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Birth Story. Warning: Just Born Baby Pic

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I was going to write my birth story this week as I love reading others and thought it would be good to share. I didn’t.. Mainly because although it was an amazing experience and the most wonderful thing in the world happened as a result of it I don’t want to relive the birthing experience or scare my friends. Instead I will sum it up briefly before moving onto my actual topic ( how do you learn to be a parent).

So… my waters broke at home at 3pm September 15th just as we were about to go shopping and it was weird – anyone whose waters have broken will tell you that and totally not what I expected. After a quick visit from my lovely midwife I decided to pop to tescos to get some last minute bits ( she was 3 wks early I was unprepared) which was probably not my best idea.. But I got a tens machine which I don’t think I would have managed labour without even if I did scare the pharmacist by telling her my waters had broken.
By 12.30am I was at the hospital with contractions 2 minutes apart and by 9am Sept 16th the prettiest baby girl I’d ever seen was in my arms. It was not all plain sailing I was sick all through my labour which I kinda expected after 9 months of constant nausea and various other things but she arrived SAFELY and I was fine afterwards so that’s all that really matters.

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Fast forward 14 hours and I am on the ward finally alone with my little girl and this is when it starts to hit me.. I am in charge of the life of another person. Wow. Suddenly I realised I may have gone through the trauma of labour and the general horrors of pregnancy but I had no clue as to how to be a mother. Don’t get me wrong I read ALL the pregnancy/baby books, bought all the apps and even watched #oneborn religiously. I have younger siblings, nieces and nephews who I have babysat trillions of times but they all came with instructions clearly set out by their parents but now I was the parent and it scared me.
I sat on my bed with my baby who refused to breastfeed and wondered if I was already doing it all wrong. For those five LONG days and nights when Izzy refused to latch and I refused to admit defeat and go onto formula the thought that it was me that was stopping this natural thing from just happening nearly drove me insane. Looking back this was not helped by the fact that I was not allowed to go home and she refused to sleep in the hospital so I was the most sleep deprived I have ever been in my life. There were a million questions rolling around in my head like: how often do I change her nappy? When do I use nappy cream? What if I fall asleep when holding her? Will she ever sleep? Will I ever sleep again? HOW CAN I MAKE HER FEED? On the fifth day after lots of pumping, syringing milk into my babies mouth and convincing the nurses/doctors that I could keep this up at home Izzy gained weight! I was allowed to go home and that night she breastfed for the first time and pretty much didn’t stop for days. – I was so relieved.

Now 7 months later, I still have days when I feel like we are waiting for the real parents to turn up and quite often I just stop myself from calling my mother to ask what she thinks I should do – I still do it just not all the time. I’m learning, growing, becoming a mother myself and I’ve discovered I know what my baby wants and most times I know what to do or where to look for info if something goes wrong but who knows what new mums did before the Internet, twitter and baby centre existed. I have been very lucky in that I have a brilliant, supportive boyfriend who is so fabulous with our daughter and to have a great network of family and friends and I do wonder how other people cope when they don’t have such strong support as no matter what anyone else tells you parenting is the hardest, scariest thing I’ve ever done and I’ve done a skydive. 🙂 It is also the most fun, rewarding, happiest and emotional time I have ever experienced and I look forward to more and even at some time hope to have another baby so it can’t be too bad.

Sorry if that was one long ramble as I am fairly tired but once I started I couldn’t stop.

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Tagliatelle Aglio Olio

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This Tagliatelle Aglio Olio can easily be made for less than £5.00 and allows for 2 hungry adults and a little leftover for a next day lunch.

You will need:

1 large sauce pan and 1 smaller frying pan or cazuela.
250-300g of tagliatelle.
2 cloves of crushed garlic or I use 2 frozen cubes of minced garlic.
4 tbsp good quality extra virgin olive oil
Spoonful of dried chilli flakes or a good dollop of chilli paste
seasoning
Basil to garnish

Cook pasta according to packet instructions.
When there are 5 minutes remaining, put the olive oil and chillis into a small pan and cook over a low heat for a couple of minutes giving you s lovely chilli flavoured oil.
Add salt&pepper then the garlic and continue to cook for roughly 4-5 minutes. Be very careful not to burn the garlic as this will ruin the flavour.

When the pasta is cooked to your preference ( I prefer al dente) you should drain then stir in the sauce topped with your chopped basil garnish.

* this is meant to be a very simple dish with very cheap ingredients however if you want to adapt it to include meat, bacon lardons work very well and if you are veggie baby leaf spinach is great also.

Serve with home made garlic bread ( see below)

Home made garlic bread ( the easiest possible way) :
Chop a french stick into thin rounds then toast lightly before spreading on some lurpak garlic butter and cooking in oven for 5 mins. If you are counting calories you can rub with a clove of garlic and spread some extra light flora or a little olive oil on instead.

This is probably the tastiest EASY meal I have made in a long time.

Chicken & Chorizo Paella

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I love anything which has chorizo in it, it’s a beautiful ingredient which has the most incredible flavour and a little goes a long way.

Chicken and chorizo paella

You will need:

A paella pan or cazuela
Olive oil
400g Chicken cut into 1 inch pieces- thigh is best for flavour but breast is fine too.
Chorizo – you can use as much as you like here. I use about a third of Asda extra special chorizo sausage diced into small cubes
1 large onion diced
2 red peppers chopped
2 garlic cloves crushed
Some chopped red chilli or a squirt of fresh chilli paste
1.5 litres of chicken stock
2 teaspoons of smoked sweet paprika
400g paella rice – you can use other rice but it just won’t be the same.

