This post in inspired by the recent news of MP Stella Creasy bringing her baby with her for a debate. Being a mother is hard, being a working mother is harder. The struggle between wanting to continue your job and still being a present parent is a dilemma most mothers feel. Many jobs offer paid and covered maternity leave so the mother can take that initial time to bond with her baby and usually hire someone else to cover the workload during that time. But what if you do not have the employment rights for that maternity leave? Unfortunately for Labour MP Stella Creasy, she has had to bring her baby to work due to lack of employment rights.   Stella in parliament with her son @itv.com Politics  On Tuesday, the MP had brought her three-month-old son with her to a debate in Westminster. Without adequate maternity cover Stella has been trying to balance working after giving birth, to continue representing her constituents who she says, 'still have a right to be heard.’ MPs are entitled

  When Rosie was younger she had to wear a Pavlik harness. This is usually put on babies if they have developmental dysplasia. This is when the 'ball and socket' joint of the hip doesn't form properly and so they have dislocated hips. It is congenital and usually affects girls more so than boys. Rosie's cousin had this happen with both of his hips.  The health visitor first noticed that Rosie's dimples on her lower back were slightly misaligned. We were referred to Musgrave Park hospital and the baby hip clinic. As she was so little her hips were scanned in the ultrasound rather than x-rayed. This showed that her right hip was unaffected but that her left hip was borderline. We agreed on the Pavlik harness rather than leaving her hip to potentially get worse, better safe than sorry. She had to wear it for twelve weeks, going back for readjustments every four weeks.  What is the Pavlik harness?  A Pavlik harness is made of fabric and is essentially a splin

 A big milestone in a new parents journey, and even with subsequent babies, is when they begin eating solid food. However, common problems can be that baby doesn't seem keen on lumpy food or mealtimes become a battle with an older toddler. You want to provide them with healthy fruit and vegetables, they want chicken and chips. My aim for this post is to help parents with the basics of baby-led weaning. When to start solids. Current NHS guidelines states to start babies on solids at six months alongside their usual breastmilk or formula. However, some babies seem ready before this but this is a common misconception.  Parents can be told by others that certain signs their babies are showing means their ready for solids but this is not the case. Parents are told that:  Night waking is a sign of readiness. Babies wake during the night for numerous reasons but if baby is under six months old and does seem genuinely hungry then more milk should be offered rather than solids. Others belie

  Over the six years, I have been a parent the one thing I have relied on is the bedtime routine. Luckily my kids so far have been the type to still sleep well even if they are out of their usual routine. However, every night I put my kids to bed reminds me how beneficial it is to set up consistency at bedtime from the start. Jamie's Routine When Jamie was a baby all the books I read mentioned some sort of a bedtime routine. There are some parents who would rather not have any routines and allow the family dynamic to be child-led as much as possible and that's ok too, if it works for your family don't change it. At the start, the routine was bath time, breastfeeding while reading a story and then he would fall asleep on the breast and I would gently place him into the bedside crib until the next feed was due. As he got older and moved into his own room and onto formula the plan was to give him the bottle, read the story and then learn to self settle. This didn't happen.

 In Northern Ireland we are currently at the end of the Christmas break, my son was due to go back to p2 tomorrow (today was a development day). The schools are now closed for at least a week for all pupils except for vulnerable children and the children of key workers. Everyone is having to do online learning.  It's ok for me as I'm on maternity and so I don't need to worry about home educating while trying to get on with my own work. But not all parents have this luxury time to put in to their children's education and I really sympathise. Daily Routine At the moment the daily routine focuses on Rosie but while Jamie was in school it was all about getting him there on time. 6:00am- wake up to Rosie shouting at us from her cot (she is still in our room). We usually bring her into our bad and let her play with some toys between us while we take turns in dozing. 7.00am- Jamie wakes up and comes into our room. Some mornings it is sooner, it just depends on how loud Rosie i

We are due our third child in April. We were now faced with getting a double pram and getting rid of our old silver cross. This was abit emotional for me as we've had it for 6 years. It was Jamie's pram then Rosie used it but now seeing as we'll be having another baby in quick succession we needed a double pram.  After toying with the idea of keeping the silver cross and just using a buggy board for Rosie we chose the babylo duo x2 which is great for our needs as I realised Rosie would only be 13 moths when the new baby arrives and a buggy board was not going to be practical. But I was then torn about what to do with the old silver cross. Most people would give it to charity to sell or just sell it on themselves. However, this didn't feel right to me.  For a week I pondered about what to do and then suddenly I thought of the Nativity story. It sits differently with me now that I'm a parent. When I was taught the story in school the focus was of course on the baby Je

 Sleep deprivation is something all soon-to-be parents are told to expect. I'm now on my third pregnancy and I have noticed a difference in lack of sleep between both of my children at different stages. With my first, it felt awful at the start because I wasn't used to it. I was trying to breastfeed and keep on top of the housework. Everyone kept saying sleep when the baby sleeps, but how could I when there was so much stuff that I had to do? Some chores could only be done when he was sleeping, like taking the finished laundry upstairs and putting it away.  But the newborn stage soon turned into the baby stage and he began sleeping for longer periods at night and so I wasn't as tired during the day and so I had more energy for other activities. By nine months he was on formula and sleeping through the night, though getting him to sleep was still a song and dance once he was sleeping that was him. My daughter on the other hand is different entirely. The newborn stage was tir

So I am 21 weeks pregnant with baby number three. I love my children and we had always thought about having a third but hadn't intended on it being so soon after Rosie's birth.  I had booked an appointment at the GP to get the contraceptive implant and when there I was asked if I was pregnant. I had assumed not as I was exclusively breastfeeding and my periods hadn't returned. I had read that exclusively breastfeeding could be used as a form of contraceptive, it's called  lactational amenorrhea . I thought this was going ok and that I was getting the implant in for when Rosie started solids so I wouldn't get caught out. How wrong I was.  So the GP asks me to take a test and I do. She looks and says well no little brothers or sisters for you Rosie! Thank goodness! She begins to get prepped to put the implant in and so happens to glance at the test again before disposing of it. Oh! she says. What? I said. She then proceeds to tell me that there is a very faint line!