Because Mummyhood doesn't have enough guilt!

I read a conversation the other day on the Netmums forum about how awful petit filous are for babies because of all the sugar- shock horror, I've been poisoning my baby with a sugary fromage frais the other day. Even though it has protein, calcium and vitamin D, shame on me, I should have been giving her organic yogurt with homemade fruit puree. Somebody call Child Protection! Don't tell anybody, but one time I was at my mum's and she didn't have any petit filous so I had to give her....wait for it..... reduced fat yogurt *gasp*!
Shockingly, my baby survived being fed low-fat activia against her will, but why are we so quick to tell other mums how to do their job? Apparently, being a mum means that you are wide open to criticism and people telling you that you're doing it wrong.
You get criticised if you can't breastfeed, you get judged by formula-feeding mums if you do breastfeed (your baby won't sleep through the night, your baby won't put on enough weight, you'll never be able to leave your baby with his/her dad) If you start weaning at 4 months, you're told your baby's too young, if you don't wean you get told to give them some food as they're OBVIOUSLY starving. Yes, it's fantastic if you've been there, done that and got the t-shirt, but knowing your baby doesn't mean that you know mine as well! As a first-time mummy, I spend enough time worrying that I'm doing it wrong without people sticking their oars in and making me doubt myself whilst wanting to throttle them.
Friendly advice is great, but people need to guage when and where it's actually wanted and try maybe not telling people how to raise their babies. My mum has the best attitude, in fact, more people need her attitude. She basically says that she's there if I need advice but Isabella is my baby and I know her best. My mum is so wise! And extremely clever, I think she says that so I'm more likely to actually ask her for advice. Because I'm her baby, and she knows me best!

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming!

My baby daddy took today off of work to get some more time to practice his CAD (computer aided design work) so we went swimming which Isabella looooooves!
I first took her swimming at 4 months as I heard the younger you start them the better and went with my mum and her husband whilst I was staying at their house for the week. Not only was Isabella amazingly brave and well-behaved, it tuckered her out for hours afterwards! My baby is normally a little ball of hyper, so this was amazing!
Our local pool is about 10 minutes' drive away and comprises of a smaller, warmer teaching pool and a proper, grown up pool. We were in the habit of taking her once every 3 or 4 weeks, but haven't got round to taking her for aaaaages, so a few weeks ago we decided to take her, only to discover that she had (obviously) outgrown her swimming costume so had to do a mad dash around the shops to get a new one. Unfortunately for us, the pool was actually shut that day as they were short-staffed.
We've now taken her twice in the last week and, even though it's £4.25 each and she swims for free, I'd really make it a weekly, at least fortnightly thing. Isabella is almost swimming herself already and only needs a little bit of support in the water, which is amazing considering we haven't actually taken her to any swimming lessons. I've decided not to get one of those inflatable seat-thingys because I think they make babies a little bit lazy, but when she's old enough to actually learn to swim I will be sourcing the pinkest, girliest armbands I can find!
Plus, even if you don't get a chance to do any actual swimming yourself whilst you're at the pool, just playing with your baby in the water is amazing exercise. Really fun as well! I give it a few months before she can swim better than me!

TTFN xx