Picnic Season

Spring. A young man's thoughts turn to love and a Golden Retriever's turn to picnicking. It is once again that time of year when our dog cannot be let off the lead in any location where people might be laying out the picnic blanket and opening up that hamper.

She's a fabulous dog but the food obsession is her drawback. She displays all the addict behaviour. She knows it is wrong, she knows she shouldn't do it but she just can't help herself. If there is food within the vicinity she will try and eat it.

In her lifetime we've had to apologise to many people.

One time she came across a couple enjoying a private romantic pizza in a beautiful countryside spot. It took 2 grown men to prise her jaws open to get her to release the food. Then there was the man in the tent on the beach who suddenly found a dog snuggled up with him demolishing his stash of sausage rolls.

Another time we unexpectedly came across a fishing competition. The fishermen were lined up every 50 yards or so, intent on catching the big one. The dog just cruised straight past them all wolfing down their bait and the odd sandwich. I finally caught up with her about 10 minutes down the path and had to do the walk of shame home, apologising to every single one.

The players of the Ultimate Frisbee team were unimpressed when their post-game donuts disappeared before half time. She has not, unlike another retriever we know, eaten a birthday cake but she has eaten a cricket tea and then distinguished herself by being sick right across the cricket pitch. She once found an open back door and helped herself to the cat food in the kitchen. She did something similar in Bosnia and got belted across the face with a broom stick, rightly so.

Her finest achievement came as a (luckily) very sweet puppy when we let her out of the car in a restaurant car park. She legged it into the restaurant and got onto a diners lap and helped herself to his pudding.

So we welcome summer but dread it too. Years of experience have taught us once picnic season is open, the dog stays on the lead.

Review: Baby Royale Blanket

What would you think a blanket made out of bamboo feels like? I was intrigued to find out, for some reason thinking it might be a bit scratchy. The Baby Royale Blanket is 70% organic bamboo and 30% organic cotton and, I was surprised to discover, very very soft. Exceedingly gentle on the skin soft. Lovely, luxuriously, why don't they make things for adults this soft, soft.

Turns out bamboo is an excellent thing to make baby blankets out of. Not only is it naturally hypo-allergenic and anti-bacterial it is also enivornmentally friendly (pesticides are not used in a bamboo crop and as the plants are trimmed and not fully harvested, the crop is fully regenerative). The blanket itself is woven using traditional weaving techniques which makes for a textured feel and a look that feels individual, far from mass produced.

I'm a fan. It's a light weight blanket that would be ideal for the spring and summer, although probably not warm enough in the winter months. It's also machine washable (lets not forget how important that is for any parent of a new baby).

At £35 it is a product that is firmly aimed at the luxury baby market, but given the innovative materials and the genuine softness and individuality of the blanket, I feel it is probably worth the money and would certainly make an excellent present for a new arrival.

The Baby Royale Blanket is 90cmx150cm available in blue, pink or white and can be purchased online from BabyRoyale direct or from Hello Baby.

THIS IS A REVIEW POST FOR WHICH I RECEIVED A BLUE BABY ROYALE BLANKET WORTH £35.

Reality Bites

Adam: Mummy?

Me: Yes Darling?

Adam: When I grow up I'm going to marry someone just the same as you.

cue melting heart, uplifting smiles and soaring songs.

Adam: But not as grumpy.

Skewered by the twist of the dagger of truth.

Helping Other Mums: A Mothers Day Campaign

Way back in 2002, I spent a few months in Sierra Leone. It is a beautiful country, stunning (remember those Bounty Bar adverts from the 1980s? Those beaches are in Sierra Leone) populated by a funny, touching, vibrant people. I loved my time there, loved the people who had endured so much and yet were still smiling.

At the time I was working with a whole bunch of women and listened to their stories. As in the UK, many of them centred around children, child birth and pregnancy. Not having children at the time I did not fully appreciate the extent to which their experiences would differ from mine own a few years later.

Whilst I luxuriated in regular ante natal checks, only 56% of Sierra Leonean women do. I had 2 midwives present throughout my labours (and, if we are being totally accurate was also seen by a consultant, an anaesthetist and a couple of students if I remember correctly), in Sierra Leone 58% of women do not have a qualified health professional present at the birth of their child. If you are Sierra Leonean the life time risk of dying from pregnancy related causes is 1 in 21.  (UNICEF)

In April 2010 access to health care in Sierra Leone was made free for pregnant and breast feeding women and children under 5. Within a month the number of women going to hospital to give birth doubled and there was a huge jump in the number of children attending health centres. (Oxfam)

Oxfam have started a campaign to encourage the UK government to do what it can to replicate this success in other countries. They are asking people to send a Mothers Day card to Andrew Mitchell, the Secretary of State for Development, urging him to encourage more successes like this one.

I feel to demand free healthcare for other Mums makes this is a Mothers Day card worth sending. Please consider doing so yourself. To request a card or see more information about this campaign please click here.

