I’m so excited to bring you a little tour of my daughter’s nursery today.

Decorating a room for the baby is one of the most exciting parts of being pregnant and it's such a nice way of welcoming a new arrival - it's the anticipation of waiting to discover who will be appearing to fill the space!

If you haven’t seen my post about the renovation of No.80 - our house is a labour of love. It was formerly subdivided into three flats in a Victorian building that we’ve been slowly converting back into a family home.

It’s still a long way from finished, and I certainly wouldn’t call myself an interiors expert at all, but I am enjoying the process of decorating. I loved putting together our son Theodore’s nursery which we then updated into a toddler bedroom when he was about two and a half, and I’ve enjoyed doing the same for our daughter Romilly Hero.

Take a look…

All the cliches about time flying are true.

It feels like I’ve gone from shuffling into the induction ward at the hospital at two weeks overdue to have my daughter to celebrating her first birthday in the blink of an eye. Ever since the arrival of both my children, life seems to have been stuck on fast forward. Our days are crazy busy, but so full of joy.

The fact is, I never really longed to be a mother. I never felt broody. I never wanted to hold babies when they were brought into the office by colleagues who had become new mothers. And yet, having my son Theo and his much-wished for younger sister Romilly has been the best experience of my life.

And so we celebrate together - for Romilly hitting her milestone first birthday, but also for us as a family, finding our new shape and our strength together.

Body image after having a baby is a funny old topic.

Your body has done something life-changing and momentous - growing, sustaining and nurturing an actual human being - and that seismic event also comes with some pretty seismic shifts in your looks.

Many women feel under intense pressure to drop weight quickly after they’ve given birth, and this is not only foolish, but can also be dangerous. Softer, bendier bones, wider spread hips, larger boobs to feed baby and a dinnerplate sized internal wound in a softer mid section, often with abdominal separation, are the somewhat grim body realities post-baby that mean it's not a great idea to be harsh on your body soon after you’ve had the baby.

It’s something that every working mother faces, but none of us can prepare for – the return to work after maternity leave can be quite a rocky road.

You certainly aren’t alone in finding it a struggle to navigate a changed work place, trying to think professionally for the first time in a year or more and also coping with leaving your child. There’s a whole cocktail of emotions – intimidation, detachment, excitement, heartbreak – which you’re facing all at the same time.


I should know. I’m facing them too.

I returned to work in my marketing job at a university a couple of weeks ago, after a year away with my lovely daughter, Romilly Hero. It’s my second return to work experience (I also took a year out after having my son, Theo) and I like to think I’ve learned a few things the second time around.

There's a word I learned recently that I love. I had never heard it until a couple of months ago, but instantly, instinctively, it made sense to me.

That word is ‘matrescence’, and what it refers to is the process of becoming a mother - like the birth equivalent of ‘adolescence’. There are a lot of parallels, really - both emotionally stormy times when your life (and your body) is transforming beyond recognition.

I believe this word should be more widely known, because it acknowledges the journey that you have to go through to earn your motherhood crown.

Being a mama is more than just the biological accident of reproduction. It's a hard earned process of growth, a story of sacrifice, ingenuity and learning to love harder than you ever thought possible.

It's time for a little personal update, and I wanted to do a post about the milestones that my daughter, Romilly Hero, has reached.

I've never been good at filling out baby books, so it seems a nice way to record how she is now she's reached six months old.

The last six months have been the quickest of my life. Having two kids to take care of is a game changer because every minute of the day is pretty busy! So much has changed already and I'm actually now thinking about going back to work in a few months.

It's made me determined to really enjoy the rest of my maternity leave, and I've been lucky enough to make some really lovely mama friends along the way - people I know I would be friends with even if there weren't kids in common.

Motherhood is all kinds of wonderful.

For someone who never went gooey over nappy adverts and wasn't sure if they were cut out to be somebody's mum, the wild joy my two little humans give me has been the best kind of surprise.

But as much as I'm enjoying being a mama, there is a hidden side to it that no one talks about. And that's the identity crisis that often seems to go hand in hand with pregnancy and birth.

Your world changes overnight. Your priorities are different. Your heart is forever changed. You don't look like you anymore. And that can leave you wondering who you really are now.

Your being and your body has become all about keeping this little human you made safe. You put so much into loving and sustaining your baby, putting your own needs firmly to one side.

Little wonder that you can catch yourself looking in the mirror wondering who that tired, scruffy person looking back is.

Pregnancy is a magically exciting time in your life. However, there’s sure to be some panic amidst the positivity. This is primarily linked to feelings of being unprepared for the journey ahead. In truth, nobody is fully ready.

A combination of your maternal instincts and experience will kick in to serve you very well. As for the rest, organisation is everything.

Taking control long before the special day is the only solution. Here’s how to make it happen.

There's nothing so uniquely divisive about motherhood as breastfeeding. It's a topic that everyone seems to have an opinion on, it's very loaded emotionally for new mothers, and it's an area with a lot of misinformation.

World Breastfeeding Week concludes today, so in honour of it, I thought I would share our own journey so far and the essentials that have made it all a bit easier.

Welcome to the world, my beautiful Romilly. 

Like her brother, our little girl decided to be fashionably late, finally arriving 10 days overdue on the 29th July. Everything about it has been incredibly overwhelming, I think we’re still spinning- but that is definitely life with a newborn!

So here we are at full term, waiting for my baby to make an appearance any day now. While I'm waiting, I was thinking about the questions people have asked me since I found out we were expecting a sibling for Theo, and I decided to pull them together into a full-term pregnancy question and answer post...

What should you pack when you go into hospital to have your baby?

It’s a popular topic, and for many first-time mums, it’s the great unknown. There are so many things that you can’t plan about a birth, but making sure you have the right supplies with you to ensure you and your baby are comfortable is one thing you DO get a say in.

In all honesty, I think that both times I’ve been about to give birth, having a well-prepped hospital bag ready to go has been a huge part of my coping mechanism.

I’m currently 38 weeks pregnant with baby number two, so you may think I’d know what to expect this time, but the truth is that each birth is unique, and I’m aware this experience may be completely different to delivering my son Theo. What I do know, however, is what I took with me to the hospital before that proved genuinely useful.

Last time, I found the NHS Choices website a great resource for letting me know what the hospital was expecting me to take. But what I found even more helpful were blog posts and videos from real mums - so here is mine!