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You are here: Home / MOTHERHOOD / Blogger Bump Club Week 15 #BlogBumpClub

Blogger Bump Club Week 15 #BlogBumpClub

August 21, 2014 by Molly 6 Comments

Blogger Bump Club

Organisation takes on a new meaning when you have a baby. I remember, with Frog, spending a while sourcing decent second hand baby stuff, buying new bits and squirrelling stuff away so I felt “ready” to be a mum. As if the very fact of owning a car seat would make me fully prepared for the adventure ahead. I think it’s the psychological aspect to the whole nesting thing. The more you clean or sort through stuff, the calmer you feel about the chaos that’s about to erupt. Or maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, things haven’t been that different this time around. The last week has been spent getting the baby’s room in order. We’re nearly there – the walls are painted, the new cot is up, my late grandmother’s rocking chair is newly upcycled and in the corner. We just have to put up some shelves and accessorise it all with a few last pretty bits (baby mobile, the odd print, a cute lamp).

I’ll be blogging about it properly once it’s done, but here’s a little preview… 

baby's room with stars

upcycled nursing chair

We’re going away again soon, so I’ve been in a bit of a rush to get on top of a few work deadlines, as well as sort out baby clothes and the stuff in the loft (yet to be done). I don’t know if that’s contributing to my current feeling of slight panic, but I know it’s not helping.

In a couple of days I’ll hit the 35 week mark and that’s kind of scary. If I had the beginning of maternity leave and no other child to look after then it wouldn’t seem such a big milestone. But, as it stands, the end of this pregnancy coincides with my daughter starting school and a very busy two weeks of work. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t starting to feel a bit sick.

Yesterday I had a huge panic about it all. Mixed in between the excitement of meeting our new baby and seeing Frog become a big sister, is this underlying worry. It’s stupid, but I’m nervous about how I’ll do the school run and get us all out of the house by 8.30am every morning. I’m helping a friend a couple of mornings so there will be two children to take to school, along with a baby to feed and change. I know I’ll be OK and I’ll make it work, but my natural state of worrier is taking over a bit at the moment!

34 week pregnancy bump

I think the organisation of the baby stuff is my way of trying to take some control and feel at least a little prepared. I wanted to go into September with all the big baby stuff organised – the clothes washed, the hospital bag packed, the nursery decorated. In my head, once that was done, I could fully focus on all the other stuff that September will throw at us. Does that sound stupid? Probably.

Anyway, in between the nerves I’ve been feeling very positive about things. I’m still well and have plenty of energy during the day. I’ve got another midwife appointment later today and then we have a home visit from the health visitor in a couple of weeks, which is brilliant and something that never happened when we lived in Berkshire.

The hormones seem to be doing their job – I’m excited about breastfeeding again and being back in the baby zone. And I’m continuing to enjoy long bubble baths, pregnancy yoga and slathering delicious smelling cream onto the growing bump. (My new favourite is this TEN hydration cream I was sent to review. It’s creamy and smells lovely – I’ve been plastering myself in it every morning and night!).

TEN baby

Link Up!

I can’t believe we’ve had 15 weeks of the #BlogBumpClub already. Last week I absolutely loved this simple and beautiful post from Dambaby. If you’ve got a couple of minutes read it – it’ll be worth it, I promise.

Link up your most recent pregnancy post here and don’t forget to grab the badge so other pregnant bloggers can find out about the linky.

As always, if you tweet me a link to your post I’ll be sure to share it for you (I’m @mollyjforbes on Twitter). If you follow the #BlogBumpClub hashtag you’ll also see there’s lots more baby-related chat on Twitter too. Come and join in!

