It’s no secret that Baby Girl has never been the most reliable customer when it comes to sleep. In fact, she only started sleeping through the night a few months ago and, since holiday, has reverted back to several wake-ups again. Joy.

I could bang on all day about baby sleep (or lack of it) and how it can affect all sorts of things like relationships, mental health and parenting confidence. But rather than share my own thoughts on the subject, today I’m inviting Pampers along to the blog to share an expert insight into the world of baby sleep. Anything that gets a tired parent a few extra minutes of shut-eye is a bonus, as far as I’m concerned.

What Pampers say…

Did you know that babies spend around half their time asleep? Those precious hours aren’t just important for their mood, but they also have a positive impact on their development, too. Which is why we’re so excited that to launch a brand new innovation and upgrade to UK parents’ #1 nappy choice: introducing 3 Absorbing Channels! New Pampers Baby-Dry feature a revolutionary nappy design with 3 Absorbing Channels and unique Micro Pearls™ that distribute wetness more evenly and lock it away for up to 12 hours. With less wet bulk in the morning, so your LO can wake up smiling. And, UK parents agree:

New Pampers Baby-Dry has been recommended by 88% of UK parents *

New Pampers Baby-Dry are also been BritMums Bloggers Approved, Mumsnet Rated, Mother & Baby Tried and Tested and 90% of Netmums mums would recommend New Pampers Baby-Dry.

With New Pampers Baby-Dry working as hard as possible, you’re LO can say goodbye to wet bulky nappies and hello to a dry night’s sleep.

To celebrate the launch of New Pampers Baby-Dry, Pampers are working with baby sleep expert Jo Tantum – who is a member of the Pampers Love, Sleep & Play panel and has 25 years’ experience helping hundreds of families to achieve a peaceful night’s sleep. Jo has identified 5 sleep typologies that may help you to understand your baby’s sleep habits and needs better – so, is your little one a Starfish, Skylark, Sloth, Owl or Meerkat sleeper? Take a look and let us know using #PampersBabyDry.

Starfish

This is when your baby sleeps in the same position, on their back with legs and arms out. They also wake up often and regularly, but they don’t go back to sleep easily after you intervene with a sleep prop – which they need to get to sleep!

Jo’s Tip:

A muslin square, knotted in the middle. Tuck it down your top before giving it to baby so it smells of you and comforts them. Also, try and teach your baby to fall asleep on their own gently. Start in the day, at nap times, watching for tired signs, then settle them for a sleep in their room.

Skylark

These are the babies that wake up early in the morning, singing and shouting, and refuse to go back to sleep whatever you try.

Jo’s Tip:

Wave sounds. This can be a sleep App or sound machine. Keep it on continually while baby is asleep, so when they come into a light sleep phase it soothes them back to sleep. Total blackout is also key – remember that babies can’t tell the time – they don’t know it’s only 5am! If your baby wakes up early, try and respond to them as though it’s still night, rather than creating a habit of early waking.

Sloth

These little ones love sleep and can sleep anywhere and everywhere – lucky you! But what happens when they wake up? You will know it’s going to be for a growth or developmental spurt or they are teething or not well.

Jo’s Tip: Increase feeding time by 5 minutes, if breastfeeding and by 30ml if bottle feeding. If your baby is close to 6 months old, they may need weaning.

Owl

This is when your baby goes to bed late and then wakes up in the night. They’re wide awake for long periods and can’t get back to sleep.

Jo’s Tip: A Sleep Fest! Allow your baby to sleep for 3 hours during the day to reset their internal clock. Babies need lots of sleep and it’s a myth that if you don’t give them naps, they will be so tired that they’ll sleep through the night.

Meerkat

They stand up, move around trying to get comfortable all night and they don’t want to sleep. They’re late to bed and early to rise.

Jo’s Tip: Wind Down Time. Try bath-story- feed to establish a calming bedtime routine. Your baby is overtired and so will thrash around trying to get comfortable just like we do. They will have lots of energy around bedtime and early in the morning, as their bodies and minds are overstimulated.

If you’d like to try New Pampers Baby-Dry, you can visit the website to claim your free sample.

*based on a survey of 790 UK Parents, given the samples in May 2016

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Thanks to Pampers for commissioning this post. For more information about how I work with brands check out my Work With Me page.

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Hello! I’m back in the UK and currently sitting amidst a pile of holiday washing and unpacking while looking out onto my slightly wild garden. I can’t wait to edit all the footage I took in France (despite my earlier thoughts of not vlogging or photographing much of the holiday the inner blogger in me won out and I ended up really enjoying catching snippets of our holiday on film). Before I get to the holiday stuff though, today I want to talk about happiness – specifically, our sounds of happy.

We have a tradition in our house. Every Friday after school during term time we have a “living room disco”. This is like a normal disco, only in the living room and without the disco lights. We’ve done it since forever.

As Baby Girl is now a 22 month old toddling toddler she’s just as much into the disco dancing as her older sister. The two girls dance around the living room throwing shapes and making each other laugh with their crazy moves. This isn’t a recent thing though – even before Baby Girl could walk she loved the tunes. Music – any type of music – makes her happy.

If I had to pinpoint the top five sounds that make my littlest one happy, they would be:

1. The word “Boobie” (she’s definitely still led by her love of milk)
2. Shakira’s Waka Waka song
3. Fart noises (she likes to proclaim “poopie! Poopie!” every after one
4. Lullabies at bedtime (Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is her favourite)
5. The sound of the horses in the field opposite our house (she loves animals)

So these would be the sounds that would make my C&G Baby Club Sounds of Happy shortlist. The brand’s Sounds of Happy campaign is a great way to tap into some useful ideas for ways to cheer up a slightly grumpy baby and to kick-start those infectious baby giggles. (You never know, maybe your baby – like mine – will also have huge love for Shakira’s Waka Waka song!)

There’s something hugely rewarding about seeing your baby laugh isn’t there? I can still remember that first baby smile from both of my girls and, later, the development of a gummy smile into a belly-busting roar of a laugh. It’s funny and heart-melting, even at 3am.

I never get tired of finding ways to make my tot lose it with laughter and, as she gets older, she’s proving to be just as adept at finding ways to make us all crack up too. Often it’s a silly face (she does a brilliant Kenneth Williams impression!) or a funny dance move. Again, music is normally the catalyst for such behaviour. As much as her dad rolls his eyes at Shakira, even he can’t begrudge her the song for the millionth time in a row because the way her face lights up when it comes on is so priceless.

Tell me, what would your sounds of happy be? Is there a particular song your baby loves or a noise which is guaranteed to raise a big gummy grin?

**

Disclosure: This is a commissioned post. For more information about how I work with brands check out my Work With Me page.

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When I was a kid I used to love the last week of the summer holidays before school begun. Fully refreshed from a summer in France, I’d sharpen my pencils, colour co-ordinate my highlighters and polish my new school shoes like the little geek that I was. The autumn term stretched out ahead of me with all the promise of a brand new exercise book, its pages pristine and fresh.

Of course, the reality was often a bit of a let-down. It didn’t take long for homework, rainy walks to school and lost pencil sharpeners to dampen my eager spirits. Still, that last week of the school holidays was always one to savour.

Now I’m a mum of two – with one child about to enter her third year in primary school – I sort of feel the same. At this point in the holidays we’re very much on wind-down, but I have no doubt that come the end of August I’ll be feeling just as excited as my six year old about the thought of her going back to school.

This summer M&S is celebrating helping families get ready for back to school for over a century. It’s funny to think how the whole back to school thing has changed over the years. While some things are firmly the same (the excitement of new school shoes, the satisfaction of a blank exercise book) other things have changed beyond all recognition.

This is me a few weeks into the new school term as a Year 4 pupil. I’m nine years old in this picture and my sister’s five. What you can’t see is the Take That necklace I’m sporting. Still – note the trendy 90s turtleneck!

There are some key differences between my own back to school days and my daughter’s. The most obvious one is uniform – or my lack of it. When I went to school in Bristol in the 90s uniform wasn’t a thing. It wasn’t until I got to secondary school that I had to don a pair of black trousers and a rather fetching royal blue jumper. When I tell my six year old this she can’t believe it. “Poor you Mummy, you didn’t get to wear uniform?!” Funnily enough she loves wearing uniform – even the annoying tie – and tells me it makes her feel “smart and grown-up”.

Luckily for her, the M&S school uniform offering manages to strike that delicate balance between comfort and durability. The shirts, for example, are made with a special finish to make stains disappear more easily, while the trousers feature adjustable hems that can be altered without a needle and thread. I also love the crease-free shirts and the fact I don’t need to iron them (I have far better things to do on a Sunday evening than stand in front of an ironing board).

Another big difference between my daughter’s school days and my own is the shoes. I could wear any shoes I liked partly because I didn’t have a uniform to conform to but also because, unlike my daughter, I didn’t need insoles to support little hypermobile feet.

It’s refreshing to finally find a pair of girl’s school shoes that nail the balance between appealing to my six year old girl who loves a bit of pretty (i.e. patent leather) and sturdy enough to withstand plenty of running around and puddle jumping. They have a lovely chunky grip-tastic sole and nice supportive high backs which mean her insoles easily fit inside. High five to M&S for this design.

