Julia Sidwell

We were shown how to put nappies on dolls. We discussed boobs and bottles. We even got on all fours to simulate giving birth. But now, as a real-life family of three and while tending to Joey’s every need, my husband and I constantly find ourselves saying: ‘Well they didn’t tell us that at NCT.’ I get it - they can’t tell you everything and there is no manual for babies. If there was I’d have read it from cover to cover by now, reciting every chapter to Greg last thing at nig

‘You’re glowing,’ said no one to me during my pregnancy, ever. THE CHANGE. I don’t know what I expected. It’s like when you’ve had children - you can never really understand what life is going to be like until it actually happens. Same goes for pregnancy. Yes I knew what was going to happen to my body biologically, but I had no idea how much it would change on the outside, how it would feel mentally, and whether I'd be one of those natural 'this is so easy' pregnant women, or

It's been an hour since I dropped Joey off at nursery and I still have that horrible churning in my stomach. Yes I'm on my second coffee of the morning, but it's definitely not that. It's the look on Joey's face as I left him at nursery, permanently etched into my memory. Almost every time I drop Joey off at nursery he gives me the DON'T LEAVE ME cry, accompanied with a face of terror like I’ve just left him on a desert island alone while he watches me sail off into the dista

Well, we have had one very tempestuous afternoon. The ultimate #mumfail has to be when you are simply unable to stop your little one crying. I have spent the last hour trying everything to calm this wild one down, but nothing worked. In fact, anything and everything I did made him worse. We got into the bath... ‘Out, out, out!’ he screamed, while pointing at the door. We suffered the water less than a minute and as soon as we were out, I nearly lost my towel in front of the A

Controlled crying. Like Marmite, you either love it or hate it. You either do it or you don’t. There is so much controversy surrounding this method of getting your baby / child to self-soothe and settle, but it was always an easy decision for me. When Joey was just under six months old, he went through a sleep regression and needed comfort to fall asleep at bedtime as well as in the night. So, the day came and I put him in his cot, sat on the sofa and gritted my teeth while I