Mother's Always Right

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Hello and welcome! I'm Molly Forbes - podcaster, presenter and blogger with a passion for positivity, confidence and body image chat. Regularly writing and vlogging about empowering female issues from a motherhood angle, I also cover lifestyle and fashion topics for like-minded mums who want to rediscover themselves after having children. Thanks for stopping by! Read More…

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Hello. How are you? . I’ve noticed something th Hello. How are you? 
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I’ve noticed something this lockdown that feels different to first time... the sense of people being more disconnected than ever, more divided, more isolated. 
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Maybe it’s because we’re all on our last nerve now - the loss, sacrifice and stress is amplified that bit more. 
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And we’re so deep in it, often confined in our thoughts at home, our only connection with the outside world via a screen, that it becomes harder to appreciate our differences in circumstances. 
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We forget that we are all just humans muddling through a global pandemic, trying to come out of it alive, with our minds intact and hopefully our jobs too. 
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We’re angry, sad, frustrated, scared. And in the absence of those regular social connections we need a place to direct those feelings. The social media platforms and comments sections on news sites have never been so busy. 
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Except it’s not just faceless people on the internet that we’re upset with anymore. It’s our neighbours, family and friends. 
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Dr Vivek Murthy wrote about the importance of social connections and community in his book Together, pointing out that loneliness has the same impact on mortality as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. 
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We are sociable creatures. We need community not just to thrive but to survive. 
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So check in with your friends today. Maybe even send them a voice note. Don’t assume you know how they’re doing based on their latest Facebook post. We need to get through this together, not apart ❤️
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[Image description: Molly is looking at the camera, smiling in a tired, resigned sort of way. She’s outside and is wearing a fantastic hat that her husband says looks like a tea cosy.]
✨Art from @emilycoxhead gorgeous book You Are In ✨Art from @emilycoxhead gorgeous book You Are Incredible Just As You Are✨
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A reminder that loving every bit of ourselves isn’t just about embracing all the parts on the outside, but also about accepting - and maybe even celebrating - the bits on the inside too. 
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I’ll go first: I am a worrier and have a tendency to think deeply on things. If we’ve ever had a disagreement - be it an exchange on Twitter in 2018 or a row in the playground in 1992 you bet I’ve stored that away in my brain ready to ruminate on in the depths of a night when I can’t sleep. 
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But in the spirit of loving every bit of ourselves I say that rather than looking at these parts of ourselves as “flaws”, we choose instead to view them with loving kindness and a heavy dose of self-compassion. 
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I worry because I am sensitive, and I care. This sometimes means I’m more vulnerable to allowing others’ opinions of me have too much power... but it also means I feel remorse when I make mistakes and try my very best to learn from them. 
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And this also means I work hard in everything I do because I genuinely care about doing a good job. Meanwhile, my tendency to think deeply on stuff means I’m able to see the nuance in things and appreciate other perspectives, because as I grasp for an answer I often find two things can be true at the same time. 
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These are not traits I would view as “pathetic” or “needy” or “indecisive” in my kids and I would never tell them to “just get over it”, so I’m trying to remember this for myself too.
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Tell me, what parts of the inner you are you working on learning to love? 
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[Image description: A double page spread from Emily Coxhead’s book You Are Incredible. It’s a yellow page with a red heart and white writing which reads “Here’s to loving every bit of you.”]
Let’s talk joyful movement and.... PRIVILEGE! A Let’s talk joyful movement and.... PRIVILEGE! A nice juicy subject for a Thursday evening 😅
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I absolutely love to see the narrative shift (albeit ever so slightly) to the intrinsic benefits of movement. The focus on intuitive movement and moving our bodies for how it makes us FEEL over how it makes us LOOK brings me huge happiness. 
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BUT... even when we take movement away from a diet culture context, I still think there’s often a lack of acknowledgment of the many barriers preventing people engaging in movement in the first place (hot tip: it’s not “just cos they’re lazy” 🙄). 
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When it comes to my own family - here are some of the privileges we live with which make movement easier for us: 
