Who Designs Baby Changing Rooms,

Because I have a bone to pick with them.

I've been in a whole pile of different baby changing and family rooms over the past nearly a year and whilst there are some which aren't great because the amenities are broken, there are a lot which aren't great from the start. Whether it's the fact it's a building which was built before people had babies - yes, that is a joke - or in the time when children were neither seen nor heard and mother's were just expected to stay at home with youngsters, or it's just bad planning, most of these rooms were not planned by the people who use them or were intended to use them, because otherwise they would have been designed with a lot more sense. 

There's things like safety straps. The number of times I've seen changing mats with them or without them are probably pretty even and I get that, because if you have one, does it make you less vigilant about preventing falls because mentally you think that's what the strap is there for, but when babies get older or turn into toddlers then they get very wiggly, wriggly and darn right devious, which means they get a knack for getting out of such things and sometimes that is a lot quicker than you assume that they will. But without a strap you have absolutely no back up and if you have to cross the room to wash your hands or dry your hands, you either need to put the child on the floor (God, no), back in whatever they are being carried in (which if you are just carrying them, then good luck to you) or... risk it for the least length of time you can in order to wash your hands? (Obviously that's also not a good option.)

There is a debate over whether family rooms should include a toilet, because of potty training, but my issue with that is that it almost encourages abuse of the room when lines in other bathrooms are long, but I have genuinely seen (on social media) conversations where mum's say they will pee in the sink and encourage their kids to do the same if there's not a sink in there. Taking aside that that is gross from a drainage point of view, it's also gross in terms of leaving that for cleaners, because splashing is a thing. I also think having a toilet is important in case of reusable nappies, because you can flush the liners which have the worst of the nappy contents in, rather than having to either bin it (when you're not likely to carry nappy bags because they're plastic) or take it home in the nappy.

Sometimes it's as simple as the bin being miles away from the changing table, because who doesn't need a hike in the middle of a nappy change?, the dryer being the opposite side of the room to sink, no hand soap, the pedal on the bin not working or something else and it just makes life difficult. Add to that the fact that the doors never swing both ways and are rarely assisted doors, so entering or exiting is always a struggle, and some of the rooms are not big enough for even the smallest pram to be in. And then my biggest pet peeve, changing facilities are lumped in with a disabled access toilet. 

If it were as simple as there were changing places toilets everywhere and the changing facilities were a part of that facility, so there was a bed or plinth or table or whatever big enough for all changing needs, I would slightly say fair enough, but it's not. Changing places bathrooms are few and far between. It's not even about ensuring disabled parents are able to access changing facilities because mats are most often mounted where it would be impossible for a non ambulatory wheelchair user to use them, with little or no support for ambulatory wheelchair users and still too low for "able" parents to be able to comfortable use them.

I'm not saying that every changing mat should be height adjustable (wouldn't that be amazing) or that everywhere should revamp every room to move sinks and toilets and changing mats to all be on wall or anything, but a shelf to put your bag down so you can get at supplies would be amazing - not every nappy bag is built to be used from a hook! - bins working and being in logical places and having somewhere safe to put baby down so you can actually wash your hands (getting Sudocrem out from under long nails is absolutely no joke) and potentially one of those vending machines with emergency bits in, because everyone has done the thing of walking out of the house with something that they need and there's not always a well placed supermarket... (and even if you're in a supermarket, wrapping the baby up in a muslin toga or similar whilst you make a mad dash to the nappy aisle is one of my worst nightmares...) And all this is without even getting into the idea that having a parenting room should include somewhere to breastfeed or pump without taking the facility offline for everyone else for up to half an hour at a time.

What Happened Last Week,

I'm writing this still sporting my wedding nails and really struggling, because instead of typing with the ti pop my finger like I am used to, I have to angle my fingers differently and use the pad of my finger so I don't either snap a nail, which is painful, or feel like I'm peeling the nail off of the nail bed, which is excruciating, so bare with. 

Is that the reason last week's blog schedule went out of the window? No, of course not.

So why did it?

Honestly, the last few weeks I have been struggling with what to say. 

Before the wedding happened I had all of these things I wanted to write about but without giving away all of the details of the big day, because several of my friends who attended read my blog. I did think I might post them in the post wedding era, but honestly, I didn't even want to write them anymore, let alone post them. And now, post wedding, I don't feel the need to write and share as much about it as I thought I might.

It's not even that it didn't go to plan - it did - or that there was loads of drama - there wasn't - but certain people have made me feel very watched in a bad way, and like they are try to pry into my life no matter what I do to prevent it, and it's uncomfortable. This blog has always been about being able to share what I want to, what I write and what I think in a way that's comfortable, but the truth is that the discomfort I have been feeling around those people and the sort of access they are trying to force into my life and my son's life is making writing this somewhat less comfortable and that is something I am truly devastated about. Trust me, I don't want to give this up, but withdrawing more from it might be on the cards because I just don't want those people having information about my family, because it seems to make them think they have some sort of access.

Maybe I'm just naive but I don't like relationships which are only one sided - where people only want to be involved with me or have a relationship when they want something, even if that is just an invite to my wedding, or when people try and pretend like we're close to get those things, or when their relationship with me is simply there to facilitate a relationship with my son. He is an exceptionally loving little boy, but if people think they can be mean or dismissive or rude to me and then still expect a relationship with my son, they must be from another planet, or you would think so. 

So yes, what to say, how much to say and whether to say anything has been very much on my mind the last few weeks and it's something I have been struggling with but I don't have a solution right now.

"Normal",

I might have written about this before, but it's something that really bugs me and continues to bug me this many months later, so here we go...

This isn't about being a "normal" person; that seems to have fallen by the wayside for a lot of people because there is an acceptance that "normal" doesn't exist because everyone is an individual. Cool. That's great.

So why do we still use the term "normal" when it comes to a birth?

Let's be honest, normal is used synonymously with vagina birth, despite the fact that there was outcry back in December that these number of births via C-section had risen so much that C-sections accounted for over 50% of births, to my memory. Even if these were the only two methods of birth possible, how does that make a spontaneous vaginal birth "normal"? 

"Normal" birth seems to refer to a spontaneous vaginal birth with no interventions needed, but instrumental assistance is needed in a percentage of births, induction is needed in a percentage of births, episiotomy is needed in a percentage of births.

Particularly when we interact with the NHS, the need for clarity and specificity seems to be lost behind this terminology that doesn't really have a whole lot of meaning, and doesn't give a lot of information, but rolls off the tongue. I've been on the receiving end of eye rolls and smirks because I question what they mean, but I don't know what they're asking me. Why is it so hard to say, was it a C-section or vaginal birth? if it was a C-section, do you know what category of C-section? Vaginal? Was intervention needed? Was medication required? Was it at home, a birth centre or a hospital? Did mum or baby need extra attention after the birth? 

What is beside the point, of course, is that this is all in my notes. And my son's notes. Why do I need to go over this information at every appointment or interaction with a doctor?

It's not a thing of making conversation, because using that word shuts down conversation about a person's birth experience. Saying a "normal" birth is like saying, if you followed a certain path, I know what your experience was. It's formulaic in a way that birth isn't. Some people are terrified of vagina birth because of the pain, because of the effort or because of the risk of bleeding or tearing. Some people are terrified of C-section because of the pain, or the recovery, because of the judgment of not being a real mum or not having experienced a real birth.

And maybe I am still just being sensitive because I haven't come to terms with the fact I had a C-section, or the parts that were done badly. Maybe I'm still mourning the birth I imagined or the birth I wanted, but that shouldn't detract from the fact that the language which is typically used by a lot of the NHS isn't working for the conversations we're trying to have. 

When Do We Grow Out of IKEA Furniture,

I've spent too many days not writing so I'm trying to write this from my phone because I can't be bothered going downstairs to grab my laptop. If this damn app closes one more time though I might find the motivation that I need to go...

I know that IKEA is like marmite for a lot of people, but personally, I love the place, and the work they're doing at the moment to redesign their furniture to taken apart and moved instead of being kind of one and done is awesome.

There are a lot of people in the world who will look down on IKEA furniture, and I kind of get it, if you own a certain type of home, because if you get something like a cottage with a lot of character or a Victorian or other period property with a lot of period features, and you go and stick a whole pile of flat pack furniture in it, it's going to look kind of silly, but I've genuinely heard people talk about IKEA as though it's the furniture or when you're a student (which it works as) or in your 20s (which it is, because you can buy it, get it delivered or even take small items on the tube, and yes I have seen that) but it's almost as though when you're in your thirties you should have "grown out of" IKEA furniture and be looking at something "proper" which I think is pretty mad.

