Finding Joy in Motherhood: 4 Health Tips for New Mums

Being a mother is a heavenly feeling. You and the father adjust to the needs of your little bundle of joy. Still, you must not forget to take care of yourself. Here are a few points to remember.

For Busy Single Mothers: Guide to Spending Quality Time with Kids

Raising a child alone while working on your career may be the toughest part of being a single mother. Read on and get some tips or guidance on how to make time for your little one.

Thinking Of Going Back To Work? Read This

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When you’re a mama, you know that your main job is looking after your babies. And it really is the best job in the world. To be able to become a parent and raise a family - it’s such a blessing. But at the same time, because it’s so incredible, a lot of women feel guilty. They feel as if they just have to be at home with their children all of the time. And that wanting anything else or wanting to go back to work is just wrong. But it’s not. Because you can be a mother, and an amazing mother at that, and work. You can. You’re able to have boundaries and space from your children, to teach them independence, and get a bit of yourself back. Which is great, especially if you need the money that you’ll get from working. But, the biggest question is, how are you going to do it?

Not Too Old To Be Mum - Rebekah

This week’s "Not Too Old To Be Mum" is with Rebekah. Rebekah isn't part of the blogging world, she just wanted to share her story. If you read my story of how I became a mum at nearly 40 you may remember her. She was one of my friends in the photo with me when I was single and here she is now sharing her story of how she became a mum.

First of all congratulations on your baby. How old were you when you had your baby/babies?

I was 40,  and having my baby was the best 40^th birthday present I could have wished for!

Not Too Old To Be Mum - Christy

This week’s "Not Too Old To Be Mum" is with Christy from Welsh Mum.

First of all congratulations on your baby. How old were you when you had your baby/babies?

I was 34 when I conceived and 35 when I gave birth to my son last year.

Tell me a bit about yourself and your main reasons for having a child(ren) after the age of 35?

I'm Christy and I live in South Wales with my husband and son. I started writing my blog shortly after the birth of my son when I was 35 as I wanted to share my journey and experiences. Having a baby later in life was not really a choice for us. We started trying for a baby when I was 25 when we had been married for a year. It took us 9 years to conceive due to a few health problems, including PCOS and Endometriosis. For the longest time we didn't expect to be able to have a child at all and feel very blessed that we got there in the end. It showed us how strong we are as people and how strong our marriage was.

Weekend Tot Style - Sunday Outift

I thought my boy was looking super cute in his outfit last Sunday, so of course grabbed my camera to capture some photos of him, before he ate, dribbled too much or fell down outside 😆.

Can you tell he has a mama who likes to take his photo? I posed him on the sofa for a neutral background, crossed his legs and placed his hands on his lap. And he stayed still!!!! Pretty amazing for a boy who is constantly on the go.

What Jamberry Has Done For Me

For those who don't know I've been a Jamberry consultant for the past almost 4 months. It's been a roller coaster of emotions with highs and lows. I can't compare it to other companies as I have never done anything like this before, but what I do know is that the company themselves is amazing, they do all in their power to help you achieve your dreams which includes a vast amount of training. As I've gone through the training it talks about offering the opportunity to others by telling them what you have personally achieved. I've had a hard time with this as I'm still just starting out and haven't achieved the things they talk about. I haven't been able to give up my job yet or pay for that holiday.

A few days ago I was thinking about what I had personally got out of Jamberry so far. And when I thought about it, it was actually a lot. Yes the end dream is to make enough money to better my families financial situation or change my working hours out of the home, but it doesn't mean I haven't achieved something along the way. We need to enjoy the journey as well as the destination. Chances are we will never get to where we think we're going, but we could possibly end up somewhere better. Here's what Jamberry has brought into my life;

Renewed Friendships
Since joining Jamberry I've been able to renew some friendships from years gone past. Both my sponsor and one of the ladies I have sponsored have been friends in the past. It's not that we were no longer friends, but our lives had moved on and apart from the occasional comment on a post on Facebook, we had very little contact with each other. Now that we have Jamberry in common and want to help each other build our businesses and achieve our goals, those friendships have possibly become stronger than they ever were. And it doesn't matter that they live at the other end of the country or even the world, I know I could contact on either one of them and they'd be a listening ear.

New Friendships

It's not always easy to make new friends, particularly when you get nervous in social situations like I do. And since I've been on maternity leave I've not had as much contact with people as I would have done otherwise. But it's amazing how many people I've met and feel like I could call a friend now and yet I've never actually met them in the flesh. These are made up of people in my upline, other consultants in my team and customers who have bought product from me. I've met so many lovely ladies from all walks of life that I wouldn't have met in any other circumstances and I just love it.

Confidence

I'm constantly being stretched to step out of my comfort zone to speak to people about Jamberry and to share the product info at in home parties. I've even pushed myself to do Live video stream on Facebook. I know I need to push myself more out of my comfort zone, but I know I've gained more confidence in speaking to people. It's not always about speaking to people about Jamberry, but just speaking to people in general. I can sometimes shy away from talking to people who I don't know too well. But I can tell that since I've started Jamberry I've had more confidence to talk to those people, to say help, ask how their day is going and tell them they look good today. I'm so grateful for that increased confidence because I want to be that kind of person more.

