Terrible two's already???

So this week, the devil child rose from the flames in the form of my ginger son!

I don't understand what has happened, but he has become an absolute menace! If he's not whinging, he's shaking his head and telling me no to absolutely everything. We have had many episodes of complete throwing himself on the floor, kicking, screaming and generally showing me up.

I had to take him for a hospital appointment on Wednesday straight from work, just a routine check up after a little op he had last year. I won't go into details, but he'll thank me when he's older. After me becoming so stressed out trying to park at Medway for over half an hour, we finally arrived 15 minutes late. When reaching the pediatric centre, I thought Noah would be in his element with the big play area. Instead he didn't want to get out of his pram, then he didn't want to get back in it, he wanted me to hold him, then he didn't want me to hold him.............. this is how it went on until I put him on the floor and told him to have a paddy. I didn't even care that other people were watching, I had just about had enough at that point! I even said to him that "I picked you up an hour ago and yet I want to take you back"! Awful, I know, but sometimes when you have wished for the whole day to go past so you can see your baby, then they annoy you so much within an hour, its quite upsetting!

We eventually were seen and then made our way for the exit. This was after I pinned Noah in the pram and then realised I had left my purse in the car, all the way back in the multi storey car park! Argh! In the stress of being late, I had left my purse in my hand bag rather than the change bag and so now had to go back to get it before I could pay for the ticket. I just wanted to get home. That evening, he was so hyperactive he was standing on the table jumping around and we couldn't wait to put him to bed. Every night this week, we have been looking forward to bed time, something we usually wish we could drag out.

I don't think it helps that he is not in a baby room at nursery as it needs double glazing, so he doesn't get to nap. It completely knocks our routine out and makes him such a different child. So frustrating, but they seem to not have any answers for it and I'm fed up of asking and moaning. Tony's turn to ask I think!

 The rest of the week seemed to continue in the same way. We went for dinner last night at The Harrow Inn and he just ran around screaming until our food arrived. He then sat in the high chair screaming. In the comfort of our own home, we ignore the screaming completely, thinking it is an attention seeking thing. When out at a restaurant, it is impossible to ignore. So embarrassing!

Today has been a good day I must admit. Then again, I weren't with him this morning. He was at my mums whilst I had my hair done at Images in Sheerness. Apparently he had a few tantrums, but nothing more than throwing himself on the floor. We then went for a bridesmaid dress fitting for my sister's wedding which is in September. There were toys and chocolate buttons to keep him happy, so was uneventful. We were supposed to be at a party tonight, but as he woke up at 4 this morning, a very rare occurance, both myself and Tony are too tired to go out. Never thought I would hear myself say that, but it comes to us all in the end!

Tony is working this weekend, so tomorrow me and Noah will be having an extremely lazy day at home. Cannot wait! Think I'll get my onesie on, bath Noah and put him back in a babygrow. Might even let him watch Peppa Pig all day! I'm really hoping we have a lovely day together, as I hate being annoyed with him when I don;t get to see him enough.

I'm thinking positive.............. if the terrible two's have started now, does it mean they will end sooner?!

On the plus side to this week, I'm off to see One Direction tomorrow night. I cannot explain my excitement about this other than, I've decided I need to dress a little sexy just in case Harry Styles see's me in the crowd and decides he wants to sing to me! I know at 30 this may seem a little sad, but this is the sort of thing that happens when you sit at home watching day time tv on maternity leave.

So Tony is at home with DC (devil child) tomorrow night. I shall leave out a survival guide and a list of emergency numbers in case it gets completely out of hand. If all else fails, a white hanky for surrender should be sufficient!

Valentines Schmalentines.....

Only just got round to sitting down and writing a Valentines update on the blog. Hectic weekend as always!

Having only been together almost 4 years, we decided to no longer 'do' Valentines Day after the 2nd year. It just seems a pointless waste of money when we tell each other we love each other every day and have a wedding to save for etc.