There are some things I would be kind of reluctant to buy from IKEA. I bought a sofa bed from them when I had a studio flat in London and I was gutted to get rid of it, but managed to sell it on to someone else in a similar position. I think if I tried to sleep on it in my 30s, especially for any length of time, I would be really struggling. I'm not completely in love with their sofas in general, but that might be because I'm fussy about sofas. I have short legs so need a low ish seat and for it to be a short ish seat, too, as super deep seats mean no back support for me, but I want quite a high back for the support and it means just having a cushion behind me to "solve" the seat depth issue doesn't really work. I also might buy a bed frame from IKEA (maybe) but I wouldn't buy a mattress from IKEA.

I think I'd be more likely to have "grown out of" IKEA because I can't manage putting the flat pack together myself anymore - because I do it myself as a point of pride - rather than going off of a lot of products. Had we not already got our son's cot when we had him, we would have been getting it from IKEA because most of their furniture just makes sense, and I don't think I would ever get a kitchen from anywhere else.

Any hey, look at that, I wrote a blog that wasn't about parenting or the wedding. Yay me.

Nailed It,

I've mentioned on here before that my nails were something that ruined the idea of engagement photos and that I wanted to try and get them sorted before the wedding, and I was really happy to have been able to do it. It was something I started about three months before the wedding, getting my nails done with BIAB to make them stronger and less easy to bite, and now I have to come to a decision on what to do next. Do I soak the BIAB off and probably end up going back to biting my nails within minutes of them coming off, or paint them at home and hope that I can keep them in half way decent condition, or is this my life right now? Do I just have to accept that I'm going to be going to get my nails done every few weeks for the foreseeable?

It's not that I don't love the girl that does my nails, because I do. She's brilliant, she does brilliant work and I enjoy going spending time in the salon, so much so that I even managed to convince myself to get my hair cut there before the wedding and then was super thrilled to have the hair dresser come to help me get ready the morning of my wedding, but it's not exactly cheap to get them done and with the fact that I'm still on maternity leave it's not the most important thing in the budget.

I would also say it's not like they're perfect. It's not that my nail artist does anything wrong, but BIABs are a gel which uses UV to set it, and I've read a few things about how prolonged UV exposure, even little and often over time, can cause skin aging and potentially skin cancers, which is obviously more than a little concerning. I've also had a few episodes of catching my nails in things, because they're a lot longer than I've ever been used to, or catching them when trying to do things like closing the door, catching them on the handle and feeling like I'm peeling them straight off of the nail bed, which honestly made me feel pretty sick. I know I could trim them down and this would be less of a problem, and now that the wedding is over I feel like I don't need them to be elegant and pretty, just neat, but other than those incidents, and the fact that typing is different on either my phone or my laptop, I've actually really enjoyed my nails being longer.

The only problem I have with my nails at the moment is how quickly I need to get them replaced, though I think that that is at least in part because of the number of nappy changes and bottles I am doing, because it means I'm constantly washing my hands, and that doesn't help nails, even gels, to last as long as they can do.

Honestly. I think I'm going to message my nail artist tomorrow, because the last thing I want is to end up back at the stage where I'm biting my nails until my finger hurt, but I think I will get them done shorter so that I can let my nail beds have a bit of a rest from the peeling sensation and also get back to typing like normal. A bit driver in that though is because I don't think I could paint my nails well by myself, even if they were as strong without the BIAB gel on them, but it does mean it will soon be time to say goodbye to my wedding nails, which is kind of sad.

The Sucky Thing About NC500,

I say this as a person who is not a lover of driving and just sees it as a way to get from point A to point B, but I can say from experience as well as the input of my husband, the sucky thing about the North Coast 500 isn't anything to do with the parts that have been rebuilt, or the fact that some sections may or may not have average speed cameras, or the fact that there are definitely average speed cameras on the way up there. It's not the single track roads or the parts where you see abandoned homes and businesses which clearly couldn't make it through the seasonal nature of the trip (because you don't want to risk going and hitting closed roads with snow gates across them, or the conditions when the roads are so wet you can barely see) but the fact that in the UK we aren't taught to drive, we're taught to pass a test.

This is not meant to knock driving instructors because I loved my driving instructor. She had a lot to put up with because I legitimately panicked and cried behind the wheel, more than once, but once I had passed my test people who had been driving for longer told me that now was the time to learn to drive properly, which kind of annoyed me, but I also had no idea what it meant and that kind of continued until I met my husband.

One massive difference between the pair of us is that he learnt to drive when he was seventeen, and did his pass plus and then spent the next decade and a half driving all manner of different vehicles and in different environments which have shaped the way that he drives and how good of a driver he is. He is someone who loves cars and karting etc, but he's at home behind the wheel of a car, and he swaps between our little sports car (don't get too excited, she is a shed) and our big family car with ease whereas I still put the roof down when I revere the sports car (because the rear view mirror is tiny and the roof being off means much more visibility) and scream occasionally when driving the big family car, because it's a bus in my head.

Tangent, I know...

In the UK we're taught to check our rear view mirror when we're reversing or when we join a new road, but the NC500 is a lot of time on a small number of roads, so in theory, you can get away with checking your rear view mirror, less than ten times on the whole trip unless you're looking at the view, though that might be a bit of an exaggeration. The same drive in other countries would not look anything like the same. 

Now, there are signs in a lot of places which say 'Police Notice - Allow overtaking' or words to that effect, but it comes across more as a polite notice than an instruction. You'd think that it would be pretty simple though, because all traffic travels at the same speed, but that's where it gets more complicated. The route of the NC500 is generally single track or single lanes in each direction, so cars can go one speed, vans are ten miles an hour slower, and trucks and tankers are restricted as well, but that's mainly in terms of their size and capacity to accelerate. The signs referenced above are there to try and reduce traffic - telling slower vehicles to get in a lay by or passing place and allow faster vehicles past, not to say allow people to speed (but let's face it, this isn't Formula 1 and these bozos are not the safety car!) but to stop traffic building up by playing a game of follow the leader doing forty miles an hour (at best) when the speed limit is sixty.

This problem is amplified by the number of camper vans on the NC500, which is a great way to see the route, but they are vans, so lower speed limits, difficulties accelerating, yada yada yada, and there are specific companies who rent out camper vans in the area for people to hire to do the NC500. So not only do you have camper vans coming out the wazoo, some of them are being driven worse than noobs on Christmas Day and Boxing Day when it's their first time on Grand Theft Auto...

Worse still you have people like me that never really learnt to overtake, so even if you're in a car with a decent sized engine and not dragging a caravan, half a kitchen or a tent box on the roof, have a clear shot at the road with a straight line and good visibility, you might not know how to safely get around the van or vehicle in front, let alone doing it quickly, or have the inclination to do it, because any length of time driving on the wrong side of the road feels unnatural and I don't recommend doing it whilst screaming.

The stupid thing is, it's only really small adjustments which would make it so much easier and a much more pleasant drive for everyone. If you know you're not in a "fast" vehicle, check your rear view mirror, and if there is at least one faster vehicle behind you, pull to the side, but definitely if there is a small or medium queue developing, Pull. To. The. Side. There are plenty of passing places and lay-by's for a reason and they are very well marked. If you get stuck behind someone in a "slower" vehicle and for whatever reason you won't do an overtake, Pull. To. The. Side. Or at least leave a big enough gap so someone can overtake you, come back in and then go for an overtake on the slow vehicle. There are so many ways to make overtaking easier, but it's not even the important bit. The important bit is remembering that it's not about driving like you're Billy Big Potatoes or doing something out of frustration or because you feel like you have to, but just having a bit of consideration for other drivers etc and getting out of the way occasionally. Even if you forget to check your mirror and someone has to remind you by flashing their headlights or flicking their indicators at you to get you to just move your dawdling ass, don't then flip them the bird like they're the one in the wrong (because they're not, you are). I'm looking at you Mr Peugot, and I don't give a stuff if it was a rental.

Before anyone thinks it was something where we should have just put up or shut up, it was about fourteen miles of single track road with multiple passing places, where we were car number one in the queue behind them and by the time they pulled over and flipped the bird, there were twelve cars in the queue. Naturally that queue of twelve was only going to get longer the longer time it went on for, and this is on one of their less busy roads. One of the other vehicles in that line was a recovery truck. Yes, the NC500 isn't a race track - it's not like going to the Nurberg ring and trying to post the fastest time your vehicle can do or the fastest time you can manage, but there's a difference between a road trip at a reasonable speed where you see the sights of the edges of mainland Scotland and driving around in an ever extending queue which then takes an age to clear when the blocker gets out of the way. On the A9 on the way back we saw a wide vehicle which was either a large farm vehicle or part of the dualling works which are going on to try and reduce some of these problems and there was over a hundred and fifty cars already in a queue (and yes, we did count, like it was football passes during a screening of The Room) behind it with no chance of passing for a significant section of road. That is obviously more complicated because being a wider vehicle the options for being able to pull over and allow other vehicles to pass safely, but in that queue were multiple coaches, buses, lorries, vans and camper vans, so even if the schedule and the road allowed this vehicle to pull over, there would be additional issues, and I don't want to think about the amount of time added to the journeys of those joining the back of that queue. 

