October 2010

Archive | October, 2010

What’s in a name?

By Mum's the Word on October 29, 2010 in Parenting

When I was pregnant with Sausage, I think I drove my husband a little bit mental with the name-choosing process. I pretty much ruled out any name which already belonged to anyone I had ever known, save for the potential of naming her after a relative. I also ruled out any names which gave her ridiculous initials, rhymed with anything which could be used against her (probably from years of being called Jayne the Pain/Bane/Drain by idiots with limited wit) or belonged to a celebrity who I found objectionable. I also ruled out any names which I felt may be prohibitive to her as an adult. Nobody wants to be treated by a Doctor or represented by a Lawyer with an overly twee name like Precious, surely?!

What I am trying to say is that we thought seriously hard about the name we gave her.

Which is why some people’s choice of name for their offspring really makes me see red.

My husband and I got married in the Maldives and on our way home, there was a kid on the plane, and it doesn’t help that he was an irritating devil-child with whom I was stuck in a pressurised metal tube for 11 hours, and his name was…wait for it…Skylash. Seriously.

I hope I don’t offend any of my readers, but I really feel that people should THINK about what they name their kids. Parents who choose certain names for their kids, just because they like it are utterly, utterly selfish, and deserve to be told such.

Let’s take Sarah Palin. Now, I know Palin bashing is a bit trendy at the moment, and I don’t give a shit about the crazy bitch’s politics, but she named her kids Track, Trig, Bristol, Willow and Piper. Aren’t those first two the names of classes taken in American high schools? I’m guessing she’s also never been to Bristol in England…if there was ever a place which you wouldn’t want to name your kid after, Bristol is high on the list.

I’m not going to do the whole “look at this list of ridiculous names that celebrities give their kids”, cause let’s face it, we’d be here all day.

But what is on the minds of these people, when they look at a tiny, beautiful, vulnerable baby and think “I know! I’ll name my kid Audio Science” (That’s Shannyn Sossamon’s son, just in case you wondered) Do they not worry about the bullying, the derision and the barriers that their kids will undoubtably face, because of their arrogance and their need to be different?

I know we can’t live in a world where everyone has the same name, and I wouldn’t want to, I enjoy and embrace diversity. But I think that when it comes to kids names, there is an extremely fine line between diversity and flat-out cruelty.

When we chose the name for Sausage that we were finally happy with, though it’s a traditional and old-fashioned name, we still received some opposition, people who thought she’d grow up to hate her name. And to an extent, I suppose I have to hold my hands up to a degree of that arrogance, the part of me that said “Well I like it, so I don’t care if anyone else does”. I guess that happens when anyone names a child, regardless of how popular or traditional the name is.

All I’m asking is that we at least give the kids a chance…you know?

I’d love to know where you all stand on this, do you think I’m being over the top, or do you agree? What is the strangest name you’ve heard? Have any of you given your kids out of the ordinary names, and faced adversity? Please comment and let me know!

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Facebook is making me die inside.

By Mum's the Word on October 28, 2010 in Opinion, Rant, The Internet

I have a bit of a Facebook problem. I spend far too much time checking my Facebook, time when I should be, you know, parenting Sausage or doing housework or something. I’m more than happy to admit that my main motivation for having a Facebook page is my innate nosiness. I love to look at other people’s pictures, read snippets of what’s going on in their lives.

I have 343 online friends, the majority of whom I know in real life…well, sort of. I mean, how well do you really know the girls you went to school with ten years ago? There are quite a few people who I went to school with who I was really happy to get back in touch with, people I truly value but whose lives took such different paths to mine that we lost touch, but on the whole, I barely even knew these girls ten years ago. Now I wish them happy birthday every year and read about their pet cat getting scurvy.

Another little addiction for me is the ‘like’ button. I’m definitely the type of person who gets a kick out of the immediate gratification you get when you update your status and people click ‘like’. I mean let’s face it, why do we update our statuses if we don’t want people to read it, like it and relate to it? It makes us feel valid, doesn’t it?

But why the hell do I need someone who I haven’t seen since primary school ‘liking’ some glib remark I’ve made about Cbeebies to make me feel valid? Does that not say some really negative things about my personality, or is it just all part of the human condition, the condition which made that kid Zuckerberg worth $6.9 billion at the age of 26 (good God, he’s my age? *retches*) So, it’s obviously not just me, is it?