When I was little I had a huge thing about wearing skirts and dresses. In fact, it was such a “thing” that the only trousers I would happily wear were a pair of pink corduroy dungarees. My mum still likes to remind of this fact today. Frog is similar. She’s much happier in skirts and pinafores, which makes the M&S range so great. There are plenty of different designs to choose from and, luckily for us, many of the skirts feature adjustable waistbands to fit her skinny frame.

As you can see from these photos, Frog was incredibly reluctant to model her new uniform…

While I was happy to let her carry on with her Instagram poses, I also wanted to check the uniform could withstand the paces she was bound to put it through at school. Whether it’s the 90s or today, nothing much changes when it comes to the playground, I reckon.

I grew up in Bristol and very much led the city-slicker lifestyle. This is another difference between my back to school days and my daughter’s. She’s growing up in a rural setting, in a village in Devon. So it’s nice to see the M&S uniform’s hardy enough to put up with country life too.

Ultimately though, nothing much has changed since 1992 and 2016: when asked early on in the summer holidays if she’s looking forward to going back to school this is the face I got:

No amount of amazing school uniform is going to make the classroom seem appealing before September, I guess.

**

Thanks to M&S for working with me on this post. For more information about how I work with brands check out my Work With Me page.

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A couple of weeks ago Frog had her 6th birthday party. Unlike the previous two years there wasn’t a huge amount of planning with this one. I didn’t even look at Pinterest, for example. The invitations were hastily made one Sunday afternoon and my mum sorted out the cake. It might have been the lowest key party in terms of prep, but I’m pretty sure it’s the most successful one we’ve ever done.

Rather than hiring a hall we decided to risk the British weather and organised a party at our local beach. We asked parents to drop their kids off at our house and then me, my mum and the NLM drove in convoy in our three cars with a small group of girls and plenty of beach games and food. There were eleven kids in total (nine six year olds and a couple of little sisters – some of the children met us there) and this proved to be the ideal number. There were enough children to do a few organised games but it was a small enough number to verge on the right side of total chaos.

The day before the party I headed to my local bargain store for multi-packs of crisps, biscuits and sweets. On the morning of the party I made a few different types of sandwiches and wraps, packed up some raisins, cut up some fruit and chucked the lot in a big hamper.

We were lucky with the weather. Rain was forecast but it held off and we had bright sunshine in between patches of cloud. It was even warm enough for the girls to get into their cozzies and have a paddle (although most of them ended up soaking wet as they inevitably splashed each other!).

The games were impromptu. We did “Make the Mermaid” and the girls divided themselves into teams, drawing a mermaid in the sand and decorating their creations with seaweed and shells. There was a relay race involving pebbles and a bucket, and my mum (former Drama teacher – handy) organised a game based on some imaginative role play. In between the games the girls broke off into little groups and built sandcastles, paddled in the sea or took turns burying each other in the sand.

After a picnic on the beach we headed home for birthday cake and to hand out the party bags. Rather than fill up a load of little bags with plastic tat we bought some large pencil cases which we repurposed as wash bags. These we filled with a little bottle of bubble bath, a homemade scrunchie (thanks Mum!) and a piece of cake. The girls loved their presents and, again, it was a much simpler way of doing things – especially as we got the wash bags for 89p each from the bargain store!

It couldn’t have been more different to Frog’s party last year – a disco in the village hall that took a good month of planning and plenty of last-minute stress. That party was also a whole lot more expensive too. I’m not saying we won’t do a big party like that again, but this year’s offering was so easy, cheap and stress-free it proved to me that sometimes the simplest things are the best.

Remind me of that come October when I start fretting about Baby Girl’s second birthday.

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Confession: I’ve had to give up the news. As a former news reporter, this is weird. In fact, my recent news detox is probably the first time in my life I’ve actively avoided watching, listening or reading the news.

Of course it’s impossible to tune it out completely, especially when things are going as bonkers as they are at the moment. I fully expect the NLM to come crashing in the door after a day at work saying, “Have you HEARD the news?! Nigel Farrage and Boris Johnson have been announced as the new presenters of Relocation Relocation: Down Under. They’re moving to Australia and replacing Kirstie and Phil!”.

Honestly, stranger things have happened.

Anyway, my current news starvation is an ostrich way of preserving my mental health. My poor, tired, angry brain simply can’t digest one more piece of negative news about the state of our collapsing country or idiotic people in charge. I miss pre-Brexit life.

