Blog

Highly skilled, compassionate support can feel ‘life saving’ for new families in crisis.

The early months with my daughter were very difficult due to (what we now know were) multiple food allergies and tongue tie.

A challenging start In 2019 I became a Mother to my first daughter. I thought I had prepared for the experience in as much depth as possible, I had the ‘equipment’, rallied my support and prepared myself for the newborn cocoon and the life changing reality that I knew was on the horizon. What I didn’t prepare myself for was the challenges I met with breastfeeding. I was shocked at how difficult I found it, both emotionally (with the weight of responsibility resting all on my

Before our son was born, I was keen to try and breastfeed, but I knew from my experience working with babies and their parents that it wasn’t always straightforward. I tried to get myself in the best position I could for breastfeeding. I had read books, harvested colostrum and once my son arrived, I put him to the breast within the first hour like everything I had read told me to do. Early days It was painful. But so was everything at that point, and the midwife said that lat

*** Trigger warning, this story is a personal experience of postnatal depression *** My experience of having my second baby was so very different to what it was like when I became a mother for the first time. I thought I knew what I was doing but this new baby taught me that really, I had to start again from scratch. I remember day after day of our beautiful baby boy being sick, crying, in distress and not sleeping. It will get better we thought, this is just what it’s like w

Without really thinking about it too much I decided I would breastfeed. I didn’t know much about it and I didn’t know anyone else who breastfed but after attending some online classes I felt confident in the theory and didn’t think it would be that hard. My birth didn’t quite go to plan but within the first hour of giving birth Rosie was given to me and the midwives helped me get her to latch. Only Rosie didn’t want to latch; she wouldn’t open her mouth and put her head back

My son Edward was born with a tongue tie and like many other new parents with tongue tied babies we were desperate to help him. He was losing weight and constantly crying because he just couldn't latch properly and get a good enough feed and we felt absolutely awful that he was struggling so much. He had been referred at birth to a lactation consultant but a week went by and we'd heard nothing. By this point Edward had lost 10.4% of his body weight. We had been told about Bab

Trigger warning: birth story, stop-start labour From the minute a baby is conceived there is something that develops that can ruin absolutely everything… expectation. Expectations can be tough. At times they have taken me from a blissful state dreaming of what my life is going to be like to sitting on the bathroom floor crying my eyes out in milliseconds! I am not sure where these expectations come from - social media, books, stories you hear - but they can be dangerous for u

Rowan’s arrival Rowan’s arrival into the world was swift! A planned, and much desired, home birth came off like a dream. Start to finish, it was three hours! The midwives got here for the pushing stage and to help me deliver him. Crispin was an absolute rock, making phone calls, encouraging me, advocating for me when I didn’t want coaching, giving me sips of water and ultimately holding me in a supported squat for delivery. The placenta delivery and some stitching was done ju

As we launch our first poetry evening for Baby Umbrella, I thought I would try to explain what writing means to me and how it links to my motherhood journey. I’ve not historically been a huge writer, I've never had a diary and I never wrote poetry before I became a mother. I suppose the first reflective writing I did was in processing my births. The birth of my firstborn was in some ways amazing and in other ways traumatic. I remember feeling, after that birth, a real need an

One of the things parents often say when they’ve recently had a baby, and even more so when they've had a difficult journey, is why did nobody tell me that this was going to be so hard? Why did nobody tell me the truth about breastfeeding, or birth, or sleep, or the emotional transition, or the physical recovery? If I'd have known some of this, I could have prepared myself... and maybe I would have known better if something was wrong. We'd like to start to tell some of these