The trouble is, I’m a pedant. I don’t claim that every sentence I write is beautifully composed, with impeccable spelling and grammar (though I do try). But the ‘Facebook insight’ into other people has made me seriously question the level of education in this country. And I’m not just talking about the odd typo, I have at least one ‘friend’ who I’ve only just discovered is virtually illiterate. I’m dead serious. I try not to get too enraged about it all, but when another friend ends EVERY sentence with at least three exclamation marks, one has to wonder what the hell it is that they’re getting so excited about!!! That is the part of Facebook which makes me DIE INSIDE. I check everything I write and go back to delete and re-write whole statuses if I think they don’t sound right, or have a typo. How can others not give a shit that what they’ve written may as well be in Sanscrit?

The other thing that is sometimes lacking on Facebook is a sense of context. Last year, I joined an online group created by people who were taking the same Open University course as me and I thought it would be really handy to be able to discuss the assignments and issues with a group of my peers. I also received ‘Friend Requests’ from a few of the people in the group, and happily accepted. We were a mixed bunch of varying ages, sexes and circumstances, but we fired up some great debates and helped each other along the way. Then, one day a discussion started about a particular issue which was being played out in the media and based on my (what I thought were fairly standard, by no means radical) comments, two of the women in the group decided to delete the whole conversation, delete me from their friends list and actually go to the effort of blocking me from ever seeing their profiles again.

If these women had known me, if they’d actually thought about the context of the conversation, they would have realised that what may have seemed like a reactionary comment was actually quite a reasoned and reasonable statement to make. Or maybe they wouldn’t. That’s the thing with Facebook, you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

Either way, their blocking me was no great loss and I’ve managed to get through life quite happily without their judgement. But really, doesn’t it all seem like hard work? Making sure we don’t offend people we don’t even know? I have enough trouble censoring myself for the people I know really well!

All I know is, I’ve been trying to lay off of Facebook a bit lately. I’ve not completely quit as I know there are people who I’d really miss. But on the whole, it’s losing it’s appeal. My cousin was actually brave enough to delete her whole profile, an action of which I will forever be in awe.

But at least there’s always Twitter.

*UPDATE* – I deleted the illiterate friend. I know that seems harsh, because I think she’s probably quite a nice person, but I don’t want my blood pressure to go up every time I read her status.

Also, does anyone else have *those* friends, you know, the ones who say deliberately veiled provocative things like “Phoebe is spending her afternoons sunbathing in the nude in her garden”. You just know they’re sitting there going “Ooh, how can I get people to think about my tits, without actually coming out and saying “hey everybody, think about my tits!” and thus garner an extra molecule of attention out of my friends?”. Or those ones who invent a personality for themselves, which you’re pretty sure doesn’t exist outside of Facebook?

Yeah, those people make me feel a bit nauseous.

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My overactive guilt gland.

By Mum's the Word on October 27, 2010 in Parenting

I should probably have been born a Catholic.

Nah, screw that, I’m far too lethargic/apathetic to remember to pray all the time and go to church every week.

But I do have a guilt complex of which a Catholic would be proud.

I feel guilty about EVERYTHING.

You know when you eat a can of baked beans? If I leave even one bean in the can when I empty it into the saucepan (oh alright, microwave dish, I’m not shit-hot enough at being a wife and mother to use metal saucepans to heat things in. But I digress…) I feel actually properly guilty about leaving that one bean, alone. Alone and unable to fulfill its life purpose as a baked bean, which is to be eaten by my child.

I think I can pinpoint when this all started, and just like every other sob-story, it harks back to my parents separating. Let me just say at this point that I don’t hold either of my parents responsible for this. I think I was born this way. But I do distinctly remember being picked up by my Dad on a Saturday and feeling a huge pang of guilt about leaving my Mum for the day. It didn’t occur to me that my Mum was probably doing the freedom-hokey-cokey in our living room (I was an extremely attached child, I do believe she’s recounted stories of using the loo with me on her lap, which makes it feel like it’s poetic justice when I do the same with Sausage).

But it didn’t end there. Every time my Dad dropped me home I would get so overwhelmingly sad about leaving my him to go home alone that I would sit and cry in my Nan’s hallway.

Wow. This has turned out to be a bit depressing. I didn’t mean for that to happen, this was going to be a post full of scathing witticisms, but I like the way that my blog posts start one way and I think they’ll follow a certain path, but end up leading me somewhere totally different. I guess it’s part of the catharsis.