This isn’t a post about giving up the news. It is, however, a post about some of the things making me happy in my current Brexit, news-addled slump. Oh – and there’s a bit of political commentary from my toddler at the bottom. I swear she’s got more sense than many of the UK’s politicians at the moment.

Eating

We’ve been eating really healthily recently and it feels good. I’ve taken over charge of the shopping from the NLM and now buy most of our groceries locally, from the butcher and the green-grocer’s in the next village along. Along with doing some regular workouts most mornings I’ve been actively avoiding refined sugar and cutting down on carbs and gluten.

This is mainly due to a last-minute panic before we go on holiday at the end of this month, but I’m hoping it might trigger some sort of new routine. Of course the wine on a Friday night stays, obviously.

We recently tried out the meal delivery service from new business Mindful Chef. This is a genius idea that basically takes all of the planning, shopping and time-consuming thinking out of healthy meal planning. A box is delivered straight to your door containing a selection of ingredients and recipes. Each meal is packaged (in environmentally-friendly packaging, natch) separately, so you simply take out the bag with the pre-measured ingredients, follow the recipe included and Ta Da! a fresh, organic, gluten-free and delicious meal is yours.

On the table for us last week was Beef Rendang with brown rice and mangetout, and Pork and Apricot Kebabs with pistachio and mint quinoa the following evening. Two meals that were quite honestly the best mid-week meals we’ve ever had. (If you want to try out the service yourself then you can use the code REFER25 at the checkout to get 25% off your first box when you enter my name.)

Watching

When my Brexit blues were at their height one evening last week I decided to shut Facebook and retire to bed with the iPad and Netflix. I stumbled across a new Netflix Original film that was released a couple of weeks ago starring one of my favourites, Paul Rudd (incidentally it also stars Selena Gomez AND the woman who played Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice alongside Colin Firth, fact fans). It’s called The Fundamentals of Caring and it’s one of the best films I’ve seen in ages.

On the surface this should probably be the most depressing film ever, with its subject matter being about a guy who’s suffered a tragic event and ends up working as a carer. But it’s uplifting and hilarious in a non-saccharine, witty and sarcastic way. My kind of humour.

Reading

Possibly not the most jolly of reads but I found this book Ebola: Behind the Mask full of inspirational stories. My sister sent it to me just before I was due to fly out to Sierra Leone with World Vision and I finished it just last week.

Written by two medics who volunteered with MSF (Doctors Without Borders) in an Ebola Management Centre at the height of the epidemic in Sierra Leone, it gives an insight into what life was like for many people during the crisis. There were desperately sad parts – of course there were – but there were also funny parts and far more stories that made me smile than I originally expected to find. When I finished the book I looked up one of the authors – Andy Dennis who works as a nurse for the NHS in the UK – and saw he’s currently on a 4,000 bike ride across the US to raise money for MSF. You can donate here.

Anticipating

With a holiday just around the corner I’m counting down the days to a change of scene and spending some proper quality time with the girls and the NLM, without this strange urge to Instagram or Snapchat every beautiful second. This isn’t a review holiday and, as much as I enjoy our trips via this blog or work, it’s going to be really amazing to properly switch off for a while. I’m looking forward to just being, without a phone in my hand or an eye on my Facebook feed. I just need to stop refreshing the weather app on my phone in the meantime.

And now, if you’re looking for some sensible political commentary, offering insightful views on the current Brexit situation in the UK then I can thoroughly recommend watching this. Baby Girl has, in my opinion, more sense than many of the politicians currently running the country…

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Frog turned six today. Six whole years. It’s the oldest parenting cliché in the book but it’s true: the years really do fly by. Anyway, I was going all slushy earlier looking at old baby photos of her and it got me thinking how much I’ve learned and how much I haven’t in the past six years of being a mum.

Seeing as my biggest girl turned six today I thought I’d share some of the six secrets I’ve stumbled upon.

1. The years are short

It honestly feels like a minute ago I was wearing the floorboards thin trying to get this tiny baby to sleep in the early hours of the morning. At the time it feels like it’s going on forever and your life is on pause but, at the risk of sounding like an old person, it really does go by so quickly.

2. Everyone has shit days

Just like all people the world over, parents have shit days too. It’s only, often you don’t see those shit days. New mums especially can tend to want to put a brave face on things for fear of being seen as not coping / not savouring every moment (because they go too fast, see above) etc. But it’s a load of pants. We ALL have bad days, and that’s OK. It’s normal not to love every part of being a mum. Mum life is TOUGH.

