*collaborative post*
Today’s guest post is the perfect read for any separated parents struggling with agreeing on a custody arrangement for their children. This is not a situation I have been in personally but i can imagine how difficult it must be, especially if both parents are struggling to come to an agreement. If you are in this situation, I am sending you lots of love and I really hope you find this post useful.
*collaborative post*
Are you trying to save money at the moment? That’s a bit of a stupid question really, I mean, who isn’t trying to save money right now? I won’t get into the cost of living crisis now, we all know it’s tough. BUT if you are trying to think of different ways to save some extra cash, today’s guest post has some good advice on cutting car costs.
*collaborative post*
Ughh, sleep, it is not my favourite topic of conversation at the moment! With a twelve week old baby it is no surprise that the subject of sleep is a very sensitive one for me. Why? Well, because I am not getting any of it! I had forgotten how hard being sleep deprived is and those night feeds are a killer when you are already exhausted. Us parents try pretty much everything to get our babies and children to go to bed happily and to get a good nights sleep but it’s not always easy. Today I have a guest post with three basic tips to help you to hopefully get a better nights sleep. Remember though, all babies and children are different and what works for one won’t necessarily work for another. I also know from experience that, yes, sometimes taking things into your own hands at bedtime can help but ultimately babies do what they want and they don’t tend to sleep through the night until they are ready. Regardless of that, this guest post has lots of advice that can help bedtime run more smoothly – good luck! View Post
I will always remember the day we brought Leo home as a newborn. Our life as we knew it was over and this was also the case for our lovely cat, Blue. No longer would he have all our attention and love, he was always our fur baby but we now we had an actual human being to look after too. Blue was always pretty indifferent towards Leo, their first meeting consisted of a quick sniff from the cat, Leo’s newborn baby smell obviously melted Blue’s heart too because we never had any problems. However, not all pets take to a new member of the family so easily. For anyone who is worried about introducing their beloved pet to their newborn baby, lovely Kim who blogs over at Odd Hogg has some great tips on how to prepare your pet for the family’s new addition. Over to you Kim.. View Post
As a parent, there is nothing more important to me than the safety of my child. I don’t wrap Leo up in cotton wool, far from it, he is allowed to explore the world around him as much as he wants under my watchful eye. However, when it comes to car safety there really is no room for compromise. Car accidents can happen at any time, you could be the best driver in the world but you can not, unfortunately, control how everyone else drives around you. If the worst was to happen, having the correct car seat for your child will make sure they are as protected from injury as possible. The laws surrounding car seats can be pretty confusing. To help you navigate your way around this essential yet sometimes mind boggling part of parenting, here are all the basics you need to know about car seats, including links to further reading if you need it. View Post
It is now January and for thousands of A level students across the country this is a very stressful month. It is the month where they need to finish writing their personal statement, gather all their teacher references and get their university application sent off to UCAS. It may have been 7 years ago for me but I can still remember what an anxious, overwhelming time it was. I decided to study media at university as it has always been my dream to write for a magazine (there is still time!) and I really enjoyed the subject.
Once in university, when I started to meet new people and tell them what I was studying, rarely were they that interested, let alone impressed. You see, many people have this fixed idea in their heads of what a media degree is all about, they envisage lazy students sitting around watching films while making the odd note or two, maybe. If you are a school pupil interested in studying media one day or a parent with a teenager hoping to fly the nest and pursue a media degree this September, I am here to tell you this is not the case.
I want future students to not feel the need to justify the degree they have chosen to other students who think they are superior, just because they are studying something more traditionally academic, I absolutely loved university but I had to work damn hard to get a first, there is a lot more to it than you may think.
Here are some genuine, common misconceptions of what people think it is like to study media…
1. It is an easy course to get in to – Wrong! When I was applying in 2009 you needed two C’s and B at A level. Granted, it is no where near the three A’s or whatever it is you need to be a doctor but you do need to achieve decent grades to get in. You can’t just show up on the first day of term, with a couple of F’s in your back pocket and except to be accepted because it’s just a media degree.
2. You just watch films all day – Nope. Of course media students have to watch some films but it is never just for fun. You watch them because you are later going to be analysing a particular scene, looking at the camera work, the semiotics, the political context or the feminist undertones. Not once did we just sit and watch a film. Unless you’re doing a film studies degree, watching films is only a very small segment of a media degree, usually only one or two modules.
3. You can name every actor/director in every film..ever – Ugh, this one really annoys me. Yes I studied media but please don’t be shocked when I ask you who that actor is or I don’t know what year a certain film was released. As I mentioned above, media lecturers are much more concerned about the deeper meaning and technical side of a film, rather than the people acting out the scenes.
4. This course must have been your second choice – Strange as it may seem, some people want to get a media degree. They enjoy the variety, the creativity it allows and learning about the history of the media and discovering how we arrived at the digital age we live in today. It is a really interesting subject and people who study it should be taken more seriously.