Now this doesn't necessarily mean that I would not like a spontaneous gift brought in for me!!!! I may say that we don't need to do Valentines Day, but that doesn't actually mean I want nothing at all on Valentines Day! In fact, it would be even nicer to get a little bunch of flowers or some chocolates as I would be totally not expecting it. But no! Nothing, nothing at all.

In fact Tony was working until 8pm and we were in that much of a rush in the morning that we didn't even say Happy Valentines Day to each other. I quickly sent a text to say it once Tony had left for work and he replied with "fancy getting one of those meal for 2 deals for dinner". That's as romantic as it gets!

Don't get me wrong, Tony can be the most romantic person in the world when he wants to be. His proposal to me 2 years ago was the most romantic moment of my life so far, but I have never had a bunch of flowers for 'no reason', in fact never any sort of gift for 'no reason'. He always says I would think he had done something wrong if he did that, but I wouldn't on Valentines Day.

A girly friend of mine came round for coffee and gossip and left shortly before Tony got home. I got the dinner on and Noah went to bed. After dinner, I think we had one little peck of a kiss as he didn't kiss me when he walked through the door, then we took our favourite positions on either end of the sofa.

When we went to bed, Tony fell asleep the quickest he has ever fallen asleep in the history of us being together! I couldn't believe it! Not even any sort of passion/romance, nothing! He was talking gibberish to me, which was actually annoying me more and more and in the end I just turned my back on him.

I suppose I need to realise I can't have it all as he tells me on a regular basis :-)

On the flip side, today I dragged him to a wedding fair at The Hop Farm where we looked at centre pieces, photographers, bands etc so I think that is sufficient payback for the lack of romance on Thursday.

I'm hoping one year I will get a little surprise that is totally unexpected, but with Tony that will more than likely be him leaving a piece of fruit in his bag and the surprise for me will be my finger going through the mouldy skin.

You win some, you lose some............... he's just lucky he's so good looking!

An eventful weekend.....

I woke up on Friday just gone, finally feeling like my 'food poisoning from the sausages' had begun to pass. I was having excruciating pains in my belly, but nothing I couldn't deal with. It was the last day of Tony's annual leave, so we decided to go to the gym together.

This is something that is a major hobby for Tony as well as being his job. For me it doesn't come so naturally but I'm gradually becoming addicted, wanting 'the body' and for everyone to say "you wouldn't believe she's had a baby"! One day, it will happen, but for the moment, it's work in progress.

We headed off to the gym, whilst Noah went to Nana's workplace for her to show him off. Tony's mum works at the hospital that Noah was born in and some of the ladies from her office hadn't seen him since he was born.

Time alone for me and Tony is precious now, but as you can see we aren't the conventional couple who go to the cinema/restaurant when we have a babysitter. We don't even rest! The gym for us, is a luxury though and so we do enjoy our time there (Tony loves his time there, looking in the mirrors........Lol).

We then popped into Maidstone town to buy birthday present's as it is the busiest weekend of all for birthday's in my family. We collected Noah, and headed to my mum's as it was my baby brothers 24th birthday. My nan was there who was so happy to see her only great-grandchild walking at last. Makes me feel awful for not seeing her more, but I just don't feel like I get a spare 5 mins to pop in and see her. I'll regret that one day seeing as she is almost 85.

We left my mum's really late, Noah was still wide awake, living the dream of being spoiled silly. I wouldn't mind him staying up so late if the little ginger sod would sleep in late, but he doesn't, so a lay in is still a very distant memory!

Saturday began and before we knew it we were running late for my cousin's daughters 2nd birthday party. "Where are the car keys Sar" I was being asked. "I don't know Tone. If you put them back where they should go behind the phone, you would be able to find them". This is a regular occurance in our house and yet it never changes! It appeared Noah had been playing with them and we had no idea where they had been put. We couldn't even take my car as for some reason my keys were in Tony's car, which was locked and the keys were lost.

After 20 minutes of looking everywhere, I found them behind the kitchen door on the floor. I can imagine Noah thinking this would be fun...... "the losers won't find them here"!