One Thing I Hate In AirBnBs Is,

I think this pre-exists being a mum, but at the same time I think it was amplified by the fact that when we were away last week (or last week to when this is posted, because I'm writing it on the last night of the honeymoon having been drafting it in my head for the past half an hour...) in Scotland, in an AirBnB, our son was the most mobile he has ever been and he was expressing his distaste for being contained. He's very much used to having his bottle by himself and he kind of likes it that way, but he doesn't tend to have his bottles in a high chair and I'm trying to convince him to, partly because I think it helps him get into the habit of having a bottle and food, without having to do bottle in one place and food in another, but I digress... 

When my son was in the high chair, he would lob things off the tray table or anything that was close to him and he's got a pretty good arm...

So why does this make me hate AirBnBs? Well, that's overstating it, but I do get frustrated when AirBnBs have these Scandi style sofas with the legs and the bases that are six inches off of the floor, or other furniture where there is a large gap at the bottom, because when little man decides he wants to throw things, I have more places to look to find them and more places to look after the stay, before checking out, to make sure we haven't forgotten anything. 

It's not just AirBnBs, of course, but the last hotel we stayed in had divan beds and I still lost a knitting needle and had to go back and check all around the furniture, but I knew it was far less likely to have been under the furniture and missed rather than furniture which is easy to hoover underneath but also easy to push things under, especially when you're a few months old and you get your butt right under the furniture for fun.

We had an awesome honeymoon and really enjoyed the AirBnB we stayed in except for a few little personal notes like the frying pan was terrible which massacred the omelettes I tried to make for breakfast one morning, and the fact that the wood fired hot tub was frustrating because when I want to go in a hot tub, I want to go in it now, not in two to three hours when I've chopped wood, built a fire and finally got it going and loaded it up enough to keep it going whilst I'm in it. Oh, and midges but that's not the AirBnBs fault... They provided a travel cot so we didn't need to bring our own, brought a high chair so that we didn't have to think about that either, left some small supplies in the kitchen and even put roses in a vase, rose petals on the bed and a bottle of champagne to enjoy because it was our honeymoon, but even without the added extras, the place was just stunning, modern, quirky and yet well thought out, and they had cows.

I just would have loved to not have had my husband (Christ that's still fun to say) waiting in the car with the baby whilst I checked every room from lying on the floor to make sure we didn't leave anything too many hours north of our place to want to go back and get it... 

The Night Before,

This is the last blog I need to write before the wedding to ensure that there is something prepped to be published whilst I'm on my honeymoon and I am honestly surprised and bemused I can even say that because getting to the stage where we booked a honeymoon seemed almost impossible at one stage for one reason or another, but there's going to be precious little time between us leaving the venue and returning home to when we need to leave home again so this needs to be done tonight...

...

Surprise, surprise, it did not get done... And I convinced myself that I would get it done on the night before the wedding, and surprising no one, that didn't happen either and now that we're post wedding, on the honeymoon and looking back no it all, I can't even remember what it was that I was thinking about writing or trying to write. I was the picture of organisation - not! - and then I realised that I still had a million things to do. Post wedding, I still feel like I have a lot to do, but it's less and I'm working on chilling out on the honeymoon, enjoying myself and time with my child and MY HUSBAND!, and trying not to stress about the fact that this was a rather long way to say nothing at all... 

Are You Trying To Be A Mummy Blogger Now?,

Did you miss the part where I said I'm terrible at Instagram? It was on my Instagram... But on stories, so it won't still be there.

I read something the other day which described maternity leave as a peak into a life that you never imagined and never knew you wanted. It's about slow mornings and spending time cherishing your child and the developments they are making and the learning they are doing and the growth that they are going through, and all too soon it's over and your back to meetings and emails and everything else your job entails, and so many of us are over it. So many mum's try to start businesses or side gigs that let them be at home more and stay present with their kid or kids. Am I trying to do that? No, I'm not, for a few reasons.

I'm not going to lie, the idea of sending my child to nursery and going back to work is daunting, partly because it feels so alien. Work was a completely different life ago and a wholly different version of me, but I also appreciate that the structure of it will be good for me, and the structure of nursery will be good for my son, and the socialising with other children will be good for him, too. He can play in different ways with different people and different toys, and it's something I would never be able to provide for him at home, and more than anything I want what is best for him, and being at home permanently with just me and his dad in the evenings, I don't think that is what is best for him.

One of the things I have to factor in as well is that I have a good job. Technically I have a great job. I work for the Civil Service and that affords me decent holidays, decent maternity leave and maternity pay, flexibility and stability in a way that my own part time, self employed, whatever thing never could, and there is a lot of value in that. There's also a lot of value in being able to go in, do my job, then come home without being mentally or physically exhausted like I might be from either turning the garden into a jam making, cider making or cake making exercise (we have A LOT of fruit) and actually be present with my child. Depending on different options, I can look at compressing my hours and having a day a week with him, or working term time only so that we actually have the school holidays to do something. Whilst it's possible to do that with your own side hustle or otherwise I think it's also possible that whilst work is there, you want to do it so that you make as much as you can from it to do other things, but then it bleeds over into family time. Something like that requires being strict with yourself in a way I'm not good at. 

I love writing. I have loved it for a very long time and when NaNoWriMo went down in flames it felt like a physical wound that took a long time to heal. I don't have the capacity anymore to write the way I used to. When I was single and wasn't a mother I could sit for hours and lock in on what I was writing and even if I thought afterwards that it was a waste of time, it didn't matter, because it was my time to waste. Now, it's my time with my husband, it's my time with my child, and I can't sit at the breakfast bar in my old flat and ignore the pain I put myself in hunched over the laptop typing furiously away at whatever I'm working on. I couldn't do it at the moment because typing with these nails is infuriating! Writing blogs, even when I write a few at a time and schedule them, is cathartic to me, but can I keep it up when I've got work to juggle, too? We'll see! Can I make it a side hustle? Probably not, because I won't have the time or the commitment to get through that slog to make it happen, and even then you have to be incredibly lucky. Would I make it my career like I used to want? Even if I was given the opportunity to, I don't think I would, because I wouldn't trust myself not to become very isolated and very distracted when my sole work place was in my home, and grabbing the laptop at 2am is an option, even if it's not a healthy one.

Also, I think a lot of mummy bloggers either post their children online - which we aren't doing - or post them with emojis over their faces - which still feels too risky to me - or write or share things I don't think their child will appreciate being online when they get older. Yes, I talk about my kid on here, but I'm not sharing every cough, spit and bowel movement and I never would. Children's online lives are the subject of a lot of debate and I honestly think that if there was a feasible way for myself and my husband to move with our child to Sweden we would genuinely consider it, partly because it would be an adventure and an experience but also because of the way that the country is rolling back on technology within education and refocusing on physical textbooks and handwriting. I know from personal experience that writing with pen and paper and writing with a laptop are two very different things. Add writing with a typewriter in there and I really understand why one of the attendees to the last Night of Writing Dangerously turned up with a Smith Corona on a sack truck with their novel pages in a box or a folder. (I regret not photographing that particular eccentricity - it was epic!) Personally I find that typing on a typewriter - the proper old manual types, not the later electrics, adds a darkness or moodiness to my writing that I love but have little use for since it's not really my preferred genre. Engaging with hand writing is not only a different skill but it uses and develops a different part of the brain and we are losing that, or the next generations are, because we focus so heavily on computers and how much they can do for us so that we don't have to. When you think about how far social media use goes with that, it's scary and that's without the bullying possibilities, the risks of the wrong sort of people accessing images of your child, cyber stalking and deep fakes using images of children to manufacture evidence of child abuse.

At the time of writing this, we're pre-wedding, pre-honeymoon, though when this is posted we will be away and enjoying ourselves. Where we are going has limited connectivity and I honestly can't wait because it gets us away from the beck and call of the phones or the computers. The only thing calling me will be the hot tub and you bet I will be answering that one! If I was trying to build any sort of consistent following, or mummy blogger brand or anything like that, I don't think even being away like that would help me to switch off and it would likely cause me more stress because I wouldn't be able to access everything, even if I had things prepped to go live without me clicking a button. 

So no, I'm not. It's not the plan, and I'm sorry if it feels like a departure from my usual self.