When Breast Feeding Starts to HURT - Hello Ductal Thrush

I'm lucky enough to be able to exclusively breast feed Sam (as I did with my other 2 boys). I like breast feeding. Lots of good health benefits, allows me to sit on the sofa for long stretches guiltfree and I don't have to sterilize anything. For the Queen of Idleness that I am, this is pure heaven.

Only this time, it's all going a bit wrong. For the first time I'm struggling a bit to feed and for the first time I've encountered the medical professions knowledge about breast feeding. It's been an eye opener.

The symptoms started when Sam was 6 weeks. A deep pain in my breast, which I thought was a bit of a blocked duct or maybe the very beginnings of mastitis. So I fed through it (eyes watering all the way) and it went away. Somewhat later Sam had terrible nappy rash that I simply couldn't shift. Lotions, potions and hours of time with no nappy on (which as any mother of boys will know is a dangerous thing) were all to no avail. Eventually it cleared up and I thought no more of it. Then the breast pain came back. Then the nappy rash came back. Breast feeding wasn't much fun, Sam was coming on and off the breast whereas he'd been guzzling like an American SUV only a week earlier.

I knew that something wasn't quite right so I went to the GP, armed with a suspicion that what I had was Ductal Thrush, a nice little yeast infection which gets passed backwards and forwards between a nursing mother and her baby. The GP didn't have a clue. Admitedly we weren't presenting typically. Sam had no signs of thrush in his mouth at all, and I had none on my nipple.

Oh said the GP I don't know. Why don't you access your breast feeding network and see what they suggest and if it doesn't go away come back in a few weeks.

Helpful stuff. Luckily for me there was Muddling Along Mummy online and and another friend who is also a breast feeding councillor who both suggested Ductal Thrush as a probable cause. Solution, a nice drug which isn't licenced for breast feeding mothers so GPs tend to not prescribe it.

Back to the GP we went via the health visitor. I had Sam weighed and my suspicions that he wasn't really gaining any weight were confirmed. A bouncing 75th percentile boy is now a 25th percentile one. He's gained 4oz in 4 weeks. Now I've no idea if the slow down in weight gain is anything to do with the thrush, but it convinced the health visitor to go and bash the GP over the head until he wrote out the prescription. I virtually sprinted to get to the chemist to start the regime.

I was surprised at many things. First having not had any problems breast feeding before, I was surprised to have some this time. I was surprised at how much it hurt. I was surprised at how nasty the nappy rash was. But most of all, I was surprised at how little the GP knew about breast feeding.

Fingers cross we can bash this infection on the head and I can go back to my painfree sofa fests shortly.

For anyone who suspects they may have Ductal Thrush the Breast Feeding Network have an excellent leaflet. Print it out and take it with you when you see your Doctor, just in case you have the same GP as me.

Dear So and So... the late edition

Ok - it is Saturday today but I started this post on Friday. It's been a while, but I need a rant. Bring on Dear So and So!



Dear car parked right outside our gate,

When you park that close to the gate I can't get the buggy out. Which means everytime I want to leave the house I have to dismantle the thing, climb over the fence and then put it back together. This doesn't make me a happy bunny. I really need to move it or I can't guarantee that I won't send out my sons with hands covered in suncream to smear them all over the side of your car. It won't be big, it won't be clever but it will make me feel better. And if you are parking here because you want to save money from parking it in a carpark, I may also give the boys a key.

Move it.

Cross Pants.
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Dear Ductal Thrush,

F*** OFF! You are painful and making breast feeding very unfunny. Just so you know, the drugs have been obtained and you are about to be blitzed into oblivion. I won't cry if I don't see you again.

Yours,
Cross (and watery eyed) Pants.

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Dear GP,

I appreciate you are not a breast feeding expert but really, you should know a little more about it. At least I'd prefer to not have to come and see you a second time, armed with information about my likely complaint in order to get the treatment I need.

Yours,
Grizzly Pants.

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Dear Playmobile,

I love you. Your toys are fab. They keep my boys and any others kids we have picked up on the way quiet for ages. That is all I require from a toy.

Yours,

Pants, drinking a hot cup of tea in peace, quiet and bliss.

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Dear self,

Do remember that you do not have real live superpowers. Which means you can only do what you can do. Do your best and stop beating yourself up over what you haven't done. Lets look at what you have managed and figure the rest will get done tomorrow.

You know I'm talking sense,
PWN.

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Dear Readers,

I really want to write a post about what is going on in Libya and the effects of a policy of non-intervention, as witnessed by Bosnia. But it needs to be a well thought out post, with a cohesive argument. Which my brain isn't doing at the moment. So I'll just have to say that not intervening in Bosnia put the actual people doing the peacekeeping into an impossible situation in Bosnia. I understand the theory of not intervening, but the reality is so much more complicated.

Concerned Pants.

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Dear Sam,

How are you already 16 weeks? That has flown by. You are a little bundle of sunshine, so full of smiles. In fact you are so smilely in the morning that I'm starting to think you must be a changling. Your parents do not have a morning smile gene in a single cell of their bodies.

