Real Life

Spring is here and isn’t it grand!?

This week has seen a lot of sling action, getting out and about and enjoying the sun. It was a different sort of work week for me, two days of media training but the chance to pick the brains of the experts about blogging and tweeting too, this has given me a new strategy that I’ll talk about in a bit. I also finished my two week wardrobe challenge, and now have a capsule wardrobe of just 30 items, scary but freeing too!

So maternal mental health, this week I blogged about two big issues, bottle nursing, which I think doesn’t get the coverage it deserves and was probably my toughest blog post yet, and I also wrote a piece trying to unpack and ask some questions about mother’s guilt, working and the media.

All this is building up to a big piece of news and some more posts around maternal mental health. This week I became affiliated with PANDAS Pre and Postnatal Depression Advice and Support.

In short I am setting up their first North East group, the Newcastle Upon Tyne PANDAS Support Group. I feel really well of late, I have enjoyed several months anxiety free and have been feeling strong for a while now. I want to bridge a big gap between formal mental health services and community services, there is very little available to new mums anyway following the cuts and being lonely and frightened with dependents can be a very dark place. I approached a group of friends some of which I’ve met some I have yet to meet looking for others who can help me get set up, I was blown away by their honesty and sadly by their numbers, but we all want to offer our support to other parents and that makes me feel so proud of them, and of how far we have come on our own journeys. I look forward to sharing experiences, offering support and maybe making some friends along the way too.

Blog life

Two new things, 1) to devote an evening a week to building up content on a range of ideas and 2) to blog daily where possible about topical issues in the media linking into twitter and facebook feeds on ‘big issues’ around parenthood, politics and media. I did this with my post on maternal guilt, it came out of Mumsnet stats that were released that day and I tweeted my response and linked into discussions on Facebook which drove more traffic. I would also like to see my Tots100 score continue to increase, currently at 549 I have worked hard to get to this position and would love to understand more behind the metrics too.

Inspiration

We’ve been yardening again so I’m about to blog another How Does Your Garden Grow but also found inspiration here:

http://rubiesandduels.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/shabby-chic-in-the-budget-yarden-its-not-a-back-yard-its-a-garden/

http://www.growsonyou.com/

- See more at: http://www.mumsdays.com/#sthash.661xQpg0.dpuf