5. It is easy – Like most university courses, it is as easy or difficult as you want it to be. You can get by doing the bare minimum and be disappointed three years later when you don’t get the result you wanted. Or, you can work hard, listen in lectures, write essays to the best of your ability, study for your exams and then ,hopefully, you will get the result you deserve at the end. The work itself varies and differs slightly in each university but I wouldn’t say any of it was easy. When I was studying we learnt about several different media theories, video and radio production, writing for newspapers as well as online journalism. Not once was I given an assignment and thought ‘oh yay, this is going to be easy’.
6. There are no jobs once you graduate – Isn’t this the case for so many graduates though, no matter what they have studied? There are plenty of graduate schemes out there in the media sector, you just need to look and apply, apply, apply! Apply until you can’t bear to look at another application form ever again. The jobs aren’t going to just come to you, you need to put in some hard work and be prepared to sometimes work for free. So many companies want people with experience and sometimes the only way to get this is to do some good old fashioned, unpaid work experience. My life took a bit of a dramatic turn after I graduated, I ended up pregnant a few months after receiving my degree and any career of any kind has been put on hold ever since. I know with hard work and determination, when the time comes for me to go back to work, there will be media jobs waiting for my application. Nothing is certain when it comes to a career and you shouldn’t choose a degree you are not passionate about, simply based on an assumption that there is a job guaranteed for you at the end of it.
Did you or your child study media at university? Before reading this post did you share any of these common misconceptions? Have you ever had to justify your academic/career choices to other people? I would love to know what you think. I hope more people start to realise that a degree in media isn’t just an easy option and that the students are often really creative and actually, 100% of the time, they have a brain in that head of theirs.
If you want more information on studying a media degree at university, here are some useful links –
20 important reason to study media
What can I do with a media studies degree?
University rank tables for communication and media studies degrees 2016
A matter of hours after giving birth to Leo, one of the midwifery team asked me what contraception I was planning to use now my baby was here. I don’t know about you but I found this question a bit pointless, surely after just going through the horrendous pain of labour sex is the last thing on any woman’s mind? Maybe hours after just giving birth this might not seem important but at some point, unless you want lots of kids, it is something you are going to have to think about. View Post
I don’t know about you but when I was pregnant I worried about every little thing. Should I be eating this? Am I exercising enough? Have I bought enough baby grows? Early on in my pregnancy, besides the health of my growing baby, the thing I worried about the most was telling my boss the good news. I was new to my job and was nervous about telling my new boss I was pregnant as I was yet to feel like a fully established member of staff, I was very much still the new girl.
My 12 week scan was rapidly approaching and I knew it would soon be time to tell my employer about the pregnancy, I wasn’t going to be able to hide it forever. The day after my scan I decided to tell her, I convinced myself I was stressing over nothing. Yes I was new but I was doing well in my work and we seemed to have a good relationship, surely I had nothing to worry about.
Unfortunately, I was right to be so concerned.
I was not greeted with congratulations and well wishes, instead I was told it was very likely my employment would be terminated as my boss wanted someone who was fully committed to the business, I had every intention of working up until the very last few weeks of pregnancy and planned to only take 6 months maternity leave, it was my first job after university and I was eager to make it work. I was never able to prove what the business meant to me, the following week I was told the job was no longer mine.
3 moths pregnant and unemployed. Not exactly the ideal situation.
Friends and family told me it wasn’t fair – ‘she can’t do that?’ , ‘is that even legal?’. As it turns out, no it is not legal. My not so lovely boss had breached discrimination laws set out in the Equality and Employment rights acts. A quick phone call with citizen advice bureau revealed what happened to me was not just illegal but I also had a strong case for compensation.
This is not what I wanted when I first found out I was expecting. I wanted my boss to be OK with it and to have my job waiting for me when I came back from maternity leave. I did not want to be dealing with a solicitor and a messy compensation case up until the time I was 8 months pregnant. I did not want to have to read my now ex employers defence statement, full of lies, painting me as an incompetent employee, when in fact I worked hard every single day.
We don’t always get what we want though, do we?
After everything, I only came away with £4000 in compensation. Just over 4 months worth of wages. 4 months I could have still been working for her, by that point I would have been 7 months pregnant and still very capable of sitting at a computer answering emails and making phone calls. This £4000 by no stretch of the imagination covered my loss of earnings, let alone my loss of maternity pay. This was a settlement reached out of court, a trial could have resulted in a much higher payment but could have also resulted in nothing. It all would have depended on how the judge was feeling on the day. 8 months pregnant, extremely hormonal and stressed, I decided to settle out of court. I could not stand to listen to my boss tell the judge her web of lies, so for my health and my baby’s, we took her offer.
Now I am not saying this is going to happen to you or you should try and claim compensation if it does. That decision is up to you. All I am saying is know your rights before you tell your boss about your pregnancy. It is better to be informed, just in case.
As a pregnant employee you have 4 main rights –
1. The right to paid time off for antenatal care
2. The right to not be treated differently/discriminated against due to your pregnancy
3. The right to maternity leave
4. The right to maternity pay/maternity allowance
If your employer denies you of any of these things then they are breaking the law. Also, you do not have to tell your employer you’re pregnant as early as I did. If you have a physical job that may put you or your baby’s health at risk you may wish to share the news early on, otherwise you can wait until you are 25 weeks before you tell your employer. How I wish I had waited that long. If I wasn’t such an honest idiot and just invested in some baggy tops, I could have worked an extra 13 weeks. But I didn’t and there is no point looking back now.