We headed off to the party, which was craziness as it always is with my family. Wouldn't change it for the world though. Whilst at the party, we decided skips aren't the way forward for Noah. Hyperactivity levels went off the scale! He had fun though and it was soon time to head home as both me and Tony were out Saturday night.

From this blog, I sound like I have a lot of fun lately, but I can promise my social life is never as good as this is making it seem. I must be having a block of social events, making me seem quite the party goer!

I got ready, all glammed up in shoes I cannot walk in. Oh my god, they are the death shoes! Inside, I can do it. Get me on concrete, I'm like Bambi on ice. Really not attractive, but the shoes are amazing, so I didn't care. Gold glitter platforms, what more could a girl ask for, except a broken neck which I was anticipating later in the night.

I met the babygroup girls and we headed out first to The Cricketers which is our funky local and then over to Mumu in Maidstone. Now this was a much calmer night out than we usually have, but was still a lovely evening. I made it until 1:30am on Sunday, neck intact, before heading back to Tony's parents house, where Noah was tucked up fast asleep. Tony got in about 10 minutes after me and we both fell asleep pretty quick, knowing Noah would be awake at 7:30 ish.

He did us proud and slept through until 9:00am giving us a little lay in. Nothing compares to our 1:00pm lay in's we used to have, but we'll take 9:00 any day now!

We had another party to attend today, my cousin's son's 1st birthday. So we headed home shortly after a fry up, got ready and out for the next one. Yet again another day with the crazy lot. We usually only see each other at Christmas so the joke was that we'd seen each other twice in 1 weekend. Love us all getting together though, have such a laugh. Really should do it more often.

Before we knew it, it was 5:00pm and time to head home to get a roast on and get ready for the 'back to work' Monday. For the first time ever I made Noah's lunch the night before, had his bag packed and ready to go. It didn't make things majorly easier in the morning but it gave me 5 mins extra to get ready.

Already my leave feels like a million years ago and I'm back into the daily slog once again. I'm lucky to have Friday's off each week so the countdown is well and truly underway. That is how I live my life. Monday begins, I countdown to Thursday 4:00pm, when I can hope the hours pass slowly until Monday again.

This weekend I have already stated we are doing nothing. I can't wait! Although I guarantee that we will end up doing something and Monday will be here before we know it.

In fact, I've just remembered we are out Sunday.

I'm guessing life would be boring if it wasn't so busy, but sometimes it would be nice for time to stand still just for an hour.

I'm blaming it on the sausages.......

I've had a few days off work this week with Tony and Noah which has been lovely. Took Noah for lunch and to see the animals at The Barnyard in Upchurch. We haven't been there before and it was a really amazing place. Not a bad price for food and to see the animals is free. When we left there, we then went to the Riverside Country Park in Lower Rainham. The fact that we have lived in this area now for a year and half, yet only just visiting these places is shocking, but now we've been I think we will visit them both regularly. Noah loved his time on the swings and slide and we enjoyed a cuppa in the cafe.

I really do like to make the most of my time off with Noah and feel bad that we often have days where we don't leave the house, so days out like this are brilliant for us all.

My annual leave ended last night when I had to travel to Rugby to attend a full staff meeting today. I managed to get out of the driving role and travelled up with 3 of my girlies from my work team. The plan was to get there about 9:30pm, dump our bags and head to the bar. The bar at the training college, which is where our full staff meeting was taking place, is notorious for its cheap drink and everyone being drunk.

We started off with 2 bottles of cheap rose wine between the the 4 of us and got chatting to colleagues we don't get to see very often. Before we knew it, we were buying another 2 bottles and a couple of bags of dry roasted peanuts. They would soak it up!

Now, 3 out of us 4 girls are mummy's and we don't get out much. That's what I am blaming it on. That and the fact that the bar is so cheap that it would be rude to not abuse it. We decided to head back to one of the girls room for tea and mini eggs and before we knew it, the clock said 1:40am. This is late for me! Very late! So we headed off to bed and I think I was asleep within seconds.

This morning when the alarm went off at 7:00am I obviously snoozed it for half hour. Eventually got up, showered, dressed and met the other girls for breakfast. The food at the training college is known to not be good, so I went for a safe 2 sausages, egg and plum tomatoes. As soon as I sat down, everyone commented on the sausages not being good. They did the trick though of making me feel slightly better and we were soon heading off to the meeting.

This is where it all went wrong. I was soon sitting in the meeting listening to the big boss man talking feeling very ill. I was sweating, feeling faint and starting to get the sick feeling. I had to get out of there, so myself and one of my lovely colleagues got up and walked out. It almost looked like we said "this is boring, lets go" but if I had of stayed I fear the row in front would have been in for a shock!

I got out of the door, knew the toilets were too far away so just decided to be sick on the gravel outside the main entrance. So classy! A meeting where every member of my work team were present, regional team, the big bosses I decide to be sick. I couldn't even blag this one on it being a bug as they were all in the bar with us the night before. How embarrassing!

After 4 times of being sick and generally feel pants all day, one of the Area Managers told me to go home. I could've kissed her, but I don't think she would have appreciated it with my sick breath.

The running joke all day has been the fact that I have blamed it on something else even though I knew it was the wine. So first of all, it had to be the sausages! Then a blueberry muffin, then the heat in the conference centre.............. this went on until we were on our way home and I finally admitted "I think it was the wine".

It wouldn't have been so bad if we weren't in the bar, giving it the big I am, swigging wine from the bottle, calling on after partys and then spent the day being sick. But it was there for everyone to know, I had been drunk and couldn't handle it.

I'm now officially a lightweight!

What I've learned is, don't give it the 'biggun' when your out of practice and can't lie the next day!

Life now......

I returned to work last May and have now been back at work 9 months. Noah is now 19 months old and the time is flying by so quickly! I now feel that I never had any time off at all and can't believe how soon you just settle back into working life.

Life is certainly hectic though!

My daily morning routine consists of: alarm set for 6:20am (snoozed until 6:45 to maximise snuggly cuddle time), up, dressed, hair run through with GHD's, make up slapped on, sort Noah's clothes, meet the boys downstairs where Noah has had his bottle and maybe a bum change, start doing Noah's lunch, say same thing as every day "need to start doing this the night before", get Noah dressed, both clean our teeth, suddenly realise I need some lunch for the day, say good-bye to Tony, get Noah's shoes and coat on, chase him around the house, get loaded up with bags like a pack horse, out the door by 7:30am.

PHEW!!!!!!!

I then have a 25 minute journey to work where I chat to Noah as much as I can, with the limited words he can say. This usually involves some amount of stress and annoyance with meeting a tractor on the way which means the clock ticks by even quicker.

I drop Noah off at about 7:55, which no longers consists of tears on my behalf (he has never cried) but more a throw the bag through the door and pinning him down for a quick kiss. I then get to work for 8:00am, ready to start the day. I'm lucky to work directly opposite the nursery and so it means maximum time with my ginger ninja!

Kettle on, computer loading, the day begins. Work is pretty mundane, I work in I.T. How I work in I.T I will never know! I have no clue about computers but I'm good at my job if I say so myself and that's all that is needed. I work with a fab group of people and without them I don't think it would be the same. The morning seems to fly by and before I know it, it's lunch time. Me and a couple of the girls head off to the work gym for a quick work out and return afterwards feeling all slim and good about ourselves. Hence I said feeling there and not actually being, me that is, not the other girls!

Then the drag begins. All I want is for it to be 4:00pm so that I can go and collect Noah and make the most of the evening we have left. Eventually 3:45pm arrives, I wash my mug up and start to pack away, ready to be out of the building and to my car a minute after 4:00pm. I shoot round to the nursery, usually there by 4:03pm and rush in to get the monkey. He never wants to leave, which makes me feel great, but I'd rather that than him not want to be there.

We arrive home at about 4:35pm, get in, make a cuppa, get the tv on, and think what to have for dinner. Tony usually arrives home about 5:15pm unless he is on a 12 hour shift, which means he wont be home until 8:00pm instead. I get out lots of Noah's toys and we have play time on the rug. We have dinner about 6:00pm, I then bath Noah, get him ready for bed, read him a book and he has his last bottle. We try to get him to bed by 7:30pm, not always I must admit, but that is the plan. He usually falls asleep within 5 mintues and my feet can finally go up on the sofa.............. yeah right!

I then load the washing machine, do the washing up, make another cuppa, dry up and put away, get Noah's bag ready for the next day, have a shower, then I get to sit down and catch up on some tv. We like to be in bed by 10:00pm as we are just so shattered all the time, so not much down time before it all starts again. I must add, if Tony is home, he does help me with washing up etc, but it is more likely to be me doing it if he is working late.

At the point of going to bed I usually say the same thing every night consisting of, I still didn't paint my nails, I should've done Noah's lunch, I forgot to do this, that and everything else and then I wonder why I struggle to fall asleep immediately. I'm too busy thinking of everything that needs to be done the next day!

I often dream of what it must be like to be someone like Coleen Rooney. Never really had to work a day, except everything she's been handed because of being a footballers wife, probably has a cleaner, lives the life of riley and yet I bet she still complains about something. To be fair, she is married to Shrek so that I suppose that evens it out a bit, but sometimes what I'd give to swap lives just for a day.

The difference being all I would like is to wake up and say to Noah, what shall we do today then Mr Ginger? Shall we go and play at the park? Shall we go for a picnic? Shall we have a pyjama day?

One day I will get to do this, but at the moment I just live for my annual leave breaks and pray they are the slowest days known to man!

Reality strikes........

Before I knew it, my 10 months maternity leave was coming to an end. I had made some brilliant new friends from attending the sure start babygroups, which really helped me having just moved to a completely new area and I didn't want this time to ever be over. A few of the girls weren't returning to work and if they were they were only doing a couple of days.

I had been attending cognitive behaviour therapy sessions for a while now and I felt as though I had got as far as I ever would with getting over what happened to me. I think to be honest time would be a better healer than any couselling sessions, but I'm glad I had them as they taught me to open up and talk when I needed to. Something I have always struggled with.

My start back at work date was 9th May but I had been having some 'keep in touch days' from February, just to break me in gently and get me used to working again. Now these days were a big false interpretation of what returning to work would really be like. For one thing, Noah was at home with Tony on these days as we had arranged them around his rest days and secondly I didn't have any real responsibilities at work. I just went in, got logged on, sorted through the thousands of emails, chatted to the girls and drank tea. If only every day was like that!

Tony's parents had decided they were going to treat us to a holiday in April, just before I returned to work. We went to Portugal for a week and I saw this as the final family time before I was shoved back into the daily grind. It was lovely, except I was ill, Noah never slept a night whilst we were away and I decided holidays just weren't the same now we had a baby. They were hard work, like everything else!

The week away went so quickly and before I knew it we were flying home and I was returning to work in 2 days time. I must admit at this point I was strangely looking forward to it. I believe that everyone needs some time out and adult time. I have never been the sort of person to completely submerge myself in baby activities and I was excited that I would be Sara again and not just Noah's mummy. I was hoping that my brain would return as I felt it had turned to mush sitting at home not having to really use it too much, although I fear that was a serious case of baby brain. Affects every pregnant woman for the rest of her life and I am still waiting to fully recover!

I remember the first day back, I was excited about wearing work clothes and having my handbag ready to go, rather than a change bag in tow. It was such a strange feeling, almost like your first day back at school. Excited but nervous. I think the nerves mainly stemmed from the fact that Noah was to attend nursery for the first day as well. My tiny little bundle was now a 10 month old and I was having to pay someone else to do all the things with him I wanted to do. It was heartbreaking.

I remember pulling up in the car park, and almost wanting to prolonge the getting him out of the car seat part of the journey. I couldn't kiss him enough and told him that I love him so many times. I bet he was thinking "ok mum, give it a rest. I've got a reputation to uphold here". I pushed the buzzer on the electronic door and they buzzed us through. The girls were lovely, bubbly and young, ready to take my little monkey for a day of fun and games. I gave them his bag, ran through any details and passed him over. Said my good-byes and returned to the car.

