Wooooo I’m going to be a mummy, all these excited thoughts going through my mind. Obviously I knew it would be hard going but it’s the most natural thing in the world so surely wouldn’t be that hard.

When we had our son it was great, my husband had 2 weeks off work and we could dedicate that time to being first time parents. Our son developed jaundice and needed light therapy at 1 week old, this was an awful experience but made me more determined to be the best mum I could be.

As time passed, it seemed clear our son cried A LOT! It felt like all of the time, nothing we did pacified him. He just cried and cried and cried. I felt I was failing as a parent and spent a lot of time crying myself, questioning what was wrong and why when parenting was such a natural thing why I couldn’t fix it.

I realised that maybe we just had a baby that cried a lot, we weren’t doing anything wrong and were actually good parents we just had a baby that liked to hear his own voice and make noise (he still very much now likes to shout and makes sure he’s heard and he’s nearly 2!)

It was really important that I continued to go out, did things that other parents did. The amount of times I got “oh is he hungry?” or “is he over tired?” – the responses from me got more and more sarcastic. Everyone seems to think they are experts, especially strangers!

My advice would be: use the help that’s available, friends, family, health visitors, baby groups. They make you feel normal and give you breathing space, someone to hold the baby so you can have a warm cup of tea!! Keep talking to people, bottling things up won’t help and will more than likely make you feel worse!