The Bride Wore Size...,

More years ago than I want to recollect, I read one of Meg Cabot's 'other' series than the Princess Diaries which were, I believe, collectively known as The Heather Wells Mysteries. They had titles of Size 12 is Not Fat, Size 14 is Not Fat, Big Boned/Size Doesn't Matter, Size 12 and Ready To Rock and The Bride Wore Size 12. I remember thinking at the time that they were somewhat strange titles because a UK size 12 is definitely not what I would call "fat", but then I realised that a UK 12 and a US 12 are totally different sizes, and the size 12 Cabot was writing about was a UK 16, and the 14 would be a UK 18. These sizes are typically relegated into the realm of plus sizes, which I guess is sometimes seen as synonymous with being "fat".

One of the things mentioned in the novels is vanity sizing, which is essentially where the store or designer mislabels a size intentionally so if you are a size 12, you wear a size 8 and apparently feel better about your life as a result... I mean, I guess it's better than the shrink sizing which has happened over a number of years or a number of brands where sizes are deliberately made smaller, possibly in an effort to make people feel bad about themselves.

You then have the joys of bridal sizing, which is quite frankly the single biggest farce on this planet as far as I'm concerned. Oh, you're a perfect 10? You'll be in a 14 then. You're a size 8 with chesty blessings or had a boob job? Size 18, and lots of adjustments even in a corset back. I know that a lot of dresses need adjustments because people want their wedding dress to be perfect and that's a struggle with something of the rack, but I don't really understand why there is a problem with making clothes with a recognisable size for people so they don't have to spend forever trying to figure out what size they are, or should be, or might be and getting ever more frustrated because it feels like nothing fits.

One of my dresses for the wedding day came from a charity bridal boutique which I love. The other two were from pre-loved online marketplaces, but were a bit of a nightmare because of sizing. One sent me the measurements of the dress and I thought it would be fine after a bit of exercise (postpostum kidding yourself that you'll "bounce back" doesn't help with wedding dress shopping) and the other I looked up the brand, went through their sizing chart and had to consult a measuring tape, but it wasn't quite the say yes to the dress experience you imagine. The best "experience" I had was definitely in the charity boutique. But that dress was a certain size, and so many brides picked up that dress, and tried it on, then had to put it back because the size on the label is two sizes bigger than the measurements are actually. It makes preparing for what is billed as one of the best days of your life really depressing, tedious and all sorts of negative emotions that no bride is seeking out. Or at least I don't think they are.

Now, I fully intend to keep hold of one of my dresses, because the more I see it or think about it the more I love it, and the idea of letting it go makes me sad and that might be because I'm writing this pre-wedding, but I don't think so. I've always been overly sentimental about clothing. The other two I'm happy to sell on, because they're gorgeous and they deserve to be part of a big day, they're not cheap and it would be nice to get some money back for them, and because environmentally, a dress that is many layers more than it needs to be, specialised material, with at least some plastic in the ribbons or the embellishments or other parts, worn once by one person for not even a whole day is quite frankly a disaster. But how do you sell on a wedding dress? The impression I get is there is no perfect way. 

I'm not someone who has dropped between £900-£1500 on a dress and wants to make about 70% of that back, but I've seen it on marketplace and Vinted. These dresses aren't even like Vera Wang or similar, but relatively run of the mill dresses... If you are selling a dress for around £100 or under, you seem to have more success. Another thing which can help is trying on, but naturally, brides are searching from all over the country, and the likelihood of finding someone super close by with the right size, style and price is not exactly high. You can put your dress into places like the charity boutique I went to and that's awesome because it supports charities - mainly the ones I know of are hospices, which is cool - but it does mean that the bride who is getting rid of the dress just gets a nice feeling at having offered some support as opposed to a bit of the money back from the amount they spent, so that's not going to work for everyone... I would love if wedding fayres hosted a pre loved dress sale for wedding dresses, bridesmaids dresses etc! But I also appreciate there would be a lot of admin in that and it would mean it was competing with the bridal stores showing there which I don't think would go down well. 

I believe, though I don't have the details for them, that there is a business in the UK, perhaps more than one, who have dresses in their store, sell them on to new brides and then the person who previously had it gets a cut from what the store sells it for, which is pretty cool, but something that strikes me is that there are thousands of pre-loved dresses which people are trying to part with and thousands more made every year, so the market is massively over saturated, so getting rid of your old dress can take months, or years, and eventually people decide they want the space back and dump a dress into the nearest charity shop where it may not even sell...

So what's the point I'm trying to make? Or am I just going on with myself because my brain has turned to mush from all the wedding planning and baby raising. Probably option two. But also, in an ideal world wouldn't it be cool to keep reusing wedding dresses and sort the sizing out on them so that it was far more simple for them to be found and loved the way that they should be? 

Am I Doing This Right?,

I have to admit, parenthood feels a lot like asking yourself this question a million times a day and being worried that the answer is no, though from what one of the health visitors or midwives said in the early days, the only truly bad parents are the type who either don't ask themselves the question or don't really care what the answer is. Naturally though it's something I worry about, because I worry about everything.

Particularly I'm worried about it at the moment in concern to weaning, because guidance about it is so all over the map, and some people will say you HAVE to start with purees and some will say you HAVE to start with baby led weaning (which doesn't mean no purees) and some people will tell you to just do what works for you and for the baby. Okay, fine, so he's just going to eat chips wherever we are then? Nooooo. 

We started purees early because my little vomit comet was forever losing his stomach contents and - like an idiot - I thought that purees would help him to maintain his weight even if he was puking milk everywhere, but it turns out that purees aren't really nutrient or calorie dense foods, so yes they would stay in his tummy better, but no, they weren't going to help him with his weight at all. That being said, he has moved up the growth charts since the point where we were told he was tiny and to look at him, it's obvious he's a healthy and growing kid. It's hard not to get concerned about the numbers when you go from growth scans where they are right on average, then they seem to drop off a lot, and then they're on or near the 9th centile line and then fall off of that. Now I understand that centiles are like if you lined up a hundred kids born on the same day at the same point and put them in order of weight or length or head size, but I would have thought that "normal" would be something like forty five to fifty five. I'm not sure why I chose that number, or those numbers, but I thought that, and it turns out that the anomalous, or extreme, numbers on that scale are actually 0-2 and 98-100 according to the allergy clinic. If someone had told me that six months ago it would have saved me a whole lot of stress.

Another thing that gets challenging with weaning though is how much do you give them? They're still little, they're still drinking milk and they have no concept of what a feeling of a full stomach is really, or that over eating leads to vomiting, so if you're completely led by your child that is sure to go wrong, isn't it? Well, yes and no. If they're turning their head away or refusing to open their mouth, they might not like something or they might be full, or they might just be having an off day, but you're the parent, so if you know that they've eaten double in one sitting what they normally do, you have to be the responsible bar tender and cut them off. 

Some of it is about persistence as well. Most advice says try giving your child something ten times before accepting that they don't like it. Personally I find that really hard, because chickpeas make little man cry, but also because if he's not interested in food it's getting thrown and if it's not something the dog will willingly eat (and I can then clean the floor of dog spit instead) it's trying to get it cleaned up myself, and that's either from the floor, from smeared all over the high chair or changing whatever clothes he's wearing because it's gone all over him... 

As if all of that is not enough, there is a window of time to move from just thin purees which are mainly fruit and vegetables where you're trying things out to textures. Things like yoghurt (or dairy free alternatives if, like us, yoghurt is off the menu), couscous, pasta, toast, soft biscuits, melty sticks, wafers, strips of food etc. Between eight and twelve months is apparently the absolute must to ensure that babies don't end up stuck on purees with a lot more difficulty moving on. Obviously this is caveated in terms of development, but that's the best window in terms of the average... And honestly, it's hard. 

The first time little legs tried couscous it was because I was having couscous, and I thought, well, the pouch he's eating today is a savoury one anyway so I can just pinch some couscous from my lunch, mix in some of his pouch so it has more flavour and isn't dry and we'll see where we get. There was coughing, there was wretching, there was a whole lot of saliva, but there were also smiles and grabbing for the spoon, so it's not that it was terrible, it was just new. We gave his melty sticks and wafers before he got his teeth through because I had read that they can help with teething, but things like toast and biscuits waited for the teeth to arrive to make sure he had the ability to cut through them and not end up with huge chunks in his throat. 

Even with a couple of teeth through and a few months of practice with purees under our belt, weaning is still a scary experience. It's fun to see how he reacts to new food and what he likes and doesn't like - spoiler alert, if it's not chickpeas, he likes it, at least so far - but given he already has an allergy to milk, it's nerve racking to worry he'll have another allergy and that could be more serious, and that's on top of worries like you have with any child that they could swallow something or choke on something and it becomes a medical emergency really quickly. I can give him a bottle and be bobbing around the room whilst he finishes it, but with solids, I have to be looking at him and making sure I know how he's getting on. I'm not complaining about that, because it's important to make sure he's safe and I know that, but it means another task I have to be switched on for and something else I need to fit into the day with everything else. And how many times do you do it? Well, you should be getting towards three meals a day. I have no clear concept of how to do that. Parenting classes focused on not shaking the baby, not how to get through weaning... 