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✨ We live in an area with access to lots of safe green spaces to play and walk.
✨ We can afford to pay for a gym membership, and extra curricular activities for the kids like gymnastics, Street Dance and swimming.
✨ We have access to the technology needed to take part in online classes over lockdown.
✨ We are non-disabled so experience no physical access issues preventing us from joining in with these activities. 
✨ Our work schedule allows us to get out together during daylight hours. 
✨ None of us lives with a mental health condition which might make getting outside / engaging in movement really hard or even impossible.
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Kids access to movement is not equal so if we really care about encouraging more children to move then, as a nation, we need to level the playing field (pun intended). 
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Some accounts which often discuss movement and privilege: @thephitcoach @amysnellingpt @theaishanash ❤️
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[Image description: Molly and her two daughters standing on top of a hill smiling, with their arms in the air.]
It’s pretty well accepted that certain “fad di It’s pretty well accepted that certain “fad diets” are not the one. But if our definition of diet culture stops there, and we fail to see how diet culture IS fatphobic in its very nature - and that it absolutely depends on a collective cultural fear and vilification of fatness then we’ll never get anywhere with tearing it down.
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Dressing up fatphobia as “health concern”, or “tough love” or “helping people” is just a fluffy way of saying you don’t acknowledge the huge complexity around health, or the many factors that impact weight, or the research showing the harmful (and unhealthy) impact of weight stigma, or the evidence into the long term effectiveness of diets and intentional weight loss. 
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And essentially, those who assert that health only looks one way, and that people have a moral responsibility to prove their health via the shape of their body and not be a “drain on society”, are saying that only people with their version of a “healthy body” are worthy of respect, equality, dignity.
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Children pick up on these messages and learn from an early age that “fat = bad”, and to see some bodies as better, and more deserving of love and respect than others. This could be why we’re seeing a rising number of pre-teens with eating disorders and mental health issues associated with poor body image. 
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Yes we need to lose the fad diets. But we also need to lose the deeper prejudices and anti-fat biases that make them profitable in the first place, otherwise they’ll just continue to show up in different ways, coming in ever more aggressive and insidious ways for our kids.
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(Image description: A yellow slide with multicolour shapes and a screenshot of a tweet overlaid which reads “FYI you can’t be simultaneously anti-diet culture and pro fatphobia. (And yes, fatphobia includes continuously asking “But what about health?” and not listening to the answer...)
You might have missed this in the news over Christ You might have missed this in the news over Christmas. It didn’t get nearly the same amount of coverage as all the diet-related features that are everywhere right now. It was hidden away behind the before and after “amazing weight loss” stories, celeb diet plans and “o*esity causes covid” headlines. But that doesn’t make it any less shocking or heartbreaking. 
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I believe there’s a link between the rise in children being diagnosed with eating disorders and the rise in children suffering poor body image. These issues are fallout from a culture that idolises thinness, vilifies fatness and continually promotes one, narrow, over-simplified version of health. 
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Diet culture is coming increasingly aggressively for children, and the pandemic with the huge mental health toll it’s taken has not helped one bit. We already knew the number of pre-teens diagnosed with anorexia in the last decade had doubled, and it seems the figures are rising even higher. We need change. Fast. 
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Check out the Body Happy Kids resources, workshops and Masterclass and the #FreeFromDiets campaign in my bio, if you want to help change the culture our kids are growing up in. They deserve better.
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[Image description: a section from a news article about rising numbers of children suffering with eating disorders. Full text can be found in Alt Text.]
I’ve been looking a lot at old photos lately. Th I’ve been looking a lot at old photos lately. This pic is from summer 2018, when I could hug my mum and travel abroad on holiday. If I close my eyes I can almost feel the warmth of the sun on my skin, smell the salty sea air and hear the laughter of other families playing on the beach. Holding on to these memories and the hope that the hugs, sunshine and bikinis will come again one day. In the meantime it’s video calls, trackie bottoms and WhatsApp. ❄️☀️ 
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[Image description: Molly and her mum standing on a beach in France, in 2018. They are both wearing brightly coloured bikinis, hugging and smiling. It’s a hot sunny day and the sky is blue.]
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