I had an incredible birth that I am so proud to share. It was the most amazing natural hypnobirth in the early hours of the morning on 17th March 2020. Meet Eden Isabella Higgins. She’s a dream.

To create the perfect birthing environment there are five elements that will help you feel relaxed and secure to birth your baby.

I’ve just had a catch up with one of LushTums students, who is now a friend, and we were talking about “how, when and what for exactly” does retuning to exercise look like for most women post having a baby.

Another week, another horror story about local postnatal exercise classes. This week it’s the online group course requiring women to practice burpees and star-jumps just 8 weeks after birth…

Obviously, I’m not being literal but that overwhelming sense of love you’re “supposed” to get when you see your baby for the first time, it didn’t happen until my son was one-year-old. Even now, looking back I don’t remember much about that first year of my son’s life other than anxiety and crying (him and me).

Pregnancy is the most incredible journey, but I’ve had 3 kids and I know first-hand how vulnerable women can feel afterwards. The pressure to now suddenly feel happy and ‘complete’, to be the perfect mum, and to have the perfect baby. And added to that, we often put pressure on ourselves to regain our pre-pregnancy figure in the blink of an eye, all the while functioning on little to no sleep.
 

What they won’t tell you.

I’ll start off by saying that I absolutely love being a mum. Despite the broken sleep, the dirty nappies, the tea-time battles over the kitchen table, the sometimes mind-numbing monotony of being stuck at home on a rainy day with small children-not to mention the complete emotional rollercoaster these little people put you through (such highs! such lows!), I am incredibly aware of just how lucky I am to be a mum to two gorgeous children. I’ll stop short of using #blessed, but you get the picture; they are everything to me and I am very, very grateful.

But a snapshot of my early days of parenthood still sticks with me...