A Rock and a Hard Place

Piglet is now three months old and still basically nocturnal.  He is sitting in front of me on his bouncy chair now, sucking his thumb.  His thumb is his latest new discovery and one I have mixed feelings about.  On the one hand, I now feel less bad about denying him the dummy which various…

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The Public Badge of Good Motherhood

Argh.  I have inadvertently trained Piglet to gaze blankly at the television as if in a hypnotic trance. Unfortunately, this does not only happen during In the Night Garden.  This was not supposed to happen.  I was supposed to be an earth mother, all joss sticks and babywearing, giving birth blissfully  in a bathtub surrounded…

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Essential Items for the “Nursery”

I just ate my dinner from start to finish with an angry Piglet sitting in his chair kicking his legs around and shouting at the TV, which I had turned him around to face to try and take his mind off the fact that Mummy was eating and not playing with him. I am a…

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Piglet is ten weeks old, and I find myself asking the question, how much TV is too much?

Aha!  I don’t want to speak too soon, but I think I may have found the secret of the elusive Bedtime Routine. It is none other than popular children’s television programme In the Night Garden.  So far it has helped Piglet settle down to sleep no less than two days running. It is as yet…

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Piglet wreaks vengeance upon Mummy for ignoring him in favour of outrageous coat-lust

Knackered.  It has just taken me four hours to get Piglet to sleep. According to everyone in my NCT class, their babies now sleep from about 8-9pm and wake up an average of once per night.  Piglet goes to bed at variable times, but rarely before 11pm, and wakes up an average of three times….

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Why Middle Aged Women Should Rule the World

For the last two days I have managed to get Piglet to bed at *around* the 9pm mark.  This is an immeasurable improvement on midnight, which was his previous bedtime.  It may in fact now be the case that Piglet will grow into a creature of reasonable nocturnal habits, and will not be staying up…

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Sadly, contrary to what Jeff Brazier and that fat one from TOWIE might say, I will not be walking away with £30,000 in cash and a holiday to the Caribbean

  Desolate. I had decided I was going to enter every single one of those competitions you get before the ad breaks of programmes on ITV-you know, Lorraine, This Morning, X Factor….the ones that promise untold riches beyond one’s wildest dreams: £30,000 in cash; a brand new car; a Chanel handbag; a holiday to the…

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Insomnia: I CAN’T GET NO SLEEP

Yes, in the words of Faithless, those great sages of 1996, I need to sleep I can’t get no sleep. The baby, meanwhile, is sleeping like, er, a baby. I’m not sure why people use that phrase, as “sleeping like a baby” clearly doesn’t mean lying in a crib suspended between two trees in a…

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A Critique of Daytime Television: 1.) Real Housewives

I just shouted “Yes!” when the announcer on ITV2 announced a double bill of Real Housewives of Beverley Hills. I am officially a very sad person. The thing is, when you are on maternity leave, there isn’t a lot to do.  Or there is, but most of it involves spending money I do not have….

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The Kindness of Strangers.

Why is it that every time I go out, no matter how many times I have fed Piglet (and no matter how many times he has tried to escape from the Hide-the-Boob Tent), and even if I have fed him immediately before leaving wherever I am, by the time he gets on the train home…

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