‘You’re so young! I thought you were the nanny!’

I found out I was pregnant at 17 years old, in hospital with a kidney infection. This was not what I had planned for my life. I remember thinking of teen mums as losers who couldn’t be responsible enough to use a condom. Then I became that loser who hadn’t been responsible enough to use […]

Parents! You can’t be happy all the time and that’s OK!

You must feel sad. Human emotion is not capable of being monochromatic; one must accept the full spectrum of brain chemical combos. You cannot feel happy without allowing yourself to feel sadness as well. Something I found terrifying about motherhood was the unexpected anxiety and despair. Everyone promised the oxytocin highs, the love, the desire […]

To my gorgeous yummy-mummy gal pals …

Alone but not really at all… I had a burning desire to write to my local friends with young children the other day. This is what poured from my heart and the responses back have been overwhelmingly positive, with most of them saying they, too, feel lonely and isolated but also inspired by each other. […]

‘Someone told me I was a control freak around my baby’

Nothing prepared me for the unrelenting demands of motherhood: the realities of a 24/7 responsibility that left no time for myself, that lonely time after the front door closed behind my husband each morning while I felt like I just had to cope. I had wildly unrealistic expectations of myself as a perfect mother and […]

Does your partner feel left out?

For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, ’til death do us part, blah blah blah … Did you notice your wedding vows don’t mention kids? What’s that telling us? The sleepless nights, the tantrums, the dramas, can we survive a marriage with kids? I remember those vows, from once […]

‘I would walk around the house like a zombie’

Did you know if you have suffered with anxiety or depression in the past you are at an increased risk of suffering perinatal anxiety or depression during pregnancy or in the first year after birth? Rachel did. This is Rachel’s story … “I had experienced both anxiety and depression prior to falling pregnant and had […]

7 ways to be the best parent you can be – because you can’t be perfect

In the day of modern parenting, we are constantly inundated with images of the perfect parent, raising perfect children. Being perfect is about as achievable as finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It is not that our parenting skills are on a downward spiral, but we are placing too much […]

7 ways to break out of the new mummy daze

It’s normal to feel like an emotional zombie in the first weeks with a new baby but once you break out of the daze, there’s a whole world of motherhood to enjoy.