Anyway, there is no way I would have swapped spending these 2 years I have had off with Leo for more time working for an employer who ultimately, wasn’t that nice or caring anyway.
If you want to find out more about your rights as a pregnant employee, .gov website and citizens advice have lots of useful information.
How did your boss react when you told them you were pregnant? Did you have a similar experience to me? If you are pregnant now and are looking to tell your boss soon, good luck and don’t worry, luckily my story is quite an uncommon one.
Dear new mummy,
Congratulations, your little baby is here. Well done you for choosing to breastfeed, you are about to start an incredible, emotional, rollercoaster journey. I am writing this letter to you to tell you what breastfeeding is really like. All the things your midwife has purposefully forgottten to tell you about I will share with you now. I don’t wish to put you off but it is good to be prepared for what is to come. Before I go any further let me just say, if in these early days you find breastfeeding is not for you after all, try not to beat yourself up about it. It is your decision how you choose to feed your baby and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. So, let’s get to it – the truth about breastfeeding.
The very first time you feed your baby may pass by in a bit of blur. You will still be running high on adrenaline and whatever pain relief you used during labour. The attention of the midwife will have switched to the opposite end of your body, she may now be trying to guide your nipple into your baby’s mouth instead of putting her hands ‘down there’ trying to feel the baby’s head, as she was doing only moments ago.
Don’t let this drug fueled first feed fool you, breastfeeding hurts. I wish this part wasn’t true but it is. I used to hold both my breath and my husbands hand for the first 10 seconds of every feed in those early days. The pain is not unbearable though, invest in some nipple cream and have lots of warm flannels at the ready. Once your baby is happily latched on the pain subsides and there is nothing quite like looking down at your newborns face, enjoyng the milk only you can give them.
In a couple days time something weird will happen, you will wake up and your boobs are going to be full to burst. When this happened to me I cried, a lot. Up until this day you have been feeding your baby colostrum (or ‘liquid gold’ as the midwives call it), now for some stupid reason, all you milk has decided to collect in your boobs at once. You and baby now have the scary task in front of you of sorting out your supply. This is not as difficult as it may seem, I promise. The best way to relieve the pain of your milk coming in is to feed your baby. It will probably be the last thing you want, a tiny mouth sucking on your over sensitive breast, but it will help with the pressure and will help your body to figure out its supply.
The next few weeks will pass by in a blur of night feeds, visitors, films and countless cups of undrunk, cold tea. Slowly but surely you and your baby will start getting a hang of things and by 6 weeks you should be starting to feel a lot more comfortable about this whole breastfeeding thing. You are likely to spend most of these early weeks sat on the sofa just in a nursing bra – this is great for skin to skin bonding with you baby, not so good for shareable mummy and baby photoographs.
Your boobs are going to develop a mind of there own and they will probably try and embarrass you on a daily basis. Showering becomes a risky game, warm water and full breasts do not mix well; sometimes you will leave the shower feeling dirtier than when you went in. Just when you think your supply has settled down, you will be feeding your baby and the other boob will get bored and decide to be funny. I learnt the hard way, always pack a spare bra, breast pads and top when leaving the house!
Breastfeeding in public, it’s something you probably stressed loads about when you were pregnant but it just takes a bit of getting used to. The double vest top method was a firm favourite of mine and I found it to be more discreet than attempting to hide my baby under a blanket. At the end of the day, breastfeeding is natural and if anyone tries to say anything to you then they are obviously stupid idiots. Please don’t ever feel you should hide away and feed your baby in a toilet, no one should be made to do that. You have every right to breastfeed your baby in public and although it’s daunting at first it really does get easier.
It is likely you are about to develop an appetite leaving you convinced you could actually eat a horse, and them some. This was a shock to me, in the first month or so of breastfeeding I was eating twice as much as when I was pregnant. If you are one of the lucky ones, breastfeeding will become the easiest diet you have ever been on. Although you may be eating more than ever, your baby will be stealing all your extra calories and loosing that mummy tum may turn out to not be so difficult after all.
There are probably going to be days where it all feels too much and you just want to switch to bottle feeding. Your baby may have been attached to you all day and fed all night but they are still crying, this doesn’t mean you are doing anything wrong, babies just can be awkward sometimes.
When the day comes and you decide your breastfeeding journey is over, don’t feel guilty. Be proud of what you have achieved, even if you only breastfeed your baby once today and decide that’s it, you have still given your baby something amazing. If, like myself, you have a happy, successful feeding relationship with your baby, when the last feed has ended you will feel both sad and proud. You will be sad you will no longer have this special time with your baby but you will look at your growing child, so much bigger than they are now on their first day, and think..
Once it is all over, you will miss it. You may not think that now as you struggle to get feeding started, or in a few days time when your nipples are hurting, but one day you will miss it. As your toddler sits drinking a beaker of cows milk, a year on from your last feed, you will hopefully remember your breastfeeding journey and smile.
Wendy x