These days, my guilt is just as prevalent. My husband tells me that I say sorry an unreasonable amount, and that I make him feel like an ogre with my constant apologies. And I don’t do it because I think he’ll be annoyed with me for forgetting to put a sweetener in his tea/leaving his oldest, favourite t-shirt too near the hamster cage so that Happy drags the sleeve in and eats it/doing my best Master Blaster impression and accidentally kicking him the balls. It’s because saying sorry is the only way I know how to purge my guilt, to let people know that I take my own mistakes really seriously. Although, that’s the problem, being my own worst critic means that more often than not, things I perceive to be grave errors are nothing more than a trifle.

Motherhood seems to be a whole barrel of new things to feel guilty over. If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll know that I love being a mother and I love Sausage more than is probably healthy. But I worry that I should be doing everything differently and feel guilty that I’ve done things a certain way. It doesn’t matter that Sausage is astoundingly bright, well-rounded and sociable. I still feel guilty that I don’t read to her enough, or didn’t take her to enough activities and groups when she was little.

But where does this get me? Abso-bloody-lutely nowhere.

Guilt is like an anvil that you wear around your neck, and it gets a little heavier each day. So how do we cut it loose?

I can honestly say; I have no idea. I’ve been this way my whole life. I wouldn’t even know where to start trying to change the habits of a lifetime.

If anyone has any idea of how to do that, maybe you could let me know. Until then, I’ll say goodnight….and sorry, just in case!

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Things you never think about…until you become a parent.

By Mum's the Word on October 26, 2010 in Opinion, Parenting

Note to self; I must remember that Sausage has been eating lumps of red Play Doh, before I change her nappy and panic about all the red bits in her poo.
Hmm, I wonder if there’s a more practical way to deal with an attached child than to have them actually sitting on your lap while you pee?
Oh, wow, she moved over a bit, that means I now have FOUR WHOLE INCHES of my kingsize bed, all to myself!
I wonder if I can cut her hair/fingernails/toenails while she’s asleep, so I can avoid being kicked in the teeth/stabbed?
I wonder if Aunty Mabel actually took flying lessons so that they could get those shots where she’s flying the plane, or if it’s a man dressed in a wig and headscarf? Also, what happens if Pippin needs a pee or a poo while she’s in the air?
OHMYFUCKINGGOD, stepping on a Peppa Pig toy hurts more than stepping on a plug. A plug which has been sharpened for use as a weapon.
I wonder if I have time to wash my hair today? No? Okay, it’s only been a week anyway.
No, Mylene Klass, I will not be buying your range of kids clothing from Mothercare, on account of the fact that I don’t want to dress my kid as a miniature hooker.
Wow, I actually empathise with the woman at the next checkout over who is trying to wrangle a screaming child whilst loading a weeks worth of shopping onto the conveyor belt. Because sometimes, kids scream, just because they feel like it.
Oh. My. Goodness. I had absolutely NO IDEA that is was possible to feel this much love for a person, and be so obsessed with their every move, like it’s an addiction and you just can’t get a big enough fix. In fact I think I might just go right ahead and explode and cover everyone with my insides which look like a big rainbow, covered in hearts and bunnies and sugary treats, all because I love my baby SO FUCKING MUCH.

Dedicated to Sausage, who makes my heart grow bigger, every day.

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OH NOEZ, NOT TEH INTERNETZ!

By Mum's the Word on October 19, 2010 in Rant, The Internet

So, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve made a couple of changes on my blog. First of all, I’ve removed any trace of my daughter’s name from my posts, and have removed the post which contained pictures of her. Secondly, I’ve also removed my Husband’s name from all of the posts.

They will, forever more, be known in the blogosphere as “Sausage” and “Husband”.

Now, I’m well aware that this may seem like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted, but I’ve only had really positive feedback so far, so I’m hoping the nice readers that I’ve had up until are not the type to go and use our identities for nefarious purposes.

When I started this blog, if I’m totally honest, I didn’t really think anyone outside of my friends and family would read it, but I had moderate interest from others and, whilst this is a pleasant surprise, I now feel a bit like I’ve hung my family out for all to inspect.

I will continue to mention Husband and Sausage in my posts, but I’ll try not to be as…personal. The older I get, the more I find the internet to be a scary place. I don’t want pictures of my kid to be found on hard drives of dodgy people and I don’t want our identities to be somehow used against us.

I hope you’ll continue to read, and bear with me while I adjust to their new monikers.

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Homage.

