaning teeth, of remembering birthdays, of making sure everybody is eating well. It is the constant worry that I'm not doing enough, of trying to improve, to be better, to mother in a way that will protect them in the future, it is the late night ordering of parenting books from Amazon and knowing that they will sit gathering dust beside my bed until I finally find the time and energy to read them and, by that point, that it could be too late, that I may already have done everything wrong.

Motherhood is like a kettle boiling, that shrill whistle sounding loudly in my ear while I try to gather my thoughts and think about what to do next, my insides hot whilst frustration bubbles beneath the surface. Motherhood is getting things wrong and making mistakes and wishing I had been better. It is sitting down in the evenings and letting the day wash over me, thinking about where I went wrong and what I should have done instead, it is the never-ending conversation with Laurie about who we are as parents and who we want to be. It is knowing that finding the time for that conversation isn't always easy but that it is always important, that if we stop thinking about it, if we fall into habit and parent without analysis, then we aren't doing it right. There is always room for improvement, there are always apologies to be made and bonds to be strengthened, even when there isn't time because life is in the way.

Motherhood is me. It is always there, even when my children are not. Become a mother rewired my brain and changed the way I see the world. It changed everything. It made the world smaller, it made my fears bigger and it threw my ribcage open and exposed my heart to the elements where it seems in constant danger of getting hurt. It is beautiful and powerful and vaster than any skyscraper. And, sometimes, it's nice to get away from it all. Sometimes, it's nice to escape from motherhood, just for a little bit. I need to walk away from real life, to throw myself back into the past, to meet friends and drink wine and talk about politics and forget about motherhood and all that it entails. That little break, that night away to a different city with different conversations and busy streets and new foods to try, gives me the chance to swim to the surface and take a big gulp of fresh air and remind myself who I am. I am a mother and that is the biggest part of my identity now while my children are little, but I'm also lots of other things and, when the waves break around me instead of over my head, it's nice to remember those things, to breathe them in and hold my breath, letting them rush through my veins, before I am dragged back under again.

Review: Hello Canvas HD Metal Prints

One of the things I love about having this blog is that it's pushed me to get more creative with my camera. Laurie had a pretty good camera but neither of us knew how to use it (Laurie says he does, but why are all his photos so blurry?) so it was wasted on us. This blog became the perfect place to capture my memories of motherhood when Ebony was a baby and I soon began to want decent photos to accompany my words. 

My photos still aren't perfect but they're so much better than they used to be and I love them. I love having gorgeous photos of the girls that I'll be able to look back on when I'm old and grey (now then). I rarely get around to printing the photos though, they just exist in digital form because I'm lazy and cheap and because I take so many photos that it would be truly ridiculous to print them all. I had a load printed when Ember was fresh from the womb because I didn't want to be one of those terrible parents that never gets around to putting photos of the second child up on the wall. I never got around to buying frames for them so they are still in a pile on my desk, so I am just like all the other parents. One day, I will go frame shopping. 

Hello Canvas got in touch to see if I'd like to try out one of their HD Metal wall prints and I couldn't quite get my head around what it was going to be. Would it look like metal? Would it be grainy? Heavy? Too metal? I didn't know what to expect but I decided to try it out. Laurie's family have their walls covered in photos of the girls so I figured another wouldn't do them any harm. I chose a photo of the girls together, it was taken on Ebony's fifth birthday and I really love it. It's so rare to get a photo where neither of them has food on their face so this is particularly special to me. 

The HD metal print arrived and it is gorgeous. It doesn't look like it's printed on metal, it just looks (from the front) like a high-quality gloss print. It's shiny and clear and bright. It doesn't look grainy at all. I was actually surprised by how much I loved it, I'm not really a lover of huge canvas prints because I think the photo quality is diminished when stretched across the canvas, but that isn't true of the HD metal print at all. I really loved how it looked and the in-laws were really pleased with it as well. 

We were sent the 16 x 20 inch HD metal canvas to review RRP £79. Prices for HD metal prints start from just £19 (currently £15 in the sale), take a look at the Hello Canvas website to see the full range. 

On Turning 31 And Not Knowing WTF I'm Doing

I'm 31 today. It's an age that would have sounded horrifically ancient to me in my youth but which now I can argue is still pretty damn young. I'm not old just yet. Is there ever an age where you accept that you have crossed over to the wrong side of young? I can't imagine reaching it. In many ways, I felt old as soon as Ebony was born. I was 25 years old but I felt ooold. My friends were still young; they were focusing on their careers and going on holiday and posting drunken photos to Facebook and I was breastfeeding and changing nappies and reading blogs about gentle parenting. Life changed. Just like that. 

Now my friends are catching up with me. Lots of them have settled down, some have had babies and sometimes we sit together and talk about how hard it is to be a parent. Being a parent isn't aging me anymore, but my age is. I've finally reached that point where I have to be careful of my references because younger people might not know who Harold and Madge from Neighbours are (imagine if you didn't know who Harold and Madge were?!). My sister told me yesterday that people born in 1999 are now legally old enough to drink, that blew my mind because, er, wasn't 1999 like five minutes ago? Is my love of 90s pop now really that outdated? 

