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

‘I’m sorry... There’s no heartbeat’.......Suffering a miscarriage is devastating. February is the anniversary of my miscarriage and so I have edited the original post as I now feel more comfortable adding more detail to my story. I had a miscarriage at 8 weeks between Jamie and Rosie. I remember when we found out. I was getting Jamie ready for school and had to run to the toilet. I froze. I hadn’t had the classic doubling over with cramps that you see in movies so I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. I phoned my partner and my mum in a panic. I phoned the early pregnancy unit and was booked in for a scan.  The scan My mum came with me and sat with me while I got the scan. It was an internal scan and thankfully I had done some research beforehand so I at least knew to expect this.  I'll never forget the words of the midwife, "I'm sorry...there's no heartbeat". I sobbed. She then said, ‘did you have no idea?’, and at the time I didn’t think much of what was said but no

  This post will be about resilience and how children can use it to help them when they face adversity. Gilligan, 2009 cited in Leverett, 2016 says that resilience is used to describe the capacity of someone to prevent, minimise or overcome any damaging effects of adversity.  Adversity can be anything challenging in a child's life, for example, the death or illness of a family member. How they react and adapt to these events is based on how resilient they are. Resilience can be built up through supportive relationships. A child’s feeling of security and the quality of the parent-child relationship and so a positive and engaging parenting approach can help promote your child’s resilience from birth. Werner and Smith, 1982 cited in Punch, 2013 show how risk factors affect children differently, they found that the group of resilient children were securely attached to their main caregivers. There was also a larger support network of adults who they trusted. Positive role modelling can

Up to 40% of children will experience sleep problems, such as difficulty with falling or staying asleep, (Mindell et al, 2006 cited in Williamson et al, 2020).   Carrying on with the theme from my last post I would now like to discuss how sleep problems can affect a child's well-being. Research that consisted of a longitudinal study of children in Australia has demonstrated how having sleep problems in early childhood can cause multiple impairments in a child's well-being at age 10-11 years old, (Williamson et al, 2020). The study examined five different sleep trajectories. They found that the children that had limited sleep problems in infancy or preschool only showed small impairments with internalising symptoms such as anxiety or low mood. However, children who demonstrated persistent sleep problems and sleep problems in middle childhood had moderate impairments in their ability to self-control. Goldstein and Walker, 2014, cited in Williamson et al, 2020, showed

  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

 So I haven't posted in a while what with the Christmas holiday and everything.  Christmas 2020 was quieter than last year thanks to covid-19. We were still up early to see if Santa had been, he had, and Jamie was the best big brother and 'helped' Rosie open her presents.  After presents Scott had a quick nap and we got ready and went to visit family where more presents were opened. I had the meat in the oven on low as it was the first Christmas dinner I've made. I was so nervous that something would go wrong.  Luckily it didn't. By the time we got back from visiting it was dinner rather than lunch. We had our starter, lentil soup made by my mother in law and then Jamie was full and Rosie was tired so we decided to save the rest of dinner until boxing day!  It still worked out ok and to be honest I really enjoyed the quieter Christmas at home. There was no need to try and rush two tired kids home for a late bedtime. We were able to relax afterwards without being to