3. Kids have the ability to make plastic tat come out of your walls

For every toy you get rid of, ten will take its place. FACT. When they’re babies the plastic tat comes in large, easy to spot form. It’s often brightly coloured and makes a noise – which is handy as it helps you navigate the toy obstacle course across the living room floor. But as your kids grow their toys get more stealthy. The plastic tat shrinks and morphs into potentially painful shapes. Lego on the floor, hama beads stuck between your toys, freebie bits of no-one-knows-what from vastly over-priced kid magazines. No orifice of your house is safe. I believe it stays this way until they become teenagers, at least.

4. Going out gets more fun

The tired old joke about mums going out and falling asleep into their wine has never been true for me. In fact, since I’ve become a mum I don’t think I’ve had a bad night out. The fact my nights out average twice a year probably have something to do with it. Plus, a trip to Tesco’s past 7pm is classed as a night out these days, so to get to an actual pub is a huge bonus. Having babies has done big things for my appreciation of pubs. Even a pub with a sticky floor, a few old men and a knackered old juke box sounds exciting these days.

5. You see your parents in a new light

Of course this isn’t the same for everyone, but one thing I was totally unprepared for when I became a mum was how I’d see my own mum (and dad). Although I was a fully-fledged grown-up with the challenging task of raising a tiny human, I suddenly felt very vulnerable and probably needed my mum more than at any other time in my life since toddlerhood.

6. Everything is a “phase”

“It’s just a phase” has become my go-to explanation for every single crappy parenting dilemma I’ve ever had to face. Tantrums, toilet training issues, sleep (or lack of it) – you name it, it’s a “phase”. It’s a cliché older than the “they grow up so quickly” one, but you know what? It’s TRUE.

(Also: you’re allowed to feel intense annoyance whenever anyone tries to fob you off with this piece of wisdom when all you want is to moan without judgment.)

What parenting secrets have you discovered since becoming a mum or dad?

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Hi. My name is Molly and I’m suffering Mum Burnout.

Mum Burnout is like regular Burnout, only the symptoms are magnified by approximately a thousand on account of being woken up in the night by sleep-hating kids and spending much of my day retrieving my toddler from inappropriate places.

I think we all know what regular Burnout is – that state of extreme mental, emotional and physical exhaustion that comes with an intense and prolonged period of stress or overworking. In an internet age of green juice, mindfulness and clean eating, you’d have to be living under a rock not to know the importance of “off” time and “self care” (often known as “sleep”). But what the Insta-gurus fail to recognise, when they dole out advice about “early to bed” and “do Yoga!” and “drink liquidised kale!” is that, for most of us, this type of lifestyle simply isn’t possible.

However, I can’t ignore it any longer. Mum Burnout has well and truly hit and, despite the intro to this post, it’s not particularly funny.

Here’s how to spot Mum Burnout – are you suffering from it too?

1. Your head feels full

If my kids don’t wake me in the middle of the night then my brain does, tick-tocking through an ever-rampant To Do list. In full Mum Burnout mode my brain buzzes over everything and nothing. House jobs, work deadlines, bank balances, school trips – you name it, my brain has picked up on it at 3am and, like a dog with a bone, refused to let go.

2. You lose your motivation

The irony is not lost on me. The more my brain buzzes with All! The! Things! the less inclined I feel to tackle any of them. In the midst of Mum Burnout I’ll find myself sitting at my desk in the evening, just two hours into a long stint of work, with my motivation levels peaking to minus ten. I just want to go to bed or do something mindless like watch Netflix, but I have all these things to do. And the more I try to do them the more it feels like I’m wading through hot, thick, treacle.

3. You feel constantly crabby

Mum Burnout renders me a shouty, impatient mess. Things that I’ll usually find funny just leave me cold. For example, one day last week I wanted to put the washing out but the toddler kept throwing my clean pants into the vegetable patch. It wasn’t a life-ending scenario but at the time it made me feel irritated beyond measure, as I failed to see the funny side.

4. You feel anxious

There’s nothing like a long To Do list but a crippling lack of time, motivation or inspiration to get those anxiety levels going. Ever tried sending a really important email while your toddler bashes the keyboard and your five year old decides to choose that particular moment to ask, “What happens when we die Mummy?”.

5. You experience self doubt

When I’m feeling overwhelmed by things I have this habit of mindlessly scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – the lot. This is HUGELY unhealthy because it leaves me feeling frustrated that I don’t have the time or energy to create anything worth reading or looking at myself. And, as the frustration peaks my confidence dips. I start to wonder if I’m too thinly spread, if I’m in the right job, if I shouldn’t just give up and bow out stage left because everyone else is overtaking me and I’m too far behind to ever catch up. Or that’s how the inner voice goes anyway.