That being said, I realise this slightly moan-y blog is coming from a privileged place.  Yes, he has an allergy, but it's one thing (granted which is in a lot of things and I've turned into a habitual packet reader) not multiple things which make it hard to use pre-made purees and dinners and mean you're cooking everything yourself, and it's not life threatening, because the after effects are unpleasant but not anaphylaxis. In terms of development, the little guy is doing well, so he's sitting up, trying to crawl, and doing all of the muscular things he needs to do for eating, and he's curious about everything. His interest in food is a really good thing (until I'm eating something with cheese in and need to defend it). The prognosis for his allergy is that it's somewhere between highly possible and highly likely he will grow out of it, and it's not an uncommon thing. 10% of baby's now have a milk allergy of some sort and I think it was something like 80% of those children grow out of the allergy. 

There is work to be done on it, because part of growing out of the allergy comes from working through something called the milk ladder, which manages exposure and builds tolerance gradually, but that is doable, and I do know that we're lucky in a lot of ways, even if I did just put my unsocked foot into a puddle of refluxed milk and that feeling is putrid.

It Doesn't Have To Be Perfect,

Let me start this off with saying I'm not a girl who has imagined my wedding from being a small child. I've seen wedding dresses I've loved and trends I have hated, but I've never been the girl who has known what colours she would choose, what flowers she wanted, the dress, the shoes, the food and everything. I had an idea of the dress and I bought something pretty close to it, but then it didn't fit.

As we've been going along in this planning process though there have been thingsw I've loved and things I've wanted and things where I've thought, screw it, it'll do. (I know, I know, that's really not the attitude.) 

Some of the things which I chose to make - partly because I left it too late to order them - have been somewhat the bane of my life these last couple of weeks and that has been partly because I want them to be perfect, and accepting that they don't have to be and most likely won't be is really hard. But I'm not a painter. I'm not an artist in any way really and I think reminding myself that some of the things I'm making are going to look a bit rustic and wonky is fine, partly because they are homemade, handmade, made with a love of love and effort even if not too much skill and actually that's the thing that makes them lovely.

Yes, I could have paid a lot of money for someone else to do things for me - and this is no disrespect to those who do - but these are things I chose to give a go, spend my time and energy on and that means even though they are imperfect, they are pretty special, too. It might just be something I'm telling myself to feel better, but I guess that's what I have to do at the moment, because even if I wanted to throw the whole idea out of the window or choose to go back and find someone to make them "properly" there's not the time or the budget to do it now, so it's make do or do without...

Why Custom Rings Are A Total Racket,

Or at least I think so...

This isn't meant as any shade towards anyone with a custom ring, by the way.

There are some times when they make sense. A former partner of mine bought, or was gifted, I can't really remember the story, a large, partially finished amethyst when he was visiting India, and the plan was always to get it finished and set into a ring as an engagement ring, and that would have made a lot of sense to me. I also get when people get stones from heirloom rings either reshaped or refinished or just reset into something more modern or more to the taste of the intended wearer. What I don't quite get is saying, I couldn't find anything I like, so I got something custom... Oh kay... 

When my partner and I were looking at rings (he wasn't my fiancé at the point  because he hadn't asked and I hadn't said yes, because he wanted to do it properly and have the ring ready) there was so much choice it was a bit overwhelming, and even though you're thinking about the question of spending the rest of your lives together - or at least you hope that's the intention! - I personally think the question of budgets is an awkward one, but I'm not a big fan of talking about money generally.

I know some people can be really specific about engagement rings (whether their own or someone else's) and it has to be a diamond (traditionally it's the protect the woman's virginity (not sure that's such a big deal these days) and it should be x proportion of a wage (I think the tradition was something like a week or a months pay cheque or something) and a ring from Pandora is definitely not an engagement ring (genuinely read a story about that on Facebook and the comments made me die a little on the inside). There's other things like pre-owned rings are bad luck but heirloom rings are good... What's the difference? Well, a pre-owned one is one someone bought and used for a proposal where the answer was no, and an heirloom is one from a marriage. Clearly, it was all down to the ring...

I've had a costume ring I was in love with for years and I was specifically looking for something in the same style, but I would have loved whatever ring he picked, or we picked, I think, though maybe there are a couple of caveats to that. I'm not the biggest fan of pear or oval or marquise shaped stones not for any other reason than I'm just not, and I wasn't particularly enamoured with the idea of a solitaire ring or something pave (I can't find the accent on an Apple keyboard...) but there were still millions to choose from be it diamonds or other stones, different bands, different cuts or whatever. If literally nothing from jewellers would have done I know a few different vintage stores that carry gorgeous rings and I might have been able to find something I loved in the right size or something near enough I could have had it resized, but as it turned out, I found the perfect ring and said something like that one... and my partner said, okay, that one...

Now the only problem with "that one" was a wedding band wasn't going to fit under it, and it wasn't going to sit nicely next to it, so I was trying to look for something that would go around it. Why does this feel like we're going on a bear hunt?

Now, I thought it was highly logical to just go back to the same jewellers because surely if something is sold as an engagement ring they would stock a wedding ring to go with it, even if it's not sold in a wedding or bridal set? Well, apparently not. They suggested a ring with a bump in it, but the bump wasn't the right size or shape or angle or whatever to sit around my ring. They suggested a flat ring, but it didn't sit under my ring, or under the detail (it also wasn't anything like anything I wanted) and they suggested what I can only describe as either an incomplete or horse shoe ring. It didn't suit my engagement ring at all, and I'm kind of glad because again, it was nothing close to anything I wanted or liked, so the jeweller suggested their design service for a custom ring. We paid a fee, sent my ring off to be cast so that the new ring would fit with it perfectly and gave them a brief of what we wanted. All it had to be was a plain wedding band that looked like a wedding band, the same thickness as the band on my engagement ring, no diamonds, no inclusions, no nothing. It was something simple and understated and when they came back with a price that was well over a thousand pounds (from memory it was actually closer to fifteen hundred...) my jaw and my butt were in a race to the floor because honestly, I couldn't believe it. We went to collect my engagement ring from the store and I was feeling sad because I thought I wouldn't find something and I should have factored that in during the engagement ring search, but on the way I found something different, which still wasn't right, but it made them think hey, what about a wishbone shape? And it was perfect. And it was more elaborate. And it was less than half of what we were quoted for the custom ring. For the same shape. I was honestly livid.

My wedding ring is sat in a box with my future husband's future ring, and I can't wait to wear it, not just because it will mean we're married, and that the wedding is over, but also because I genuinely love it, and I think it looks stunning next to my engagement ring. I think back about the money we nearly spent on a ring to fit my engagement ring and it makes me feel sick. I don't know if it's just that the jewellers were pushing that service, or if they really hadn't thought of that ring or in a moment of temporary insanity had forgotten it existed, or if they thought we had the sort of money to drop that kind of cash on my wedding ring, but it upset me for a long while and for a few different reasons. In all of the wedding planning process, that was one of the genuinely really difficult bits, not because I'm being a bit soft, but because it genuinely felt so complicated, so expensive and so bloody stupid.

But we muddled through it and we found our way in the end, and I'm glad that we did. It took us a while to find the right wedding ring, but then it took us a long while to find each other, so maybe it fits. And at the risk of sounding very twee, I couldn't imagine any other ring being right just like I couldn't imagine any other person being right. You may now vomit into the nearest available waste paper basket. (Kidding).

Why I'm No Longer In Love With Vinted,

Right, this is not me saying I don't like Vinted or I'm going to stop using it or anything like that, but there are a few things I am getting sick of, and it's not just things which are problems with sellers or buyers or general users, though some of the things are.

First off, I recently bought a veil because the one I was going to use for my wedding got damaged, so I bought a new to me one on Vinted. One of the biggest reasons for doing that is that veils, or at least those in the price bracket I was happy to look at, tend to be made of unnatural materials and they're used once and then either packed away as an heirloom you don't know that someone is going to want or they're donated to charity shops (good choice!) or they're a little bit damaged and they're thrown in the bin. I do understand that most people are not going to choose to buy a damaged veil or people won't fix it before selling it if it was cheap to start with and I also realise that there might seem to be a bit of hypocrisy in criticising throwing away a broken veil since I was shopping to replace on BUT I was going to replace the comb on my original until it seemed like that would cost more than getting a new one and I couldn't find one I actually liked. Tangent over, I bought a cathedral length veil because I was having a bit of a fairy whimsical day. It arrived, I tried it on with my dress and decided it looked daft. Say what you will about bridal stores being expensive but at least you can try things on in store without committing to buying them before realising it looks ridiculous. To me, it seems pointless to take a load of new pictures of the thing when the condition is completely unchanged, and Vinted themselves say that if you receive something and change your mind on it, resell it. But you can't use the same pictures. Or pictures which are too similar, because it flags it. Doesn't flag a shocking amount of baby formula which you're not allowed to resell, but that is by the by. I get that not taking your own pictures is a risk because the condition CAN have changed, but there are also times it hasn't, and it means for things like a dress, which you try on, don't damage but isn't your size, you can't take your own photo of it being worn BECAUSE IT DOESN'T FIT!