I feel like 30 passed me by. I was pregnant and in the middle of all the decorating and my 30th birthday just kind of happened. There was a party, I was sober, it was as terrible as you would expect a sober birthday party to be. I wanted to think deep thoughts about growing older and reflect on the passing of my twenties but I was so damn pregnant and tired. It's hard to reflect on anything when you can't make it off the sofa without getting heartburn. 

31. It's the age my mum was when she had me. It doesn't sound that old anymore. Growing older is just making me realise that nobody has a clue what they're doing. When you're young, you assume that everyone older than you has it together. You believe your parents know what they're doing. You think that one day it will just click and you'll know what you're doing, too. I'm starting to realise that that's not the case. Or not for me, anyway. I still don't have a clue what I'm doing. We're late for school most days (not late book late, but late nonetheless), I pretty much always overspend by the end of the month (sometimes by the middle) and I still find it really stressful dressing for formal occasions. 

I forget about homework, I do my work scarily close to the deadline and sometimes things just slip my mind. I can never find matching socks (unless they're Laurie's) in a morning, I stay up too late on school nights and the cupboard under the stairs is so full of crap that I have given up going in there. I am not adulting with finesse. I have no clue what I'm doing. Please tell me I'm not the only one. 

5 Things That Guarantee Me A Good Start To The Day

I'm not a morning person. I never have been. I have spent pretty much my whole life waking up tired and grumpy. There just isn't enough sleep in the day. It didn't matter for a few years when Ebony was little and we could spend lazy mornings slowly dragging ourselves out of bed, but she's in school now so I have to get up. We're rarely there on time, though that is actually down to Ebony's time management skills rather than my own. I can be up and dressed half an hour before we have to leave and Ebony will still make us late by misplacing her shoes or getting distracted by a game.

I'm not a big caffeine drinker so I don't rely on a mug-full of commercial coffee machines and gourmet Fairtrade coffee to get me through the day. I occasionally dabble in the whimsical world of the fruit teas, but that's about as exciting as it gets. And I rarely have time for a hot drink before the school run because I'm too busy trying not to shout at everybody (this takes a lot of effort). I usually have my breakfast when I get back dropping Ebony off at school. I have noticed that it's the little things that matter in the morning. Like, whoever it is that hides Ebony's school shoes every single morning, WHY?! But also, it's the little things that make me feel happy and set me up for a good day. Here are five of them:

1. Waking up before my alarm

There is nothing quite so terrible as being dragged out of a dream by a piercing alarm shrieking next to your head. There is no such thing as joy on a morning like that. If, however, I manage to wake up before my alarm, I feel like a million dollars (even though I've probably had less sleep, go figure). Anything pre-alarm feels like bonus time so it always puts me in a good mood to be awake to see that time of day (as long as it's like 20 minutes before and not two hours).

2. My FitBit

I love my Fitbit. I got it when Ember was born and it has changed my life. It records how much I sleep I get which is both wonderful and terrifying. Mostly, I get enough sleep but on the days I don't, it's depressing to see, in graph form, how many times I was woken up by my many children. Usually, the FitBit brings me good news and, even though I wake up feeling tired, I am soon convinced that I've had enough sleep. Seeing that I've had seven hours sleep instantly makes me feel less tired. It is genius. All new parents should have them.

3. Having the school uniform ready

I want to say I'm the kind of person who irons an entire week of uniform on the Sunday. I think I've managed it once. It was a good week. But I usually spend my Sunday evenings panic-washing the uniform and so it isn't ready to be ironed. Half the time I can't even find most of it. So, I'm not that person. Sometimes, I actually manage to iron her uniform the night before and hang it on her bedroom door. On those mornings, I don't have to run around trying to find matching socks or iron any polo shirts, so those mornings are the best. I should really prepare clothes the night before more often.

4. Looking human

Trying to look human is never easy, especially when you have a baby who can find danger in less than a second. I have to get up early so I can shower before Laurie leaves for work. Then I have to dry my hair whilst Ember shouts angrily at me in baby language (I don't know what she says but it looks a lot like 'pick me up, woman'). If I manage to straighten my hair, put on some mascara and wear a clean t-shirt, life feels good. If I catch sight of myself in the hall mirror on my way out and don't feel like crying, I know I'm going to have a good day.

5. Leaving the house on time

This one is hypothetical since such a miracle has never actually occurred, but I'm pretty sure leaving the house on time would make me feel amazing. I think I'd strut to school feeling like a mum boss (as in boss of being a mum, not the patronising term for a boss who happens to have children). I would walk up to those school gates and wish people a good morning. There would be on hell of a spring in my step. Probably. Not that I'll even actually find out.

What are your morning wins that set you up for a good day?

This is a collaborative post.