By Mum's the Word on October 18, 2010 in Opinion, The Internet

I thought I’d do a little post to give you an insight into the blogs which inspire me, the blogs that I love.

So here goes, in no particular order:

Hyperbole and a Half

This part comic, part blog, part autobiography is written by Allie Brosh and is probably my favourite blog on the whole of the interwebs. The illustrations, which are all done with MS Paint are unbelievably emotive and marry perfectly with her witty, irreverent and downright genius story telling style.

Her stories will have you laughing, squirming and sometimes wishing you could find her, wrap her in a blanket and give her a hug.

As a side note, her mini-blog Spaghatta Nadle is also well worth a read.

Free Anissa

Anissa Mayhew has been through more over the years than most. She started blogging after her daughter, Peyton, developed cancer at the age of 2 and a half. Anissa, who has herself suffered several strokes, is now a regular contributor at Aiming Low and gives us a view of what it’s like to be totally kick ass whilst rocking a wheelchair.

If you want an inspirational read, you be hard pushed to find one better than this.

The Spohrs are Multiplying

Another inspirational one, Heather Spohr is a mother to Annabel, and sadly lost her eldest daughter Maddie in 2009 to a respiratory infection. In spite of the trauma her family have suffered, Heather manages to make me laugh with almost every post and expresses herself with true grace and insight.

I also LOVE the How-To videos posted by self-confessed nervous hair twiddler Heather, in which she shows us how to recreate some great hair-dos!

Aiming Low

I couldn’t possibly talk about the blogs above without giving a nod to the site that brings them, and more, together into one place to produce a blog for average women everywhere.

Aiming Low is a blog which, in its own words, “strives for anti-perfection”. This blog is a breath of fresh air to women who don’t claim to be the best mother, the best housewife, the best at work, the best in bed…and so on!

With over a dozen regular contributors, Aiming Low is the blog for women who don’t want to be made to feel bad about their piles of laundry and the dishes in the sink.

Bakers Royale

This blog is for anyone who has ever eaten cake…and liked it.

Naomi combines her own love of baking and photography, and sifts through other baking blogs to bring you the best of baking from the internet. The pictures on her blog are so well taken and beautifully presented that you can’t help but salivate at the sumptuous creations. And the best part is, the recipes are right there on her blog, for you to recreate at home.

Do yourself a favour, though, don’t read this if you’re on a diet, about to go food shopping or standing next to somebody elses’ uncut birthday cake…the need to indulge yourself will be overwhelming!

Honourable Mentions

Percolations from a Decaf Mind – Dedicated to keeping you up-to-date with Tony’s two greatest passions – Technology and Liverpool Football Club.

Big Girl’s Browse – A great blog for those of us who aren’t stick thin, but still love to shop.

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A list of people who I might allow to read my child a bedtime story. Or, an open letter to Shane Ritchie.

By Mum's the Word on October 17, 2010 in Parenting, Rant

Richard Briers

I’ll admit it, I’m a enormous fan of The Good Life and I do have machinations of one day being just like Tom and Barbara (but it would be an awful lot of effort, doing all that work and maintaining that impish charm and Cheltenham Girls College accent, wouldn’t it?)

Richard Briers is the man who EVERYONE wants as their Grandad, isn’t he? Such a kindly old so-an-so, with a perfect voice for narration, to boot!

Amelie Poulain

I don’t mean the actress, Audrey Tautou, I mean the actual character, Amelie. She is cute, sweet, almost totally unaffected by social convention and has an imagination that would put Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm, collectively, to shame. Plus she has an adorable voice and a lovely French accent.

Jesus

I’m not picking Jesus for any religious reasons. I just think he was a super nice bloke who walked around trying to teach people that it would be, you know, much nicer if we all got along and behaved courteously to one another.

Plus, I’d like my kid to have another language and being the only one of her friends to speak Aramaic would be a great boast, wouldn’t it?!

People I DO NOT want reading a bedtime story to my kid.

Shane Ritchie

Dear Shane Ritchie,

Why are you on my telly, reading the story for the Bedtime Hour? What do you think you are doing?

I understand that you may have a contractual obligation to the BBC, but this is not a good enough reason for you to sit on my screen, with your hand up a stuffed girrafes arse, talking in a weird, camp, cockney accent.

My child does not know who you are. I was born in 1984 and I barely know who you are. I’m vaguely aware of you having some sort of holiday camp (insert colour here)coat career, and then I think you may have seen married to some eighties “celebrity” like Cheryl Baker, or one of the Nolans, or something. But I still don’t see how this translates to a sideline in children’s narration.