Another thing which gets my goat is something I've seen a lot of people upset about. Items which arrive in a condition which is not what you were expecting have to either be resold or returned at the cost of the buyer. Erm, no? The seller has the choice to return it at their expense, but I would be curious to see the data on how many do actually cover the postage, because I doubt it's many. It's not even like this is covered by Vinted and the "buyer protection" even though that is exactly what such a charge should be for, surely? I'm sure some sellers do return things at their cost, when they genuinely didn't realise there was a stain or a hole or a part missing or whatever, but if you've taken photos to show something in "it's best light" and that really means you've edited out the bobbling, or hidden the fake tan on the collar or just omitted something entirely, you're not going to cop for the postage to return, are you? I realise that there will be debate over the condition of something - I've had a situation before where someone complained about the condition of an item where it was visible in the photos and they were trying to demand a return or they would leave negative feedback (it wasn't on Vinted, mind) - or what some people call "good" others would call "fair" or "satisfactory" or whatever, and at that stage Vinted really need to step in as the arbiter and take the evidence of the advert and any photos submitted etc and make a decision. Yes, there will always be someone feeling wronged, but it's surely fairer? I'm sure that's what eBay used to do or possibly still do?

The thing that irritates me the most though is, and I realise I could be alone in this one, but I doubt it, I hate when you're looking for something specific, and it's not the sort of thing you'll need to buy repeatedly, and then you find a deal you're happy with, you buy it, and then your feed is FULL of that item. I know it's how the algorithms work and such, but there is nothing more annoying than a parade of 'here's what you could have had' where you might see something better, cheaper, closer (for bigger items) but you've bought something now and it should be done with. It's not what Vinted was supposed to be made for because it just feeds consumerism and Vinted was supposed to be about reducing what goes into landfill and reusing thing which still have life. They're already crap about allowing you to sell recycled items which you've had made from something else so they could at least stick to the bits that they committed to do. If it's things like baby clothes, sure, show me other things in the same size, or in a month or so, the next size, but don't show me newborn stuff when I'm searching 3-6 months because I DON'T NEED IT! Don't show me bottle warmers when I just bought one because I HAVE ONE and YOU KNOW I DO!

There are other bits, like I can't stand AI photos, and allowing people to list Shein brands as anything but Shein, the stupid sizing changes (why do we have to have a number and a letter when the two very often don't match up!) for an inability to use brands actually sizing in the listing? Snags have a specific letter sizing for a reason and I'm sure that Vinted could reference their sizing chart or others like Ted Baker to make it easier for everyone! I know Snag have now made their own preloved market place and I can understand why when so many others have so many problems! I'm sure there are other things to, but without a viable alternative (and I don't love eBay either and I think Little Loop is elitist - sorry) people will continue to use it and if people continue to use it as is, most businesses will never see a reason to change. *sigh*

Can We Burn Stuff Yet?,

This is a genuine question that I have, not because I don't think that the issues around fires are important but because I think that they are.

This isn't just a thing where I'm saying, oh, I'm a leader, ahem, sorry volunteer in Scouting and I want to have a camp fire with my young people, but because I use fires as a way to get rid of garden waste in my own garden and not being able to do it at the moment in a controlled and safe manner with the appropriate extinguishing methods around is actually causing another issue meaning that when there hasn't been rain (and thankfully there has been the last couple of days) piles of garden waste are sitting around waiting to be disposed of and there's nothing I can do to get rid of them.

Now, I know some people will say things like get a skip or do a tip run, but we haven't got a trailer at the moment and even when we have the borrow of one there are limits on what sort of trailer and you can only take it to the tip once a month and it's got to be booked way in advance, but there are also limits on what can be taken. The house we bought is right near the river and gets a bit of Himalayan Balsam growing, which you can't take to the tip because it's invasive, so all we can really do is dry it, then burn it to try and get rid of it.

Now, I know that uncontrolled fires have been devastating and I'm not saying all of this should take priority over the protection of homes and firefighters and all of the other reasons that bans on disposable BBQs and such have been brought into place, but what I'm asking is, how do we know when things 'return to normal'? I'm guessing the UK warning system won't be used to state everything is fine and the danger has passed, and I don't think it should, but are we waiting for people to use common sense (God, I hope not!) or is there an announcement, a bulletin or something which will happen? Is it national? Is it regional? Are we on stop until Hallowe'en, or bonfire night? It's a genuine question I don't know the answer to...

And really, should disposable BBQs ever not be under a national ban? Well... Yes, and no. Personally I don't love them and I never have. They're sometimes used by Duke of Edinburgh groups and I find it really concerning, because whilst camping kit is expensive I think learning with inappropriate gear is worrying in general. People don't think about where they are setting them up, don't take them out of the cardboard and then the cardboard can act like a taper to the ground underneath and suddenly it's a whole mess that wasn't intended and likely wasn't anticipated by the person using them because they are by no means idiot proof. Small camping gas stoves are safer because of the difference in packaging and because generally they need to be cooler for less time before they can go back in a case and be safely carried away. They're also a bit less likely to just be dumped where they are used and they don't require the carrying of matches or lighters (generally). They're not stupidly expensive, either.

But, disposable BBQs do have their place. Now, I realise that above I'm making it seem like that's completely awful, but I was once involved in a festival at my university which was called Feastival and one of the main aims was for everyone to be able to eat together and when you have a university with a pretty damn good diversity record that can get a bit complicated. We needed Kosher cooking implements and that included the BBQ on which the food would be cooked as well as the food itself being kosher. Had one of the Jewish students who kept kosher been really into camping we likely would have had access to the right thing, but they didn't so the best option was a Kosher disposable BBQ which meant that no one had the extra errand of getting something kashered before the event or after it in case it had been contaminated by something, even if that was just for the peace of mind of all involved. We had a plan of how it would be used and monitored - within a short distance of the other BBQs and on an elevated surface away from flammable materials - with a bucket of water close by in case we needed to put it out quickly, and a plan for disposal afterwards - leave it for several hours until cool and then put it into the university bins - and we weren't in the middle of grassland or woodland. We were in the "centre" of London - not the city of London or anything - but we still weren't taking any chances!

And on that note, I'm going to watch the rain on my windows... 

Things That Changed When I Went To Mummy and Me Dancing,

The class isn't actually called Mummy and Me dancing, but that's what it gets referred to as in our house and it works.

At risk of going on a tangent, I'm going to go against the commandments of Tim Minchin about defining yourself by things you love and not just things you hate.

When my son was first born I didn't know what to do with myself or with him, but I knew that everything I had seen of baby sensory classes meant I wasn't really up for that, and you're not able to take tiny babies to swimming. Since I had a C section, I wouldn't have been able to go until that point anyway, and I wasn't confident of taking him on my own, or my own recovery for a long time, so we've still not gone.

I can't remember how I found the class I now go to, but I am honestly glad that I did.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm really uncoordinated and any sort of dance routine highlights that even more. I can fall over trying to walk in a straight line, so trying to dance definitely makes me worry I might fall on my butt, or make an idiot out of myself, but it has been some of the best fun I have had for a while, and the extra weight of having baby during the routines makes it great exercise, too. 

I started off wanting to lose a bit of weight to fit into a wedding dress, which hasn't really happened, but I have been able to get stronger, be better able to carry my son partly due to some great advice on carriers, and also made some other mum friends whose babies are around the same age as my son.

I have really enjoyed listening to some different music, learning dance routines or trying to as best as I can manage, and only sitting out the dances which are filmed for social media, because we're not posting little man online. I'm less worried about looking silly or falling over during line dances and I'm starting to get to grips with some of the routines. I'm still nowhere near a fitness enthusiast, and I can't do press ups or a proper plank, but I can follow the steps and I know what a grape vine is, at least in the context of that dance class! 

That being said, I'm still lost when we do something new, and I still have no idea what a step ball change is or whether that is how you write it down. I know I could Google it, but the truth is I'm not sure I mind not knowing. 