And here’s how to fix it…

1. Tune out the noise

I made a decision a couple of days ago to delete Facebook and Twitter from my phone, and to only go on Instagram when I have the intention of posting a photo (at which point I’ll have a quick look at my feed). No more mindless scrolling, no more passive reading, no more pointless Facebook conversations that I don’t have the headspace for at the moment. Tuning out the noise has already made a huge difference to how I’ve felt today and – shock horror – it’s even left me with enough inspiration and motivation to write a full magazine feature this evening AND this blog post.

2. Talk about it

Over the weekend I had a big old chat with the NLM about things, after he asked what was up. To be honest, I don’t think I was even aware how close to the tip of Mum Burnout I’d reached until we had that talk. Just talking things through out loud helped. We now have some plans for some time out (for me) and extra work time during the day (also for me). This makes me feel relieved – and it wouldn’t have happened if we’d not talked.

3. Give in to it

I think you have to ride that wave to its crest and come crashing out the other side of Mum Burnout before you can really do anything to feel better. Otherwise you just coast along, thinking that you’re coping when really you’re not. So this weekend I’ve allowed myself to really think about what it is I need to feel happy and to be the mum I want to be and the creative person earning a living I want to be, and then put some plans in place to achieve it.

4. Get outside

Just being outside makes me feel better when I’m suffering Mum Burnout. Whether it’s out in the garden with dirt under my fingernails or at the beach with sand between my (currently frozen) toes, being outside helps to put things into perspective and gives me a chance to see my kids being beautiful and funny, without climbing all over me trying to beat up my laptop.

If you’re feeling a bit low or burnt out at the moment then I highly recommend reading this brilliant article at The Pool.

Have you experienced Mum Burnout? What helped you feel better?

The post The 5 signs of Mum Burnout (and how to fix it) appeared first on Mother's Always Right.

Baby Girl turned 18 months old earlier this month. I’d planned to do some sort of milestone post but then life got in the way. It has a habit of doing that at the moment. But I couldn’t let the 18 month mark pass without some sort of mention of life lately. And so I want to write about sleep, or lack of it, and share with you how I survived (and continue to survive) constant sleep deprivation.

1. Accepting that sleep deprivation is really rubbish

People joke about sleep deprivation, but the reality is far from funny. It can be a very lonely experience, especially when you’re pacing the floor in the middle of the night trying to stop a crying baby from waking the rest of the house. It’s OK not to love this bit of motherhood, it doesn’t make you a bad mum. Sleep deprivation is no fun.

It can put a very real strain on your health, relationships, state of mind. At times, sleep deprivation has turned me from the mum I always wanted to be into a shouting, ragey monster who has zero patience and isn’t particularly nice. That’s the worst bit about sleep deprivation – it can have a profound effect on your personality. The nicest, most patient, loving people can turn into angry mush after a bout of no sleep. It’s used as a form of torture in some countries for good reason.

2. Talking about it

There’s also a sense of isolation when you get past the newborn days and your bub still doesn’t sleep – especially when everyone else’s does. “Is she a good baby?” people will ask, when what they really mean is “Does she sleep?”.  People tell you to “cherish every moment” and you can feel like the world’s worst human if you admit you’d rather be asleep than gazing into your baby’s face at ten minute intervals throughout the night. And so we don’t always admit to how we’re feeling. We bottle it up and put a brave face on, pretending that we’re totally fine with only sleeping half an hour in 3 days, and isn’t it all just par for the course of being a parent? HAR HAR HAR.

Well you’re not doing yourself or anyone else any favours when you do that. It perpetuates the myth that all babies sleep and it puts a barrier up between you and anyone who may be able to give you a hand. Some days I was lucky enough to have my mum round for the day. Instead of talking to her I just handed her the baby and went to bed, because I knew that little top-up of sleep would make me a better mum and all round decent human being.

3. Giving myself a break

Once we got to around four months, there was talk of “getting back into shape”, or going out for nights out, or doing stuff that generally involved more effort than sitting on the sofa in my pyjamas. Some days I fancied it, some days I didn’t. I tried to give myself a break as much as possible and avoid any pressure to jump back into the world when I wasn’t yet ready. It’s not a race to get back into your skinny jeans. You won’t win a prize for going on a night out with your mates when your baby reaches 12 weeks old, if you secretly just want to stay home in your dressing gown.

4. Knowing it was normal

Apart from breast vs bottle, I don’t think there’s a more emotive or debated baby subject than sleep. Everyone has an opinion on it, and everyone’s opinions are different. Unfortunately, despite what many would have us believe, there’s no miracle “cure” for a baby who doesn’t sleep. All this advice (that, incidentally, we’re far too knackered to read anyway) contributes to one overarching belief that it’s not normal for babies to wake up multiple times in the night.