Lots of Love,
Mummy xx

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Dear Supervisor,

Finish writing up this year? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! What? You aren't joking? Seriously?

Yours in fear of the rest of this year,
Working Pants.

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Dear roll of flab around my tummy,

We aren't friends. You have outstayed your welcome. Please leave.

Yours,
Fat Pants.


Dear So and So, better than therapy. Head on over to Kat's to read some more.

The Gallery: SHAKE

Don't you feel invigorated?

It's been a while since I participated in Tara's Gallery, but I've missed it.

Review: Tommee Tippee Closer to Nature Electric Breast Pump (and microwave sterilizer)

Fundamentally I am bone idle. If I can get away with not doing something then I will. Which is probably (despite all the other far more valid reasons) why that I exclusively breast feed my baby. All that sterilizing just seems like quite hard work.

Which is why, even though Tommee Tippee sent me their Closer to Nature Electric Breast Pump to review months ago, I have only just got around to using it. Even then it was only the lure of a big night out without a baby that motivated me to actually get on with it. (note to self, you are not covering yourself with glory here, not only idle but are motivated only by the promise of alcohol and child free evenings - not looking good)

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Previous attempts at pumping (with earlier babies) had met with doom laden failure. I had used a hand pump and utterly resented every moment spent sitting on the sofa feeling, well, just a bit bovine. It took hours for very little result.

The Electric Breast Pump was different. Easy to put together, plug in and we were away. I have to say it felt a bit bizarre, not uncomfortable at all but a bit odd, and it certainly got the milk out and was far more efficient than the hand pump used previously. There are three different settings, it was certainly nice to start off with the gentlest one and then ramp it up as I felt more confident that my nipple was going to come through the experience unscathed (which it did, thank you for asking). It comes with a sterilizer, which doubles us as a convenient place to store all the bits and pieces, which I thought was a well thought through touch.

Much of the casing is in a solid white which does mean it takes a while of pumping before you can see any visible results (as the milk is working its way through the pump into the bottle), which was a little disconcerting to a new pumper.

With the breast pump comes some Closer to Nature bottles and other breast feeding paraphernalia. Sam had no problems using the bottles, but he isn't a fussy baby on that front so I wasn't surprised.

Tommee Tippee had also sent us a microwave sterilizer which does the job well enough. Bit difficult to get excited about sterilizers, but I prefer microwave ones to electric ones as we don't have much storage space in our kitchen and it just lives in the microwave. Plenty of room to sterilize all sorts, from bottles and breast pumps to dummies and other random things, it just takes a few minutes and works exactly as I would expect.

Many thanks to Tommee Tippee for allowing us to review their products, and for their patience in waiting for me to actually use them.

RRP for the Electric Breast Pump: £89.99 (but it is possible to find it at a cheaper price, here for example).

THIS IS A REVIEW POST FOR WHICH I RECEIVED A TOMMEE TIPPEE CLOSER TO NATURE ELECTRIC BREAST PUMP, MICROWAVE STERLIZER AND BOTTLES TO REVIEW, FREE OF CHARGE.

A random memory that crossed my mind

Don't know what made me think of this story but

I once knew a bloke who, jokingly, ironically, teenagely liked to call himself 'The Legend' or 'The Ledg' for short. It hadn't really caught on but he was persisting in trying to get people to call him that.

One night he'd had far too much to drink and decided to write his name on a wall. Forgetting how to spell his name he did the best he could. How difficult can it be to write 'The Ledg' after all? He was fairly pleased with himself, right up until the point he sobered up and looked at his handiwork.

From that moment on he was known as 'The Leg'.


This post is a part of the BMB March Blog Hop. Have a look at the list below, and hop onto another participating blog.

Street Party

It must be the number of years I have spent outside of Britain, but I've decided that I want to have a street party. We live in the ideal street for one - it's a dead end road and would look great with a long trestle table right up the middle and bunting stretched across the street. The road is a good mix of young families, older people who have lived here for decades and the odd student house. A street party would be a lot of fun. Ideally I'd like to have one for the Royal Wedding but think we've probably left it too late to organise and am a bit worried that the weather that weekend could be rubbish. A street party in rubbish weather is not that much fun, although very British.

I've mentioned it to a few people in the road, and everyone seems to be really up for it. But so far no one has stepped up to the plate to actually start doing anything.

So I've gone and done it. Printed off 25 fliers, stuck them in peoples post boxes and said if you want a street party come over to my house on Sunday evening for a meeting.

Now I 100% do not want to organise a party. I am stretched to my absolute limit at the moment without voluntarily piling a load more admin onto my plate. Admin isn't my strong point at the best of times, under pressure it disintegrates entirely. But I'm secretly hoping, if I get people together and then stand up and say 'hey guys, this is a great idea, who wants to organise it?' that someone else might be guilted into putting up their hand.

Otherwise, I have just heaped a whole load of unnecessary pain onto my plate.

(Is anyone else organising a street party? Any tips?)