One thing I never imagined though was it being tough when other mum's go back to work. It's partly because it reminds me that it won't be long before I go back, too, but also because you spend weeks or months hearing about the struggles and milestones of other babies, and then oh so very quickly we get to the stage where their mum is going back to work and those little ones are going to nursery, a childminder or another relative to be looked after, and if these kids come across each other again it'll likely be when they are 16 and in college, and any bond that they had as babies will have been long forgotten. They play together, they learn together, they learn from each other, but then they are soon separated and it's such a shame. I know the same will happen when they go to nursery, but at least the majority of the time they will stay together until they are ready to go to Reception and go off to their different primary schools.

Since going to a class with other babies I've realised there is a value in baby sensory and other bits that aren't really up my street, but at the right time or in the right place, they can be pretty good. 

What Can You Have Left To Do?,

Baring in mind that we booked the wedding back in January, a few people have been asking me if everything is ready and everything is done and I would love to be the sort of super organised person that could say, yes, all that's left to do is pack, but sadly that is not the case.

First off, my future husband still needs a new shirt and a new pair of shoes to match his suit. I'm trying not to sweat the small stuff, but this doesn't really feel too small! 

I'm still working on getting a few toys sorted for the playpen for little man, partly so he has somewhere to chill out and somewhere to stop himself from getting bored.

As if that was not enough I'm still working on a couple of little art projects for the wedding day and trying to find the time to do them is a little testing, but hopefully there is just enough time to get those done, and then it will be packing everything into the cars and getting everything from our house to the venue which feels like it might be a bit of a trauma.

It doesn't help that I keep feeling like I have hit a wall of exhaustion and still have a little boy to look after, and the little scamp is getting far more adventurous and mobile.

So as we head into the weekend and the number of weeks until the wedding ticks down by another one, I'm going to keep trying to find the time to get everything sorted and finished whilst also juggling little man and keeping him smiling!

So What Was It This Time,

For once, the reason I didn't get this posted on my own sort of schedule wasn't because of my son. Don't get me wrong, he's still a little tyke, skipping naps or having ten minutes and being "well rested" or not liking being put down for 30 seconds so I can pee or make food (I know neither of those two things are a 30 second job but his limit is 30 seconds before you know he's upset about not being the focus of attention, but he's a baby and that's what happens...)

Honestly the reason I've not posted is because I couldn't figure out what to write and it's not because my mind has gone blank, or because I've run out of things to say about the wedding or anything like that, but because I have always been mindful about what I do post and I try not to post any sort of drama which will act like a milk frother and just whip everything up worse and make my life even more hectic. Mainly because I don't have the time or the energy for the fall out. 

Recently, I've been upset by a few things that certain people have done and honestly it has taken far too much of my already limited time and vastly limited energy to either try and find a way to not care about it, or to deal with it. And let's be real, there are some situations which you can't deal with. There is no solution to them because the other people involved will never see things from your side. I'd love to say that that is fine, but honestly, it's frustrating and even more so when people complain about being in the middle, which is right where they have sat themselves. I realise this probably seems like vague shitposting and if I was reading it I would be wanting someone to do a Boston and throw all of the tea in the water, but I'm not going to do that, because it's a waste of time and because the idea of adding fuel to the fire when it's so close to my wedding is not actually an attractive prospect.

Inevitably, I don't know if people are intentionally starting drama right near the wedding to wind me up, to try and wind my future husband up, or just because they're too oblivious to realise it's a real dick move to put extra stress onto people that close to their wedding, but I'm honestly so done with it, and I've already been on a bit of a blocking binge for people who are just sapping my energy at the moment and I won't apologise for it. 

With the wedding getting closer one of the things on my list was to try and queue up a few blogs to give me time to finish the bits and pieces I need to and also for the time that our honeymoon should/may be, but honestly, I may need to sacrifice that one in order to stick to getting everything for the wedding done and everything for daily life done, too. Sorry and all that, but we'll just have to see what happens. 

That Which We Call A Hen Do...,

 Right, I've seen these called Hen Dos for years and I've seen American's call them bachelorette parties for years, too, but I saw it referred to as Stags and Does the other day and I don't know where that's from but it just doesn't sit right with me, to be quite honest. I don't know what it is, but I heard it and my only thought was, ew, no thanks. 

My image of a hen party has always been the 'classic' thing of Blackpool, getting drunk, wearing plaid skirts with plastic bottoms glued on (because I saw them in Blackpool once) and again it was one of those things that was like, yeah... no thanks, it's not for me. My future husband and I did consider just renting an Airbnb somewhere, having a few drinks with close friends and a bit of a games night but when we wrote out a list of people we would like to invite it started to get a little bit crazy and then get away from the idea of it being just a holiday of friends and more into typical stag or hen parties which are banned from some big houses because of the damage that previous drunken parties have done. The bigger it got, the more it felt like a mini wedding party before the wedding or we worried that there would be people we were inviting out of obligation rather than a desire for them to be there and so that went out of the window. I had thought before a spa day with just my mum or something might be nice, but even that didn't feel quite right, so it was back to the drawing board again. 

In the end I thought I would do the same thing as we have done for the wedding and take an approach of it's my party and I'm going to do what I want. 

One thing I did realise with it was that my ability to organise is shocking, and my ability to understand dates has got worse since having my son because I don't need to know what day or date it is most of the time, so there were a few people that I realised last minute that had I sat down and thought about it properly, I would have invited, but inviting people on the day of felt like an afterthought, which it wasn't but I think I've found the reason that the hen do is organised by your maid of honour or bridesmaids and it's because splitting focus between the wedding and the hen means you kind of do everything wrong.

I had desperately wanted to go to a certain Italian restaurant in Manchester, but when I came to book it, getting a table before 9pm wasn't possible, and we were meeting up earlier than that so I wasn't really up for going out for drinks and then going there because it was a group of neurodivergent friends and I, and we can get loud without realising it when we're sober, and I didn't want to interrupt other people's dinners, especially not there and especially not when the place was having a busy night, so instead I chose an Indian place which I love and got to introduce my super foodie friend to it. That never happens! There's also something very apt about it being a hen night and chaat bombs, because giving people warnings that they will go everywhere if you bite them. How is it that EVERY TIME someone does not heed the warning? So the night started with yoghurt everywhere and went from there. 

It wasn't a traditional thing in any way shape or form, because it was me and my male friends, I hated the white dress I had been planning on wearing so grabbed something black instead (and my green Doc Martens, so got to feel so like myself that it was incredible), and instead of doing the somewhat popular activity, food, drowning your liver in your tipple of choice we started with drinking at dinner and it all escalated from there. The lads hadn't known each other at the start of the night, but one of the great things is that they will now know each other at the wedding and that makes me feel a lot calmer, because people coming on their own who don't know anyone else there makes me worry. I don't want anyone to feel left out during the wedding, so it's good that they've got someone they vaguely know and once got drunk with.

It's also not lost on me that the people who were able to make it are those who don't have children, and those who couldn't make it have, because I know that had it been someone else's night and my son was ill, or he'd been a live wire for the day and I was exhausted, I wouldn't have made it either, and even though I do bring him up in conversation quite a bit, it was nice that the hen do wasn't completely about being his mum.

The night ended with my very soon to be husband picking up three of us and driving us home whilst I was insufferably drunk, and putting up with me as he does so well, and only partly because I've promised to do the same for him after his stag do.

I don't know whether it's that the hen do has happened or by sheer proximity, but everything for the wedding is feeling a lot more real now and whilst I love that, it is making me very nervous about things arriving on time or getting everything packed and to the venue, getting last things like hair cuts and nails done (why am I suddenly a person who cares about getting my nails done!) and I have genuinely considered starting to pack suitcases of bits we need but I keep telling myself that that is a bit neurotic, but I probably won't be able to hold off that long because it's getting very close now. 

I'm sure that a few people who have read this blog for a while will be glad when the wedding stuff goes off, but when it's so close and it's such a big thing in your life, it's obviously something you're going to talk about a lot of the time, and even when I don't, people ask.

I May Have Mentioned This Before,

 But I'm tired and I'm trying so let's just go with it.

One of the "fun" things about getting married is that it changes the way that you register the birth or births of any future children. When our son was born it was assumed that I was his mother, but because my partner and I weren't married at the time, until we went and formally registered his birth and put my partner's name on the birth certificate, he didn't have any legal parental responsibility for him. How that would have worked had something gone wrong I don't really know, but thankfully one of the things that happens following a marriage is that a child is assumed to belong to both the birthing parent and their spouse. (As far as I am aware it is the same for non-binary or same sex couples.)

I'm just going to note that I'm saying I was assumed to be his mother because there are a few legal sticky bits if there's been surrogacy involved or any mix ups at fertility clinics, though I believe they are thankfully very few and far between!