Of course, the fact is, it’s TOTALLY normal. There are SO MANY people with babies and toddlers that don’t “sleep through the night” (as Gill says – what does that even mean anyway?). Babies that don’t sleep are not freaks of nature.

5. Knowing that it wasn’t my fault

My first baby slept, my second baby didn’t. This doesn’t mean I did anything wrong. None of it was my fault. Repeat this to yourself over and over again: IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT.

6. Remembering that it won’t last forever

If you’re currently in the thick of it then take heart, it DOES get easier. And the good bits do outweigh the bad, even if it might not feel like that when your eyes are burning through lack of sleep and you think you might vomit. But it doesn’t last forever and, one day, you will look back and realise you’re through the worst of it.

Until then, eat biscuits, watch Netflix, ignore the hoovering and don’t even think about hitting up Google for some advice.

Tell me, what helped you survive sleep deprivation? Any other advice to add?

The post A mum’s guide for living with sleep deprivation appeared first on Mother's Always Right.

Do you ever feel like you want time to slow down a bit? I’ve felt like that pretty much every day this week. The past few days have flown by, and making this video of a week in our lives has highlighted that even more.

Last Friday we started the beginning of a blogging challenge, set by the company who make many of the cash machines that you probably use every week. The point of the challenge? Find out what we use most, and what we find easiest to use, between cash and bank cards. The #caseforcash challenge was an opportunity to discover a bit more about our spending habits over the course of a week, and start a debate about what we prefer: cash or card.

If you’d have asked me four years ago what I preferred to use, it would have been a no brainer – card all the way. I found the convenience of just swiping my card way easier than remembering to get cash out all the time. In my head, people who always used cash were either hugely organised or rather old. It seemed like a prehistoric way to pay for things when everywhere I went was so geared up for paying by card.

Then I moved to a little village in Devon. We don’t have a cash point in our village and our local shop doesn’t accept card (or, if it does, there’s a minimum payment amount which I’ve never bothered to ask about). Lots of the places we visit don’t have card machines and I’ve been caught out so many times by never having cash.

The NLM is a big pro cash person. He takes money out of the cash point at the beginning of the week and budgets accordingly. He hates spending on his card because he says it’s harder to keep track of what’s going in and what’s coming out. I’ve always laughed at him about this but, actually, the past week has been a real eye-opener for me and I now realise that he may have a point.

For the first three days of the challenge we were asked to only use a bank card to pay for things. At first this sounded easy, but on Friday we ran into troubled water. Frog has pocket money on a Friday and her school was hosting a charity bake sale – neither situation allowed for a card payment, obviously. We also tend to go to the village shop for sweets after school on a Friday (Friday is “treat day”) and I wasn’t about to try and put 50p on my bank card. Cue a morning trip to the supermarket (or, if you’ve watched the video, TWO trips – but that’s another story) in order to avoid an after-school tantrum. A morning I hadn’t bargained for and which, to be honest, I didn’t have time for either.

But before you think I failed at the card challenge and won at the cash, I also found the bank card ban days tricky too. I went to Bournemouth with Baby Girl on Tuesday for a blogging event (more on that to come soon) and needed to fill up with petrol. Not having been organised enough to take cash out earlier in the week I was forced to withdraw money from the machine at the petrol station – one of those ones that charges an arm and a leg to take cash out.

Overall, I found that I definitely spent more on days when I was using my bank card only. From spending online (breastfeeding + phone shopping apps + bank cards = bad news for budgeting) to impulse supermarket purchases – only the essentials like wine and chocolate, natch – when I’m using plastic it’s easy to forget what I’ve racked up already because it doesn’t really feel like real money.

However, I do so love the convenience of cards. If I had to survive on cash alone I’d feel marooned without a safety net. My card is like a buffer, always to hand in case of emergency situations. Plus, as a time poor parent who rarely has time to go to actual shops I find the ease of paying via card on the internet a real life-saver – especially as we live in the sticks. The thought of going back to days pre-internet shopping where everyone paid with cash all the time literally make me shudder. How did people have time to DO anything?!

So, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past six days of the #caseforcash challenge it’s that I’m deeply fickle when it comes to cash vs card. I simply can’t pick one over the other. Use card only and I’ll lose mum points on pocket money day or sweetie day or school bake sale day with my daughter (not to mention the Tooth Fairy never pays via card either). Use cash and I’ll lose vital time having to go to actual shops whenever I need something I can’t get in our local supermarket.

How about you? Are you a cash or a card person?

