Stockton-on-Tees is our home town – we live just outside of the centre of Stockton in a village called Norton. Along with Billingham, it’s one of the most northerly places in Stockton borough. This year, local people have been getting really excited because the council seeded beautiful wild flowers instead of planting rigid rows of traditional bedding flowers. And they look so beautiful! And the pollinators love them! Well done council! We thought we’d take Jonah down to one of the sites on Bypass Road in Billingham to have a look since he’s very much into flowers, trees, and running around like a small boy who’s just found his legs. Weeeeeee! We’re really happy with the photos we took. You can never have too many photos of your toddler, since they grow so quickly and change fast. We’re both camera nwerds and Jonah is the perfect subject! We’ve used a…
It’s long overdue, but I’d like to share Jonah’s birth story here on my blog. It seems such a long time ago as Jonah is now 14 months old. Sitting here to write it makes me feel so happy and gooey, as it was such a beautiful day full of love, tears, music, and pushing! I’d hit 40 weeks and Jonah’s due date knowing that only 5% of babies actually arrive “on time”. I knew he’d arrive a bit later than his due date. North Tees hospital kept moving our dates forward at scans, and since I knew the exact day I fell pregnant, Jonah was actually just measuring big for his dates. We’d followed a HypnoBirthing course with the excellent Vicki Lund, so we had birth preferences in our hospital folder. Jonah’s birth didn’t go exactly as I’d hoped, but it was a completely positive experience! I’m so glad…
In this post, I share why I’ll never sleep train my baby. We were gifted an old-fashioned crib by family, but went out and bought a Snuzpod sidecar crib so we could co-sleep safely. When expecting, we said we’d never bed share because we’d read all the advice about how bed sharing could lead to SIDS and was dangerous. We’d never put Jonah’s health at risk! We stayed two nights in hospital to get breastfeeding support, and were surprised that Jonah didn’t sleep well in his crib. He’d cry when we put him down, and found it very hard to settle in that little plastic box. In my ignorant new mother haze, I genuinely believed there was something wrong with him. I even asked the midwives why he wouldn’t settle anywhere but in my arms. The belief that babies sleep in cribs was so strong with me. After Jonah’s birth,…
This post focuses on how to prevent and treat nappy rash. Does your little one suffer with nappy rash? So many babies and toddlers do. Whether it’s teething, colds, food intolerances or eczema. Sometimes it takes some sleuthing to get to the “bottom” of it. This post will help you figure out how to prevent and treat nappy rash with natural remedies, lifestyle changes, and natural nappy creams. Towards the end of my pregnancy, I started to give nappy cream some thought – maybe I would need nappy cream in my hospital bag, and at my baby’s changing area? I pondered if mainstream nappy creams would be full of junk ingredients, like a lot of mainstream baby products. Like a lot of parents to be, a Bounty newborn baby pack was thrust into my hands, with its free mini tube of Sudocrem Nappy Cream. Scanning over the ingredients (including sodium…
Pregnant and still using mainstream beauty and skincare products? If you haven’t already, here are four beauty products to rethink before baby arrives, and some great alternatives that are kinder to baby, you, and the environment. How much of what we put on our skin is absorbed? In researching this blog post, I wondered how much of what we apply to our skin actually gets absorbed. Figures fly around the internet at something like 60 – 70%. Well, this isn’t true, because there is no one magic percentage. This article explains why we don’t know how much of an ingredient will be absorbed when applied topically. To step back a little, penetration and absorption are actually separate things – penetration is where a chemical makes it down into the deeper tissues of the body. Absorption is where a chemical actually enters the bloodstream (source). Both depend on several factors: When pregnant or breastfeeding, and…
We’ve just got back from the Global Big Latch On 2017, where families around the world gather at their local event to simultaneously breastfeed and offer peer support. The children are all latched on at exactly 10:30am so it truly is a participatory event. It’s great to be involved in something so big! The Global Big Latch On takes place during World Breastfeeding Week (1st – 7th August). It aims to create a lasting support network for women, their families, and the wider community, and quite importantly sets out to normalise breastfeeding as a part of daily life. We attended the Middlesbrough Big Latch On. We met our breastfeeding friends at Stewart Park, a gorgeous old Victorian park with sweeping views over the beautiful ancient trees. In total, 34 women and their nurslings took part in the event. History of the Global Big Latch On The Global Big Latch On was…
In this post, I’ll be looking at how to make a breast milk bath, and the benefits to baby and mama a breast milk bath can bring. A little backstory: it’s been a long time since I expressed breast milk on a daily basis for Jonah. It used to be a regular thing for me to have the Haakaa breast pump swinging from one breast whenever Jonah was breastfeeding on the other. I could leave some milk for him while my husband had him for an hour, and I’d take some much needed self-care time in the form of pilates classes. Fast forward a few months, and I’m done with classes now, feeling fully recovered from pregnancy and birth, and feeling like running around after my steam train toddler is just about as much physical exertion as I can handle. This week, Jonah’s had a few stubborn spots across his…
In this post I’m sharing why we choose to vaccinate our children. Poor baby had his one year immunisations yesterday at Norton Medical Centre. Martin took the afternoon off work so we could take him to the appointment together. We arrived in the waiting room, where a little boy was crying after receiving an injection. His mother, trying her best to comfort him, pointed to Jonah and remarked “that little boy isn’t crying”, but we all knew he soon would be – how sad. “The two public health interventions that have had the greatest impact on the world’s health are clean water and vaccines” ~ World Health Organisation The nurses were friendly and helpful, explaining what would happen, providing us with patient leaflets, and asking about previous immunisations. Daddy held him during the four injections, which were performed one at a time, one in each limb. I cupped his head…
In this post, I review Green People Nappy Balm. Experts say you should only use nappy cream when baby’s bottom is red. We like to use a tiny smear of nappy cream at most nappy changes – it works well for us. Despite frequent nappy changes, if we don’t use nappy cream, the dreaded redness appears. Thankfully, we’ve not had a serious case of nappy rash yet, so we must be doing something right. For Jonah, I only use a skincare product when absolutely needed – and nappy cream is a skincare need, since being in a nappy for almost all of the day is not very natural! We’re huge fans of Weleda nappy creams – White Mallow Nappy Cream is our absolute favourite, with Calendula Nappy Cream following a close second. However, since I’ve had such great results with Green People products, I thought we should try Green People Nappy Balm…
In this post, I compare Weleda nappy creams to see which is best for your baby or toddler. We’ve been regular users of Weleda White Mallow Nappy Change Cream since Jonah was born. Recently we were gifted a tube of Weleda Calendula Nappy Change Cream by our friend (thanks Andrea!) and were really happy to give it a go. We love the Weleda Calendula range since it is so effective, gentle on skin, and smells great. This nappy cream is no exception to the rest of the range. In this post we’ll look at the similarities and differences between the two nappy creams, research all the lovely ingredients, and make a choice to which is most suited to our baby. First a bit of background on Weleda. From their website: Weleda’s goal is to maintain, enhance and restore the health of people. What started in 1921 as a pharmaceutical laboratory, with its own…