Naturally, that only impacts any future children we have as opposed to the little guy we have now, so what happens with him? Well, we have to re-register his birth as a child of our marriage. Before you say, well he's not, I know. Before you say it's stupid, I know, it is. But it is a legal requirement and what gets even more ridiculous is that it's not even because he's under a certain age. No matter - as I understand it - the age of the child (even if they're an adult) their birth has to be re-registered. And yes, legally you have to do it, even though there is no specific timeline on which you have to do it. (Or a penalty for not doing, as far as I understand.)

And as with a lot of things, I had a bit of an emotional reaction to this, because it feels a bit like re-writing history as though I'm embarrassed that my partner and I weren't married at the time that we had my son and as though that means something about my son. I know in the past it has and there have been some names which people use to describe children born outside of a marriage, and the reason is - at least in part - the inheritance law which was why this appointment existed, but the really stupid thing is, that has been changed! But the marriage law or the registration part wasn't and I don't understand why. To me, it seems like it's just giving the registry office something more to do, as though they're not actually busy (which they are) and stopping these appointments, which are done for free, would free up time to do other things like marriage notice appointments (which are paid for) or marriages (which are paid for) or register births. When we registered little man's birth we registered him in the local authority he was born in (which you have to) and we were able to do that when he was 3 days old, but in the one we live in, you couldn't get an appointment for a few weeks, and there are certain things you need the birth certificate to do, like open a bank account or get a passport, so it seems crazy to have to offer needless appointments which take time away from very important ones!

Even if you're not a big believer in marriage or it's not something you are particularly fussed about, there are things which make it sensible, like thinking about inheritance if something happened to one of you, or for ensuring that if something bad happens, you are the legal next of kin. I realise that all seems to be for planning "if something bad happens" but in those situations, marriage becomes important and not being married is just another stress on top of an already stressful situation. For some, it's the protection of if you split, assets are divided and there is the ability to have the situation looked at from the outside, because if there are kids involved, one of you likely had to pause your career in order to look after them, even if it was for a short time, and financial contributions wouldn't look 50/50, but that's not all there is to family life. 

I think this went in a different direction than I was originally intending, but that happens when you write a blog in two halves. 

Insomnia Hits Different Now,

Before I got pregnant - God, that seems like such a long time ago now - I used to get really aggravated when people would tell me that I didn't know what tired was because I wasn't and never had been a parent. It honestly bugged the hell out of me. Now that I am a parent, it still bugs the hell out of me. 

Here's the thing. I've had sleep issues for a long time and when I was writing over one of the summers after I was in college, I got into this fabulous routine where I was going to sleep around 2am and getting up around 10am and I was wildly more functional as a person than I have been in a long time. All of a sudden I was getting enough sleep and getting through sleep cycles so I actually felt rested and it was just glorious, but it's a sleep pattern that doesn't fit in with work or with a lot of things and it certainly doesn't fit in with my son, partly because he is still working on the idea of a sleep routine...

Insomnia hits differently now because I used to give myself the permission to sleep more when I could, and I don't really get to do that as much anymore because my son doesn't always love naps and sometimes by the time he gets down for a nap I'm too awake to also have a nap, but also because the point where it becomes a problem and the point where I can do something about it have swapped now. If I realise I'm hitting the point of exhaustion where I need a solid sleep, I need to take some meds to help me sleep before about 10pm, but most of the time I don't figure out that I'm actually struggling until about 1am and then it's too late to be able to do anything, because the type of meds that help me sleep can leave me slightlu incapacitated which isn't an option when I'm the only adult who will be in the house for a few hours with my son and it's also a time when he is likely to be awake and need attention.

People told me that you find a new reserve of energy and you're able to get through the day and unless I'm missing something or that doesn't kick in until you go back to work, it's not happened unfortunately, and I'm worried that it won't, but I guess I will have to wait to find out... 

My Latest Obsession,

Well, one of.

We have a "decent sized" garden, and in that "decent sized" garden, we have a number of fruit trees, and when we moved in last year the fruit hadn't been picked or collected from the ground and so there was a massive slippery carpet of rotting apples which made it very difficult for the mobility challenged being developing her own centre of gravity due to how big she was (me...) to get around the garden or to the bottom of it, which is sad because the river is at the bottom and I like the river and I missed it.

In order to address the issue of the apples, which I worried would attract floods of rats (they didn't) I wanted a composter because our lovely council are one of these that have decided you need to pay extra for a garden waste collection and it wound me up so I said no (in hindsight, massively stupid decision.) So I bought a composter and my dad dug up a patch of grass so it could go onto the bare earth, and then a rat (only one, not the armies of them I had imagined) got into it, so we dug down, pressed it into the ground a bit and then the rat got in again, and I got annoyed... but we collected a reasonably large number of apples more than once - like a couple of washing baskets full of apples on at least three occasions - and tossed them in before realising that whole apples in a composter don't rot down amazingly well, so it's like they're sitting there and waiting for the rats, so we got an apple scratter an put it on the end of my partners SDS drill. For the uninitiated, we got a drill bit with a propeller like blade on it and put it onto my future husband's REALLY BIG drill, and we minced those rotting apples like they were going to become the worst cider ever invented. And then we chucked them back into the composter with a bunch of shredded paper and cardboard and other things which get classed as "brown" no matter what colour they are. And then it was winter so nothing much composts but apple season was over and we couldn't get everything off the floor but it gave the birds something to eat, and the rodents something to eat which gave the birds something to do... And it gave the cats something else to do other than trying to get the birds. 

As the windfall apples started to come down this year (and the pear and the blackberries and the elderberries and before this gets too romantic sounding, the nettles, the thistles and all of the other weeds...) I looked at that composter and thought, well, that's crap. Let's try something else.

That bin collection I never wanted to pay for, well, we have two of the bins going spare, so why not start a composter in one of those. Because my partner said no. But then I found a great video about how you can produce compost in a wheelie bin in 30 days so I told him I was doing it and it was fine because if or when we decided to use the bin, it wouldn't take too long to clear it out. Except it's not bloody working. 

I was aiming to get it going to a good, hot composter and then I could chuck all of my seeded weeds in there and cook them and it would have been great, wouldn't it, except I did basically everything right like leaving space for ventilation - I even propped the lid open for a few hours a day to get oxygen into it, I tore up cardboard and was careful to only add the non-plasticy cardboard in, and I didn't dump all the wood ash into it - I didn't put any in - and I mixed the green and brown stuff and I added an accelerator and it is not moving. At all. I even turn it. I don't do it every day (to help it build the heat) but I turn it, I poke it, I get oxygen right into it and keep it the right level of moist and it's just not playing ball. 

So I ask my partner to get me the water butt from behind the garage so I can check why it's empty (spoiler alert: it was cracked, which should have been expected) and then he says, why don't you make that a composter? And I say because the tap is broken and he looks at me like my label has dropped off because he doesn't give a shit about compost. And then I say, I could make it into a womery, and then it's too late because I've ordered the worms and we'll just see how that goes, right? Well, first problem, yeah, the tap is broken and in trying to remove it, we broke it worse and I then couldn't find the new tap I bought so worry that the worms, who hadn't arrived yet, would try and escape through the hole. So partner plugs the hole where the tap was. There's still the crack on the bottom so we need to place this carefully, but we manage, and then it's ah, what if the "worm tea" - not edible or drinkable, but it feeds your soil - doesn't drain quickly through the crack? No worries, I've layered ticks and leaves at the bottom and it's letting the oxygen in, too. Plus there is a big hole in the lid where the gutter used to go in... 

Then the worms arrive. So they're in situ and I'm hoping for the best, but when I went out today to check on them, one was near the top of the bin and I can't see any more of them... And then I emptied one of the hoovers into it because it's full of dog hair and a spider from the nursery which somehow survived being vacuumed up and has made clear that the wormery now belongs to it so I'm not sticking my hand in there, gloved or otherwise, to dig around and see if they're just hiding... But I'm also now worried because the hole in the top which is great for ventilation or for just dropping bits and pieces through will also let in a lot of rain and let the cold in when the weather turns, so now I'm wondering if I should attach a piece of gutter pipe with either a corner or a U shape on the top to stop the rain getting in... Before I do that though, I want proof of life on the little wrigglers and more than just the one of them.

It may be that I just haven't got the patience and I need to wait for the good bacteria and the rest of the food chain to move in, but I also kind of wanted rolling composters, but they're expensive, or a biodigester, but that's silly, and I do wonder if I need to get some cow or horse manure to get it started like you do with biodigesters, but I think they do anaerobic no aerobic breakdown which isn't what I'm going for, because it stinks, so not sure if that would help. Honestly, I've been tempted by an entire zoo of animals, but it's mainly to keep on top of the bloody garden waste. 

It's a project. We always knew it was a project and it's just proving that it is.