More pride in my appearance

Since having my nails done on a regular basis I've found myself say, oh my nails are done I should really sort my hair out and put a bit of make up on. Now I'm not talking about getting dolled up in your best frock to go to the supermarket. What I'm talking about is taking a bit of pride in the way I look, wanting to look put together rather than throwing the hair up and not bothering with much else. It feels a bit like, if my nails are done I should do the rest of me to match, if that makes any sense.

Ability to give back

I would love to be able to support a charity or two, but I'm not able to commit to an amount of money each month. If I have a friend or family member raising money for a charity I'll often sponsor them, but it's never a lot, as money is often really tight. At the moment there is nothing spare. And if we did have anything spare it would need to go back into the savings we spent to cover my time off on maternity leave. But I'm now able to give back through Jamberry. If you have a cause that you want to raise money for (it doesn't need to be a registered charity) I'm able to donate a percentage of my commission to the cause. I just keep a small amount back to cover costs of sending out samples and prizes. So far I have 1 fundraiser booked in, with another in the pipeline. I love that I can give something back to the community now.

I know I have a long way to go and with some hard work and determination I'll aim at getting there. But it's a real blessing to look at what I have gained and achieved along the way. I'm so grateful for the friendships I've built, the courage and confidence I've gained and the ability to give back. If you're interested in learning more about the product or business or have something you are trying to raise money for please get in touch, I'd love to talk and possibly gain a new friend.

Baby Naming blessing Part 3 - My Babies Outfit

If you want to see part 1 or 2 of these posts click the below links:

Baby Naming blessing Part 1 - New Jamberry Wraps

Baby Naming blessing Part 2 - Weight Loss - What I Wore

For those who follow my Facebook page you'll know that a few weeks ago I was taking my wedding dress for the chop to make something special for my little boy to wear at his naming blessing. Well it's a week since his blessing so I thought it was about time I showed you what he wore.

Baby Naming blessing Part 2 - Weight Loss - What I Wore

If you want to see part 1 of these posts click this link:

Baby Naming blessing Part 1 - New Jamberry Wraps

So it's been around a month since my last update on my weight loss. Since that time I've only lost around 4 pounds, but I'm getting to a weight that's been really hard for me to maintain in the past. I've been lower than this, but only when I didn't have a car and walked everywhere because I didn't want to pay for a bus. So I'm really pleased that I've managed to loose those few pounds.

Baby Naming blessing Part 1 - New Jamberry Wraps

If you remember around a month ago I gave an update on my weight loss and said I was working towards a goal. Well that goal was my babies naming blessing which was on Sunday. I will show you what I wore and give you an update on how I've been doing with getting back to my pre-pregnancy weight and size.

But first I want to share with you what I went with on my nails. I also want to share with you what my baby wore as I was having something special made for him from the material of my wedding dress. I will do this in a 3 part post.

Weight Loss Update

What I wore today

I wanted to give you an update on how I'm doing with my weight loss plan as today was weigh day.

Around a month ago I wrote a blog post about dealing with my post pregnancy weight. I've added the link at the bottom of this page. I had a goal in mind to loose some weight by my babies naming blessing which is a month from now. My main goal is to feel a lot more confident in what I'm wearing.

I'll give you a little background on what weight I had to loose. Before I fell pregnant I'd put on around half a stone since I'd got married. Not because I wanted to, but because it's just one of those things, watching my weight wasn't on top of the list at the time and it's easy to put on a bit of weight. While I was pregnant I put on between 2 and 2.5 stones. I don't know the exact figures as I don't religiously weigh myself, but I know approximately my weights.

Dealing With My Post Pregnancy Baby Weight

39 Weeks Pregnant

My baby is now 4 months, 3 weeks old and in reality it's not all that long since I had my baby, but part of me feels I should have done more about the extra weight I gained by now. I got rather big while I was pregnant as you can see in the photo, but it was all belly. From what I could tell I hadn't put much weight on elsewhere. For the 9 months of being pregnant I had very little chocolate or sweet things as it made me feel sick. But I did have a packet of crisps daily, the salt helped neutralise the nausea. After I'd had my baby I liked all things sweet again, so it was like I was trying to make up for lost time.

Allow yourself time to eat what you want.
I'm glad I allowed myself time to just eat what I wanted without thought. I'd had 9 months of nausea, heart burn and being sick. The last thing I needed to do was start worrying about what I was eating when I had a new born baby. Although saying that eating healthy was important, especially at first when I was feeding my baby breast milk. The meals I had frozen before he was born really helped with having good, nutritious meals. But I wasn't counting calories and if I wanted bread with the soup or stew I had in the freezer I did.

12 Things That Got Me Through The First Few Week After Giving Birth

It's nearly 3 months since I had my first baby and I'm slowly getting used to my new life as a mum and being on maternity leave. Life certainly is very different to how I knew it and although it's busy being a mum, it's a different type of busy to working full time. I'm an organiser by nature, it's what helps me deal with life, especially big life changing events. Knowing what I know now I'm so pleased I was organised, it really helped me get through what was an extremely difficult time. I didn't find it too difficult having a new baby in it's self, but dealing with the recovery of a very difficult labour and birth was helped by preparing before.