You know all that stuff THEY warn you about when you have a baby?
PUT them down drowsy but awake or they’ll ALWAYS sleep on you.
Don’t feed them to sleep or they’ll turn into a gremlin.
Teach them to self-settle or they’ll NEVER learn to fall asleep by themselves.
Babies need 16 hours of sleep a day or bad, bad things will happen…
Don’t let them sleep on you or the world will end. That kind of thing.
Well, it’s all bollocks. Continue reading
You’ve tried co-sleeping, no sleeping, gradually retreating and dabbled in Gina Ford but STILL your baby will not sleep.
So in a desperate moment of sleep deprived madness you go to the place you told yourself you would never go… The Mum Forums.
Then you post the words no parent should never post on the Internet ‘How do you get a baby to sleep?’ . And things go a bit like this: Continue reading
Tearfulness, anxiety, loss of or increased appetite, exhaustion, lack of motivation and irritability are all symptoms of sleep-deprivation.
They are also symptoms of depression.
This coupled with the fact that depression can lead to exhaustion and exhaustion can make you feel low is why so many cases of postnatal depression go undiagnosed.
The mother often believes she is just totally and utterly shattered and that she’d be fine if she could JUST GET SOME BLOODY SLEEP! Continue reading
This book won’t tell you how to get your baby to sleep but it will show you how to stay awake successfully.
I am not going to lie.
This book will not tell you how to get your baby to sleep through the night.
In fact, it won’t even tell you how to get them to take a nap.
But it WILL teach you how NOT to sleep through the night without punching someone in the face, killing your partner or selling your offspring to a travelling circus.
It also provides realistic sleep guides, humorous no-sleep solutions, hilarious imagery and lots of REAL TRUE facts by the Institute of Real Life People With Actual Babies. Continue reading
It is the summer holidays and so NO school run for six weeks.
It is the summer holidays so no school for six weeks…
I have been nagged almost to death and feeling a bit weird about my youngest starting school in September but amazingly I have not completely lost my shit – yet. However, it is only Day five.
Here is one thing i have learnt his week
ME: Right, you go first!
4YO: Who are you?
ME: No, remember you have to guess who I have on my card? That’s the game.
4YO: OK. Are you Captain Barnacles?
ME: No.
4YO: Are you a banana?
Lesson 1: A baby’s guide to life outside the womb
The biggest mistake new parents make is to forget where babies come from.
I am serious! Instead of taking any time to consider the fact that they have just dragged us from the comfort of our peaceful womb palace into HELL, they are too busy discussing stuff like, ‘who does she look like?’ and ‘I think she has your nose’ and ‘oh look at her tiny fingers’ to think about what we might NEED during this time.
Is it any wonder we scream our heads off when the Baby Getter Outerer takes us away from our Womb Container?
Is it really a surprise that we cry when you put us down in a cot, all by our little old selves??
‘Where the hell is my womb?’ We are thinking. “Where is the human I have been attached to for all of my life? The one who grew me. We are part of each other. I am her, and she is me and I am not sure it is possible to survive without her. Plus she got the milk and that shit is good.” Continue reading
A STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO BABIES BY BABIESLESSON 2: AN IDIOT’S GUIDE TO SLEEPING OUTSIDE THE WOMB
Babies wake up during the night because they are babies and it is what they do. This is a fact.
Yet, so many proper grown up people who have been to school and everything, some who have even written books about babies will not accept this.
They try and work out how to fix us when in actual fact we are just BEING BABIES and sleeping outside of mummy’s lush womby palace kind of takes some getting used to.. Continue reading
Trying to look all professional and authory
Two babies, four years of sleep-deprivation, postnatal depression, food banks, rejections, coffee and a lot of swearing and finally my book is out!
So I had a little launch in Waterstones like a grown up author type…I have dreamt of this moment for so many years but when it actually happened- I have to be honest I was as nervous as hell!
So thank you to everyone who came along to support me, pass me pens, Prosecco, books and basically everything else I kept forgetting.
Here is how I survived and managed NOT to swear: Continue reading
Dear Children.
I am writing to inform you that I am taking a leave of absence from Mornings.
When I agreed to manage Mornings With Kids, I assumed that you would do as I say because you are children and I am a grown up and therefore, I AM THE BOSS. I envisaged spending breakfast time sitting around a table laden with fresh fruit, where you would eat your food in less than SIX MILLION hours and I would smile and sip on hot freshly ground coffee in my stain-free dressing gown. I had also anticipated that you would understand the meaning of ‘hurry up’ and would actually give a shit about ‘being late for school’. Continue reading
TRYING to get a baby to fall asleep is a frustration that every parent will face at some point. And while some children drift off to dreamland fairly easily, others, however, just do not.
Neither of my babies liked to go to sleep. Some nights it could take anything up to four hours to get them to doze off, so I spent a lot of time desperately browsing the Internet for The Answer. As a result, I tried a lot of weird and wonderful techniques. Here are a few ways I tried and failed to get my babies to go the f**K to sleep:
