A representative for Huggies has contacted me to see if anyone would be interested in reviewing Huggies DryNite Shorts. These are for the potty training phase onwards so I am unable to take part. If you would be interested in getting a free pack of DryNites to review on your blog then contact Nicola directly at nicola@outsideline.co.uk.
If you don’t have a blog but would like to do a review, I’d be happy to publish it here at British Parent Bloggers.
My brother Piers introduced me to blogging. At the start I found the whole concept interesting but I didn’t want to write my own. Then with the launch of Littlelegends.biz, Piers insisted that we have a site blog as part of the whole social networking thing. I found the first few posts very daunting and I didn’t really get it. Who would be interested in reading the rubbish I write? To my surprise, quite a few! So, I carried on. However, Piers became worried that I might offend some of the Littlelegends.biz visitors with my points of view and he suggested that I start my own blog.
It is very different writing a personal blog as opposed to a site blog. After having terrified myself by writing about the dangers of baby blogs, I struggled to decide what to write about. But now I have given up worrying and I blog about whatever interests me, which is often mum stuff. I have made some good friends through blogging and I look forward to making many more 
Do pop by and say hello.
Visit manicmama at www.manicmama.co.uk
So you’ve decided you want to have a baby? Congratulations, you have taken the first step towards becoming a parent. Your body is going to be your baby’s home for the duration of your pregnancy and you have recognised the need to make it the best you can offer to your unborn child. As a midwife I am aware that many people put more effort into planning a holiday than they do into organising one of the most important events of their lives. Everyone should view pregnancy as lasting at least 12 months and preconception care is especially important if you have any medical condition. The better prepared you are, the better you will cope with this major life change.
The countdown begins here:
At least 12 months before you begin trying to conceive a baby there are important things you need to consider. Start by making an appointment to see your GP, so that you can tell him/her that you are planning to become pregnant and to discuss important issues like:
Try to have a parenting partnership and encourage each other to adopt similarly healthy lifestyles. Of utmost importance is to stop smoking and drink only in moderation at least 12 months before you begin trying to conceive your baby. In addition, consider the following:
Exercise - Start or continue to exercise daily for as long as you can manage comfortably. I strongly recommend gentle exercise, such as walking or swimming in a warm pool as a minimum; if you can manage more than this then do so. Exercise helps your body do everything more efficiently.
Folic acid- When you stop taking your oral contraceptive you should begin taking 400 micrograms of folic acid (0.4mg) each day, even though you won’t be trying to conceive straight away. It won’t do you any harm and it will give you time to make it into a habit. Folic acid helps prevent some structural defects in babies, particularly ones relating to the brain and spinal cord known as neural tube defects. You should also eat foods which are rich in folic acid such as green leafy vegetables, nuts (though avoid peanuts during this period, during pregnancy and until you have stopped breastfeeding), cooked dried beans, citrus fruits, avocado, raspberries, raw mushrooms and vegemite. It is also important to take a vitamin supplement which is suitable for pregnancy as certain vitamins are not. If you drink herbal teas check they are safe during pregnancy and the same goes for any essential perfume oils you may use. For example rose and clary sage along with many others are not safe to use during pregnancy.
Essential fatty acids- Increase your intake of these to help maximise fertility. They are also good for the development of your baby’s nervous system and brain. They can be found in foods which contain the oils Omega 3, 6 & 9, which are added to numerous products today even certain brands of eggs and milk.
Protein- Protein rich food is an essential part of our diet and can be found in foods such as eggs, meat (avoid eating liver from conception), pulses, and grains such as quinoa. Eat no more than a palm sized amount of protein with each meal for a balanced diet.
Calcium- Helps strengthen bones and aids your body absorb vitamin D. Calcium is found in foods such as cheese, yogurt, milk, ice cream, kale, collard greens, turnip greens, broccoli, tofu and tinned salmon or sardines.
For men- Maximise sperm count and motility by eating regular portions of fish, eggs, mushrooms, oysters, pumpkin seeds and other zinc rich food. Smoking and alcohol have been found to reduce sperm counts and to increase the production of damaged sperm.
Try to eat foods in a variety of colours with each meal to ensure that your diet is balanced. For example, if you had free range meat, red, green and yellow roasted peppers (try coating them in pesto sauce before popping them under the grill), carrots and broccoli and some potatoes or rice, your meal will contain many vitamins and minerals which are vital for health.
Visit your dentist early on during these 12 months to complete any dental work you may require and to gain advice about what changes pregnancy may cause to your teeth and gums. It also gives you another excuse to talk about your impending pregnancy! Finally and perhaps most important of all, enjoy and cherish the company of your partner during this exciting time in your lives.
I write 3 blogs. ‘Exquisite dreams‘ is where I go to relax and put up posts about random things that come to min . On Wednesdays I have a photo with a compettition seeking entries for the best caption. ‘Adventures of a wild hippie child‘ is one of my novels in progress and I put up a new post each Friday. ‘The novel with no name‘ is my other novel in progress and I put up a post here each Sunday. I have 2 websites, my writers website which you can link to from my ‘Exquisite dreams’ blog and the other which is my Maternity support site and can be found at this address www.thepregnancypeople.co.uk.
**British Parent Bloggers is sponsored by Bras4Mums, run by mum of two T-J.
You may or may not have been enjoying my blogging series. If you haven’t been in enjoying it, it’s likely that it is too basic for you. If you are looking for some advanced ideas regarding blogging, traffic building, SEO, monetizing your blog or starting a business blog you should consider downloading this Free Ebook which covers all of the above. I found it quite useful and am implementing some of the ideas.
I don’t like to take life too seriously. If you’re partial to a bit of good old fashioned British humour, with a hint of sarcasm and (always) a twinkle in the eye – not forgetting the chocolate coating – you’ve pretty much summed me up.
It’s not so much your run of the mill mum-blog, as an observation of life in general. You really have to go there to see what I mean, but I tend to leave the nappy stuff to the first time mums (who still find the various shades of poo exciting) and instead concentrate on the interesting stuff. Like, um, how I came to squash a snail, fold-up bikes and flat pack furniture.
I’m not really selling this am I? Well, I guess you’ll either like me or you won’t.
It is a very pretty site though. And I do poems too [yeah, that’ll sway ‘em]. Well, strictly speaking I like to think of it as more rhymey stuff than real poetry, but it keeps me off the streets. Maybe I should read my poems on the streets? Sorry, I digress.
To sum up, I’m English, I’m a mum of three, I have, by some miracle, managed to stay married (to the same man) for 18 years and I like writing about stupid stuff. If you’ve got to this point and are still reading, you’d probably like my site – so I’ll see you there!
Visit English Mum at www.anenglishmum.com
When you have a free blog your address will look like this www.myblog.blogspot.com or www.myblog.wordpress.com, however, when you are ready to own your own blog the first thing you need to do is buy the domain name. I have used 123 reg for all three of my domain names and have found them to be very good, if anyonelse has a recommendation please leave a comment.
The next step is to purchase hosting, this is basically who stores all your pages. I use Laughing Squid and they cost around £4-5 per month for each site. 123 reg also do hosting if you want to stick to the same company as your domain name. UK2 and UK Domains also do hosting packages.
Unless you know how to code your own site (!) it is widely recommended that you install wordpress. Wordpress, in basic terms, is the bit you see when you visit a site, it’s the graphics, the header, the posts etc.. It provides you with the platform on which to start publishing. There are lots of techy types that will be happy to install wordpress for you, for a small fee (Dave has done both of my sites).
Alternatively, if you already have web development knowledge or are able to follow step by step instructions I can recommend this ebook - Wordpress Guide. It is written in a very simple and straight forward language, and takes you through the whole process step by step, I think it costs like £3.50 so it’s a bargain too. Ignore the sales page which sells it as a money making machine blah di blah, it’s a basic manual that will take you through getting started. I know the person who wrote it through a group I’m in so if you have any problems when ordering it, let me know.
If any of my fellow Brit Parent Bloggers can add to my limited knowledge in this area please step forward even if it’s just to share how you got up and running, I think that would be helpful.
Vikki at Little Legends has started a carnival for British Parents, read the first edition now. Well done Vicky for starting this, I sent in an entry for the first edition and will continue to do so. I would encourage all BPB members to send their own posts in too, carnivals are a great way to find new blogs and new readers for your own blog.
Most | Least has written a very strong post about her experiences of boarding school, I found it a real eye-opener.
On a more…errr… quirky note Mother at Large reports on breastfeeding - monkey style.
3kidsnojob shares the notes from the staff meeting -Very funny!
Billy the Toddler (or at least its author) share a funny, but kinda not funny at all conversation with a neighbour.
1. Close the door behind them, grab a coffee and listen to the wonderful sound of… NOTHINGNESS! No t/v, no computer, no video games, no screaming, no tantrums, no arguing, no whining, no constant requests for food, no mates knocking on the door every five minutes…
2. Safe in the knowledge that the floor will not get littered for at least a few hours, put all the toys away and rediscover your carpet. NB. This is not always a good thing…
3. Phone someone. Anyone. It doesn’t matter whom – just revel in the fact that the phone is free and that you can talk on it without getting interrupted.
4. Do your supermarket shop, treat yourself to a bar of chocolate and eat it all to yourself, without hiding it in your bag or down your t-shirt. Return home, beaming, and pat yourself, Asda style, counting how much money you’ve saved from not having the kids with you asking for stuff.
5. Sit on the sofa. This is a novelty as it has been filled with all the kids in the street – and their cousins – all summer.
6. While on the sofa, pick up the small oblong thing with buttons on and point it at the telly. This is called a ‘remote control’, and is what the kids have been using to hide ‘Loose Women’ and the News during the holidays. You could also use this opportunity to retune the Digi box, locking CBBC/CBeebies/CITV…
7. Check your offspring’s Myspace/Bebo account (you do know their password, right?). Remove all offensive material, and replace their ‘cool pic’ with a photo of them as a baby. Leave them a message stating that if they ever allow language like that on there again, the photos will get increasingly embarrassing. Replace the weird rapper dude video with one of Bucks Fizz and sign your message ‘Kool Momma’.
8. Look in all your hiding places in the kitchen for lost chocolate bars. Check the use by dates before eating them anyway.
9. Open the fridge. Surprise yourself that all the food you bought that morning is still there.
10. Feel no guilt whatsoever that you haven’t missed them when they all come trouping back in, leaving their school bags/shoes/jumpers wherever they happen to land.
And if you are one of those weird mothers who do actually miss their kids when they’re at school, take two bags of crisps, place them on the lounge carpet and jump on them. Empty a jigsaw puzzle and a box of lego on top, throw on a few pairs of pyjamas, some socks and several odd shoes and mix with a cup of soil from the garden. Open five DVD’s, mix them up and leave them strewn on the sofa, together with as many video controllers as you can find.
There. That should make it feel more like a home again. 
“Rachel Clark is An English Mum from a small town in the South of England. She enjoys writing about anything that pops into her head, and is happy if she makes other people smile. She doesn’t know why she is writing about herself in the third person, but feels very honoured to be contributing to the British Parent Bloggers site.
More of her quirky writing and poems can be found at www.anenglishmum.com“
It’s the time of year when many a parent will be keen to get their offspring back into the arms of their new teacher for the new school-year ahead, having exhausted all the entertainment options (and money) over the 6 week stretch of the summer holidays.
Having tackled the shops and ticked off the list of shoes, uniform, name labels and stationery, it will all be over soon and life can return to normal, proudly watching your children entering their next school year.
However, spare a thought for those for whom school life is new in itself, i.e. the many parents who will be taking their child to the school gates for the very first time. No doubt, there will be plenty of tears being bravely held back as their little ones embark on their first day of “big school”. There will be excitement and doubts as well as new faces and new friendships, not just for the little people but for the big ones as well, those who keep pretending that they are grown-ups but underneath feel the child-like pressures too.
There will also be mothers who will be on the brink of new opportunities that lie ahead, as their youngest or only child enters the classroom. As they wave goodbye, comes the thought “what now?”, as they ponder upon the role they will now fill.
Of course, at the other end of the spectrum, there will be those who will be going back for their very last year of school-life, before forging onto their places at university. Once again, there will be a sense of pride and hidden tears as parents look back and remember holding their hands on the very first day at the school gates and anticipating the last year before their child flees the nest.
Many a scenario brings many an emotion. If you are caught in the middle, make sure that you make time to meet old friends, make new friends to share the occasion and spend the first day back indulging in something that you really enjoy. It won’t be long until you will find yourself at the next stage, whether it’s the end of their first year, last day at school or celebrating their first job or graduation ceremony. Oh and don’t forget the wedding day and your first grand-child. With all that ahead of us, I think I will buy my shares in Kleenex now.
21st Century Mummy has already survived the first year of big school, with her eldest boy “graduating” from reception class this summer. Keep an eye out for her personal memories plus advice on how to survive such times, coming soon at www.21stcenturymummy.co.uk
**British Parent Bloggers is supported by Paula @ Barefoot Books. Thanks Paula
I started MyeBaby when I found out how much money I had saved on baby equipment when I had my second child compared to the first. I decided to start a website with handy hints and tips about what you’ll need, and where you can get it for the best price, all with no ads and annoying pop-ups like so many ‘How to Save Money’ sites.
I also started writing articles about my experiences as a Mummy, and invited a few people from an online community to do the same. Before I knew it, I had a stack of great articles from allsorts of parents all over waiting to be published, so I decided to steer away from ‘How to Save Money’ (although that is still a regular feature, and can be found in the archives) and leaned towards making it a place where any parent without their own site could tell their story, as a memento or just to share.
I have articles from great people about a wide range of subjects; from premature birth to naming the baby, from feeding the baby to choosing nappies, from colic to home-schooling, from birth stories to pregnancy diaries.
Feel free to pop along and have a read of the articles! maybe you want to submit one yourself?
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