I know you played some shit character in some shit soap or other, frankly I do my best to avoid such things. The day I heard that Larry Lamb was in Eastenders, I felt as though he was letting me down. Me, personally.

Could you do me a favour and steer clear of CBeebies from now on? No matter how much Andi (why, oh why, spell it with an I? That’s a different matter, though.) Peters BEGS you to perform the onerous task of reading the bedtime story, please think twice. I don’t to have to look you up on Wikipedia just so that I can explain to my daughter who you are, without the use of expletives.

If you could just do this one thing for me, I’d be really grateful.

Kindest regards

Me.

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Something’s COT to give…

By Mum's the Word on October 17, 2010 in Parenting

So, after my post about Sausage sleeping in our bedroom, our situation has now officially morphed into a co-sleeping one.

For the last week or so, Sausage has been sleeping really badly. On the worst night I was up with her FIVE times. We’ve come to the conclusion that it’s her cot that’s causing the issues.

Sausage is a serious wriggler in her sleep, which means she spends more time on top of her duvet, than actually under it. I’m a pretty light sleeper these days and I hear the ‘rustle-rustle-thump’ which means that she’s successfully managed to extricate her legs from the covers about 5 times a night. The trouble is, it’s getting colder. When she would kick her duvet off in the summer, it wasn’t a big deal, she runs quite hot anyway, so she was generally okay. But a couple of nights ago she was actually calling out “I’m coooold” in her sleep. So Husband and I have been up and down like the preverbial yo-yo, covering her over and tucking her in.

I had the fantastic misguided idea that a Grobag would be the answer to all of our problems.

No.

This made things worse. When my sleeping child realised that she couldn’t kick her covers off she started to panic and I was awoken by a flapping, kicking baby, twisted up in a stripy straight-jacket.

Back to the drawing board.

Then we started to worry that it might be mine and Husband’s snoring keeping her up. A few nights ago, I’d got up with her in the early hours, and laid her on the settee whilst I went and made her a bottle (Yes, I still give my two-year-old a milk bottle, wanna fight about it?!), and when I came back, she was sound asleep on the sofa, and stayed that way until I put her back in her own bed an hour later (I do find that 2am is a good time to catch up on my V+’ed Gilmore Girls and Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals).

So then the panic set in.

OH GOD.

So…if it’s our snoring keeping her awake…does that mean…she’ll have to sleep in her OWN ROOM?!?!

In a last ditch attempt to work out the issue, without banishing Sausage to a different room, we cut her bed out altogether. And yes, I woke up this morning totally numb down my right side, and I have a crick in my neck which I suspect is now here for life.

But she SLEPT.

I didn’t have to get up once.

(Well, I woke up a couple of times to give her dropped dummy back to her. And yes, she does have a dummy. GET OFF MY BACK!)

So now, we truly are a three-in-the-bed family. We think the issue is that she’s getting too big for her cot, and she’s thumping herself into the bars when she thrashes about. We’ll replace her cot with a bed, in time. But for now, she’s in with us.

And I couldn’t be happier about it!

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Collecting Straws

By Mum's the Word on October 14, 2010 in Anger, Life, Opinion, Rant

My husband is one of those people who knows everything.

Not in a douchey “I’m a know-it-all” kind of way, he’s just got one of those amazing brains which stores an unfathomable amount of stuff. Couple that with an overactive thirst for knowledge and he knows a lot. He’s the kind of guy you want on your team at a pub quiz.

So, the other day, he was doing some reading about various different philosophies relating to anger and he came across the phrase “collecting straws”.

Basically, a person who collects straws goes about their day and if something negative happens, they store it up. Then the next minor thing happens and they store that up. They collect up all these ‘straws’ of anger, until they get to the final one and then they snap (the straw that broke the camels back, if you will). The thing which finally makes them snap is generally something quite minor, but they break under the strain of the weight of all the straws they collected throughout the day. Some people may spend their whole lives collecting straws.

Now, he told me about this and it started ringing some Big Ben sized bells.

I am a straw collector.

And I kid myself that I’m actually a super patient person, that I just lose my rag when something really pushes me, but it’s not true. I’ve lost count of the amount of days I had where I’m absolutely seething by the evening, and can reel off a long list of so-called disasters which have made my day so shitty.

