Beating the Blues with Halloween Treats

September marks the arrival of autumn and the slow build up to the end of the year. The clothes shops are filling up with all the wonderful winter styles, and pumpkin spiced everything is now available, in some form, wherever you go! I usually love this season, but it’s seems tinged with a level of sadness this time around because Thursday marks what would have been the due date of my first pregnancy this year…

Am I Managing?

It’s been two weeks since we found out our little bean had died, and I still feel lost.

 

From Hoping to Coping…

Last week, we were in a position of not knowing if our baby was alive or dead – a scan had shown a heartbeat, but further bleeding had convinced medical professionals that a miscarriage was imminent. How do you continue with everyday life when such a dark cloud is hanging over your head?

Schrödinger’s Baby

We’ve not had a lot of luck on the baby front recently, as you may have read if you follow my posts. Our desire to grow our family has been met with obstacle after obstacle, which seems to serve only to intensify our need to add a third child to our brood. The situation has been made even more difficult by the wave of pregnancies that seem to be crashing through both our personal and work lives, and I really wish I could be jumping up and down with people, sharing their excitement. I have been longing to add our own special announcement to the mix, but nerves always prevent feeling any level of joy after the multiple losses we have faced.
 

I wish my next words could be the happy announcement we were hoping for, but it seems that, once again, we have picked the short straw… We are pregnant again, but it looks like it may end in another miscarriage.

Parenting Stories - The Great Trade-Off

After the success of my post discussing the problems of being a teen parent, and my recent collection of parenting experiences in academia, it got me thinking about the variety of difficulties other parents may face. Parenting, while an experience many have in common, can often bring with it a whole host of different challenges unique to each person. This new monthly segment - Parenting Stories - provides an insight into the lives of other Mums and Dads and the struggles they encounter while bringing up their children.

Thanks to Nikki from 'Young Mum Getting Rid of a Bum' for her help with the picture :)

Reducing Stress by Eating a Raisin…

For those of you who have been reading my blog, you will know that I suffer from depression. I recently talked about how I want to make 2016 ‘my year’, therefore learning to cope with my mental health problems will be one of my goals. My university run a course called ‘Mindfulness’, which aims to help reduce the levels of stress in our lives and allow us to better manage our anxieties – sounds like just the ticket for me!

5 Ways To Make 2016 My Year

I’ve been waiting for 2016 for what seems like ages, this should be the best and most exciting year of my life. I wanted to start the year with a bang, raring to go with all my wonderful ideas – my depression had other plans. I’ve only struggled with mental illness for just over a year, but it makes the simplest of tasks often seem impossible. When I heard about this recent blog hop linkup (see my last blog hop post for an example), I took it as an opportunity to remind myself what I have to look forward to this year…