Mother's Day Gift Guide 2020 | Blog

Note: Some of the items in this gift guide have been sent to me for the purpose of this post and for review but all opinions are honest and my own. 

For most people there is one woman in their lives that has always been there for them no matter what. They always put you before themselves and they are always there come rain or shine. Mum's are precious, special and so important so treating her on Mother's day is the perfect way to thank her for everything she ha done over the years. The only problem is...what do you buy her? If you're Mum is anything like mine the she is so hard to buy for because she never wants anything (another Mum trait!) so I've searched long and hard and I've found the perfect Mother's day gifts to suit all kinds of budgets and all kinds of Mothers.

HASK UNWINED treatment collection - starting at £3.99 from Superdrug

If your Mum is anything like me then she will love a chance to pamper herself BUT I bet she never has time.  The HASK hair masks are the perfect, inexpensive gift that will give your Mum a little pamper in no time at all. These wine inspired masks are filled with goodies to give your hair a luxurious shine and leave it smelling incredible! The leave in conditioner is amazing and I can honestly say, after using it for a few weeks, that my hair is feeling healthier and stronger than before. You can grab your mum some of the HASK goodies from Superdrug. 

White Glo Accelerator - £30 from Boots

I always thought that a decent teeth whitening set with a UV light would break the bank but apparently not! The White Glo Accelerator from Boots is the perfect way to give you Mum the gift of a sparkling smile. I've been using this set for a couple of weeks now and I can really see a difference. My teeth are whiter and I feel more confident flashing my pearly white grin. 

Goodbye 30 | Blog

I feel like there are moments in everyone’s lives that define us. Some remember those moments via milestones or experiences. Some may remember dates. For me, I feel that the moments in my life are defined by age. I remember celebrating my 18th birthday. I was wearing a Jane Norman prom dress style silky black and floral dress and I felt like the dogs doodahs! I went out clubbing with my closet friends and felt like I was living the dream. I remember turning 21 a spending my birthday moving into our pokey little flat. I remember how excited I was but yet how sad I felt to be leaving my parents and my home. I remember the party that we threw that weekend to celebrate my milestone birthday I remember hugging my mum in the kitchen, dancing with my Dad and looking around the room and wondering how I’d been so lucky to have such amazing people in my life. Then there was the year I turned 25. I was 3 months pregnant with our precious little baby but it will still early days so not many people knew. Hubby and I went to London and he took me to see Matilda the music and I remember watching the children on stage singing “my mummy says I’m a miracle” and smiling at the miracle that was growing inside of me. That wast last birthday as just the two of us and now birthdays are filled with home made cards, never opening my own presents and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Pelvic Pain, SPD, Pelvic Girdle pain AKA the bane of my pregnancy! | Blog

If you've read my blog for a while then you will know that pregnancy wasn't enjoyable for me. Even though things were pretty straight forward in the first couple of months, at 16 weeks everything changed. PGP bulldozed into my life and pretty much ruined my first pregnancy for me. Pelvic girdle pain, SPD, Symphysis pubis dysfunction. Whatever you want to call it, it was horrendous and it was the reason I hated being pregnant.

The NHS description of pelvic pain in pregnancy is this:

‘some women develop pelvic pain in pregnancy. This is sometimes called pregnancy-related pelvic girdle pain (PGP) or symphysis pubis dysfunction (SPD). PGP is a collection of uncomfortable symptoms caused by a stiffness of your pelvic joint or the joints moving unevenly at either the front or back of your pelvis.’

Basically what this translated to for me is that my pelvis split apart thanks to hormones and growing baby and things which, in turn, made it feel like I’d been kicked in the lady garden by a very strong and very angry horse. It made walking, sitting, sleeping, laying and general life practically impossible to deal with. It was agony and nothing I tried seemed to help. I went to a chiropractor, had physio, brought a band that was supposed to hold everything together, tried special exercises, took medication…basically nothing worked and eventually when I was about 6 months pregnant a doctor signed me off work and said that things wouldn’t get better until baby was here. 

FABULOUS! 

The fear... | Blog

Have you ever heard of the fear? No I'm not talking about the kind of beer fear that comes from drinking too uh the night before and forgetting what it is that you did. I'm talking about the Parenting Fear. The fear that seems to come hand in hand like some foreboding ghost with everything you do. The fear comes with the big things as well as the small things but that can literally leave you shaken to the core. That's the fear I'm talking about. 

I remember the first night we brought Pickle home all those years ago. We took him upstairs when it was time for us to attempt to go to sleep and fed him some milk. He fell asleep whilst I was feeding him so I gentle laid him down in his Moses basket which was at the foot of our bed. 

‘This isn’t that bad…he’s asleep so I can sleep for a bit now’ 

I thought to myself. Well how wrong I was. I laid down and closed my eyes and listened to the silence. 

Why was it so quite? 

Was Pickle still breathing? 

Was he okay? 

Oh my God what if he’s stopped breathing and died from cot death like I’ve been warned so many times?