This is where I cried, and cried, sobbed a little and cried.

I felt awful. Was I making the wrong decision? The problem I had was that I didn't have any other decisions to make. I had to return to work.

Life is precious.......

I was brought back up to the delivery suite with my new baby boy, but I remember this wasn't really on my mind. I remember feeling very ill and just wanting to sleep. I know Tony's parents came in to see their new grandson but I think I just sat with my head back and eye's closed not really 'with it'. My mum came in to see her first grandchild and my sister called me on the phone but I couldn't really talk. I just wanted to sleep.

This whole time is an absolute blur to me, and luckily I have Tony who has filled in some of the gaps for me and I have a copy of my hospital notes that I was able to read through. I remember the room being full of people and the midwives stating that something was not right. Before I knew it they were saying they needed to rush me back to theatre, Tony was saying a teary goodbye to me and my brother was unable to come in to see Noah.

I had been hemorrhaging for an hour and half due to my uterus not contracting and had lost approx 2.5 litres there and then on the bed in front of Tony. I was losing a constant amount of blood at a fast rate all the way back to the theatre. My mum just saw the bed whizz past her and as much as she tried to chase it, she couldn't catch them. She had no idea what had happened or where they were taking me.

I remember as soon as I got into theatre the anaesthetist said they were going to put me to sleep and that the on-call obstetrician consultant had arrived. I know that they tried absolutely everything they could to stop the bleeding. They firstly tried manually massaging my uterus, but this didn't work. By this point I had lost a lot of blood and they were pumping it back into me as quick as it was coming out. They then decided they needed to use a bakri balloon, which was inserted into my uterus and sutured to try and control the bleeding. I was put into intensive care with the plan being that I would stay there until my body had recovered but an hour later they came to check on me and realised I was bleeding through again.

Another consultant had arrived at the hospital by that point so that they had 2 pairs of eye's to make sure they weren't missing anything. I was returned to theatre, where they removed the balloon and my uterus was still completely floppy. I was still hemorrhaging at this point and they knew it was time they needed to speak to Tony and my family. They said that they couldn't stop the bleeding as they couldn't get my uterus to contract. The only way they could hopefully finally stop the bleeding was to remove what was bleeding, by performing a hysterectomy.

This put Tony in the most awful position anyone should be in. Not only has he thought all night that they were going to tell him I had died, but they then tell him the only way for me to survive is by removing any chance of us having another baby. They returned to theatre and performed a sub-total hysterectomy, meaning that I still have my ovaries and I was not forced into the menopause at 28 years old.

This finally stopped the bleeding. I lost 8 litres altogether, which considering your body only has 5 litres, is a lot of blood!

I was returned to intensive care at about 3am and placed on a ventilator so as my body could recover and get me back fighting fit. They thought I would be asleep for a lot longer than I was, but typical me I began to wake up at noon on the 7th July, gagging at the ventilator being removed from my throat. I didn't know anything that had happened to me and everyone was told not to tell me as the consultant wanted to be able to tell me without me getting too upset. I just knew what they were going to say though. I don't know how, maybe from hearing it in my time on the ventilator, but I just knew. The consultant came in and told me, I cried lots but felt so ill still it didn't sink in straight away. I just wanted to get back to see Noah.

I finally returned to the delivery suite later that afternoon and they turned it into a high dependency room for me so that I could be with Noah and have as many visitors as I wanted.

I cried the second they wheeled me back into the room. How had things gone so wrong? I was seeing Noah properly for the first time almost 19 hours after he was born. We had no photo's of me holding him within seconds of his birth, we had no happy memories from this time. I couldn't even hold him for the first 3 days and a midwife said I needed to hold him for both our sakes. I managed to sit up and cuddle my pride and joy at last.