Find out how my fellow #caseforcash bloggers found the challenge:

Mum in the Mad House | What the Redhead Said | Slummy Single Mummy | The Oliver’s Madhouse

The post A week in our lives with #caseforcash appeared first on Mother's Always Right.

I woke up this morning in a foul mood. As I stomped around the kitchen, muttering under my breath, fighting back barks of anger with big grumpy sighs my husband asked me what was wrong. The truth was, simply put, I was knackered. So. Bloody. Tired. Baby Girl had woken up three times in the night and Frog had woken once, meaning I’d been woken up every one and a half hours through the night. Not that I was counting (I was).

Instead of just saying, “I’m really, really tired,” I launched into a tangent of what I thought was wrong at the time. The house was a mess. I had loads of work to do. The dishwasher hadn’t been emptied. The washing hadn’t been hung up. I had no time. I was sick of never having any time. etc etc. My tirade of grumpiness ended with me near to tears, as I said something I feel really bad about now. “I’m just really not happy. I don’t like my life today.”

Luckily for me I’m married to a man who knows me very well. He knows that I do, in fact, like my life very much and that I have a tendency to get stressed, angry and tearful when I’m really tired. He also knows the best way to get me out of that tired and grumpy rut. So I thought I’d share what I remembered today. It worked for me, it might work for you too.

1. Let shit go

Number one on the list of things to do when you’re so tired you feel utterly miserable is to hold your hands up Elsa Frozen style and let it all go. Lower your standards. Take some deep breaths and tell yourself it’s OK that the dishes haven’t been done straight away, it’s OK if the email hasn’t been answered, it’s OK if your house isn’t Insta-ready. As much as I regularly moan at the NLM for not being “proactive” and getting stuff done, his laid back attitude to this type of stuff can sometimes be quite refreshing. He’s right – no one’s going to die if the dishwasher hasn’t been emptied straight away. Get things into perspective.

2. Get outside

I have a habit of feeling panicked and claustrophobic if I’m tired and my To Do list is really long. As well as work stuff that makes me anxious, I get bogged down in things that need doing around the house. Whether it’s a DIY job that suddenly seems really important in my sleep-deprived brain, or a load of washing which still hasn’t made it to the airer, I see things that need to be done at every turn. Getting outside helps to reduce that panic and make me feel a bit normal again. Plus, it keeps the kids busy and less likely to trash the house I’m working so hard to make nice.

3. Take a moment for yourself

I knew we weren’t really going anywhere today but I made the effort to put on a bit of makeup and straighten my hair. For me, little things like this can make me feel a bit more human when I’m so tired my eyes are stinging. Failing the make-up, there’s always tea. Basically, find a small thing that you can do just for you and make sure you do it. a chocolate biscuit while the baby naps, a cup of tea while it’s still hot, a moment to brush your hair and put on some moisturiser. If it’s possible to do, do it, because those tiny things can make all the difference to your mood.

4. Stay away from the internet

This is a controversial one and obviously everyone’s different but, for me, when I’m feeling really low the last thing I want to see is a barrage of happiness on the internet. It just makes me feel dissatisfied with my life and lead to dangerous things like comparisons. For example, usually I love Instagram, but I know that if I’m in a certain mood I need to stay away from it. If I don’t I’ll just end up coming away even more grumpy as some poor, unsuspecting stranger on the internet has triggered my feelings of frustration simply by wearing a stylish outfit / having a tidy house / being on a nice holiday / having more likes on a photo than I do. It’s stupid and not stuff that’s worth getting annoyed about, but the truth is these ARE things that annoy me when I’ve had no sleep.

5. Talk about it

After my barrage of grumps at the husband this morning I felt instantly better. It’s a weird thing, but talking about stuff can really help to get things into perspective and shift your mood. Bottling things up (when you’re tired or at any other time) is never a good thing. That’s not to say that we should all go round shouting at our family just for being there, but there’s a certain liberation in owning your feelings and getting them off your chest. It could be writing a blog post (gawd knows I’ve done enough of those), venting to your best mate in a text, ringing your mum – whatever – don’t carry the burden alone if you can help it.

Oprah Winfrey I most certainly am not, and I don’t proclaim to be some kind of mindfulness expert or lifestyle guru, but I hope some of the above may help you if you find yourself in the position I was in this morning. If not then let me know what works for you. I’m always looking for new happy tricks (after all, it’s not really sociable to start on the wine at 7am is it?!).

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If you liked this post I’d love to be considered for a nomination in the best lifestyle or best writer category of The MAD Blog Awards. Nominations close at 5.30pm on 8th April and you can nominate here – it just takes a couple of minutes. Thank you!

The post 5 ways to be happy when you’ve had no sleep appeared first on Mother's Always Right.