My anger is like one of those huge cardboard cut-outs of a thermometer that they have at fundraising events. You know, the ones where the more money they raise, the more of the thermometer they colour in, until finally the top of the thermometer ‘explodes’ when they reach their target?

That’s me.

So.

Where do I go from here, now I know that I’m a straw collector?

Some self-motivated anger management.

I’ve had people suggest to me that I should count down from ten when I get cross. And you know what? That just makes me want to punch that person. Punch them in the face.

I’ve never actually punched a person in the face.

So how do I go about stopping myself from storing up all the silly little ‘straws’.

I have to say, when I think about it, straw collecting is a family trait. My mum is an avid reader of my blog (Hi Mum) and I think she’ll agree with me when I say that it comes straight from the top. My Nan is the Queen of the Straw Collectors. We really have been taught by the best. My Nan doesn’t just collect straws on a daily basis, she’s been collecting them FOR LIFE! Now don’t get me wrong, I love my Nan a lot, she’s great and has been like a second Mum to me.

But I wish I’d got to her earlier.

I wish I could go back about 40 years and say to her “You know what, Nan? This straw collecting bullshit just isn’t worth it.” I wonder if she’d have been happier in life if she could have just let some of the small stuff go? I wonder if she’d have felt more fulfilled, more content with the way her life turned out?

But it’s too late for my Nan. She’s got a lifetime of straws, all stored up. So, I’ll tell myself, instead. I’ll tell myself, every time I realise that I’m doing it again…CUT IT LOOSE.

A far more profound person than I once wrote

“For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

That just about sums it up, doesn’t it?

And because I now know all of this, I’m very glad to have a husband who reads so much.

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“Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.”

By Mum's the Word on October 13, 2010 in Life

I had a dream.

Not a particularly profound one, in the great big Dr. King scheme of things, but it really shook me up.

I should probably set the scene.

On Monday, I spent the afternoon cooking. I made a chicken soup from the chicken that was leftover from the previous days roast, and I also made a beef stew as we had company coming for dinner on Tuesday (and besides, I always think a stew tastes better the day after you cooked it). Oh and I also attempted to make bubble and squeak from the veg, also leftover from the roast.

So anyways, I cooked these lovely dishes and then sat down and thought “You know what? I don’t feel like eating ANY of the meals I have just made”. So my husband and I did the naughty thing and ordered a takeaway, and 30 minutes later, a bucket of fried chicken turned up on my doorstep.

I feel I should emphasize at this point, Sausage was fast asleep in bed when we indulged ourselves in our illicit chicken eating. I may treat my own body like shit, but I try not to poison my kid too.

So, that night, I had lots of vivid, and some fairly disturbing dreams, and this one in particular was the worst.

In the dream, I was happily sitting on my sofa, eating my fried chicken, when I looked down and noticed that my outer body had gone see through, but I could see inside my veins and arteries, and could see the chicken that I was eating being turned straight into oozing fat, which was coarsing through and coating my vascular system.

Now, I may only be one year into my psychology degree, but I think I can fairly accurately assess that this was an anxious/guilty response to my earlier indulgence, but it raised a lot if internal questions.

I’ve been overweight, on and off, for most of my life. I’ve never been a particularly active person and I love my food. I love food on any occasion, to cheer me up, to celebrate, to pass the time, all of the usual ‘bad-relationship-with-food’ cliches you can think of. And I know I’m fat, I know I’ve gone up 4 dress sizes in four years. I’m guessing I would not be diabetic now if I had looked after myself during and after my pregnancy. I know that my weight causes me many mental and physical issues.

So why, then, can’t I just put down the pie, get off my arse and do something about it?

I often look at other fat people and think “Wow, they must be so stupid if they don’t realise that greedy+lazy=heavy”. But, hey, I’m not stupid, and I still can’t make the connection.

I think the biggest fears for me are the changes that I will have to make. I won’t be able to sit and eat a pint of ice cream in the evenings, I won’t be able to spend my days being sedentary. I’ll have to give up my precious food crutches and move around.

But why is this so scary, when the results will be so worth it?

I always say “Oh, I don’t make excuses for my weight, I’m just greedy and lazy”…but in saying this, am I not just making different excuses? By saying greedy and lazy, I’m still quantifying my behaviour, just in a different way.

All I know is, something’s got to give, because I want to ensure that I’m the best Mum I can be to Sausage, and I want to have as much time on this planet to enjoy being her Mum as possible.

*Goes and dusts off the gym shoes and Zumba DVD*