We came home from hospital finally on Monday 11th July and I was ready to settle into the new role of motherhood. It brought other emotions with it though. I was so upset with everything that had happened. I always wanted at least 2 children, if not more, and this had been taken from me. It was all I could think about.

I had missed so much in those first 19 hours of Noah's life, I didn't change his first nappy, didn't feed him his first bottle, didn't get to put him in the babygrow I had ready and waiting for months, wasn't the first person to cuddle him. I was desperate to never miss anything else ever in his life.

How was I going to do this though when I knew in 10 months time I had to return to work? It made this time at home with him even more precious and made me wish for a lottery win more than ever. I knew returning to work would be hard anyway, yet this made it one of the most dreaded things in my life so far.

From day one......

I had recently gained a promotion at work in March 2010 and was still settling down into the role when in May I realised I was 'late'.

I'll never forget the weekend before, we had attended a wedding reception and I was extremely drunk. Then I had a complete melt down about being so fat and decided to go crazy on the Wii Fit. We had an exotic holiday to the Dominican Republic booked and life was pretty carefree.

I decided to do a test without my fiance Tony, who was then my boyfriend, knowing (even though i'd promised him I wouldn't do it without him) and was absolutely gobsmacked when the 2 lines appeared.

We'd been together just over a year and was not expecting that! Although the happy/shock soon turned into sadness/shock when I woke up in the middle of the night bleeding heavily. I suffered a miscarriage at 6 weeks. Within 5 days we had been through so many emotions, it was quite a whirlwind.

The whirlwind time almost pushed us into realising what we really wanted for our relationship and we decided to just 'let things happen' for the future. 

I booked a break away to Devon for Tony's birthday in October and this turned out to be the month to change our lives forever. Not only did my one true love propose to me whilst we were away, but I also must have fallen pregnant as well! We were so happy and this time it just felt completely different.

We decided to buy a house within this stressful time, just to make sure that we never had a moment of calm, but we needed to get out of the parents house before the baby arrived.The pregnancy was amazing! Sorry to anyone who has struggled! No morning sickness, no problems at all, no stretch marks and the house completed a month before my due date.

My due date was 5th July 2011 and the morning of that date I just knew things were starting. By 6pm that night, whilst out shopping in Dunelm Mill, my contractions were every 6 minutes apart and my mum decided we needed to call it a day with the house furnishings. So I called Tony who decided it wasn't serious enough yet for him to come home from work and he would stay there until his shift finished at 8pm. So laid back!

I didn't go to the hospital until 2am on the 6th July and was told I was still only 2-3cm dilated. I managed to stay on a ward without Tony until I was 4cm, when he was able to return and I was transferred to the delivery suite. The labour continued at what I thought was a really slow rate, but in fact wasn't too bad. I managed to get the only birthing pool available and was in that for a long time with only gas and air keeping me going. My waters still hadn't gone but oh my god, when they finally did, I think I resembled a wild boar being killed slowly. Agony!!!!

Anyway, I ended up out of the birthing pool, back in the delivery suite, epidural in situ, things not really going to plan. The baby was distressed, had pooed lots and 'its' heartrate was dropping. They decided the baby was large and wasn't going to come out naturally, so I was rushed down for an emergency c-section. Something I did not want at all. All I've ever wanted was to give birth naturally and it was not going to be possible. As long as the baby was ok, they were my main thoughts.

At 20:16pm on Wednesday 6th July 2011, my life changed massively. I became a mummy to a gorgeous little ginger boy whom we named Noah.

It's amazing how quickly things can change though. That day was the best day of my life but also the worst and it's something I will never get over..............

Hello and welcome.......

Hello to everyone who has stumbled across my new blog page and is reading this first message I have written!

I decided to begin a blog so that I could share the ups and downs of having a hectic lifestyle, juggling being a mummy, running a house, as well as having a career. In the modern world that we live in, I come across so many women who like myself have to return to work after having a baby even though it is something they desperately wish they didn't have to do.

I hope to share my feelings, some of which I hope people can relate to, as well as laugh along with the crazy things that happen in my life.

Not much fun for a working mum................ but soooooo rewarding! xx