*optional ingredients –
A pinch of saffron
2 handfuls of frozen peas.

Heat your pan slowly with about a tablespoon of olive oil.
Brown the chicken.
Add your chorizo, garlic and onion
When your onion is soft add your peppers, chilli, paprika (and saffron & peas if using) and after a few minutes add 1 litre of your stock.
Preheat your oven to gas mark 4.
Leave the ingredients bubble away on a medium heat for 15 mins.
Now add your rice and stir thoroughly.
Put lid on pan or a tinfoil roof if you don’t have one and place in oven for 15 minutes ( if your pan is not ovenproof simply continue to cook on hob but cover your pan)
After 15 minutes take the paella out of the oven and add remaining stock ensuring you give it a good stir.
Place back in oven for 15-20 mins and Tada you should have a beautifully cooked Paella.

I serve mine with a rocket based salad.

This makes a lot! It serves a family of 4 or 2 very hungry adults with lots of leftovers!

Also I am still getting used to writing recipes out so please let me know if they do not make sense or if you have any questions.

Things you may not know about me #1

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I’m a book worm. I really really LOVE a good book. Before I had my gorgeous little girl I would easily get through 2-3 books a week. When I was 8 my mum found me sat upstairs reading my (much older) sisters copy of The Colour Purple. I didnt understand it but that made no difference to me.. I craved the excitement of a new story from that young age. I have been through many phases in my 28 years most typically loving the romance novels and teen high school books when I was at school. Did any of you read The babysitters club series? Haha. Now I read most genres as long as they are well written and manage to grip me in the first chapter although I do have a special fondness for crime thriller writers such as Harlan Coben and James Patterson and will read anything they write. I thought I would put a list of my absolute favourite reads of the past few years :

The shadow of the wind- Carlos Ruis zafon
The hunger games – Suzanne Collins..Its been a long time since a series of books excited me so much.
The I heart series – Lindsey Kelk is amazing. I love all her books but particularly the ones based on Angela Clark.
Linwood Barclay – No time for goodbye
The kite runner- Khaled Hosseini
Tell no one – Harlan Coben
The Lovely bones- Alice Sebold
The time travellers wife- Audrey Niffenegger
A piece of cake- Cupcake Brown

My guilty pleasure – Sophie Kinsellas shopaholic series.

What are your favourite books? Share please.

One of my bookshelves below..random assortment of books!

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Baked Eggs In Tomato, Chilli, Garlic & Spinach

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It’s been a long tiring weekend and I really couldn’t be bothered to blog today but I am trying to stick with it so this week I thought I’d share some of my favourite easy recipes with you. All of the recipes are reasonably simple to make but tasty and mostly healthy. Today I am posting my current favourite lunch/breakfastrecipe.

Most weekdays I am happy to stick to sandwiches/salads but at the weekend I like to make something a bit more tasty and substantial.

I started making the next recipe based on an idea I saw on pinterest and tweaked it a little to make it even easier and in my opinion tastier. It’s incredibly healthy and so simple:

Baked Eggs In Tomato, Chilli, Garlic and Spinach

You will need:

1 large pan and 1 smaller pan. I use different sized clay pots (cazuelas) for most of my cooking as easier to clean and I like the look of them.
Tinned chopped tomatoes
Chopped chilli ( I use Asda fresh chilli in a tube as so much easier)
Eggs – free range please.
Baby leaf spinach
2 chopped garlic cloves or a squirt of garlic puree
Olive oil or butter
Seasoning

Firstly open a tin of chopped tomatoes (1 or 2 depending on how many of you are eating) mix in a small amount of chilli as well as salt n pepper and pour into a heated pan and cook over a medium heat until bubbling. Put a smaller pan onto warm up.
Next crack eggs ( I use 4 for the two of us) straight onto the tomatoes and leave to cook until the yolks are soft ( unless of course you prefer a hard yolk)
While your eggs are cooking pop your bread in the toaster and then put a knob of butter or a little olive oil along with your chopped garlic in your small pan and then sauté your spinach until slightly limp.

To serve place your tomatoey egg mixture onto your toast and top with your garlic
spinach and freshly ground pepper.ENJOY.

* to make this even tastier chop some bacon into your garlic spinach mixture.

Let me know if you try it 🙂

 

Baked Eggs In Tomato, Chilli, Garlic & Spinach

Methods Of Torture – Sleep Deprivation in Parenting

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If it wasn’t before it is now very clear to me why sleep deprivation is used as a method of torture. This past fortnight my normally happy little girl has had gastroenteritis followed by extreme teething which means that we ( I say we as I am very lucky to have a brilliant OH who shares the night shift) have had such little sleep I constantly feel as though I am on autopilot. Is this a permanent feature of parenthood? I hope not. When my daughter started sleeping for longer stretches-up to 9/10 hours I was silently smug..after all everyone had told me ( with delight it seems) that after having a baby I would never get a full nights sleep again but now it seems that after fooling me into thinking my life was somewhat going to get back to normal someone somewhere is laughing (smugly).

There is good news though I am more and more impressed every single day at how my body will adapt to little or no sleep and will function more or less as normal. I may look zombielike but I can pull off most everyday chores and even attempt a new exercise challenge-the 30 day shred which I will explain more about another time. How amazing are our bodies?! Don’t go thinking I am supermum as my house is nowhere near as tidy as I want it to be, there are many days when I really really struggle to get up from my sofa and outfit planning is normally grabbing what is clean and crease free but I am coping far better than I ever hoped.

If anybody has any remarkable/miracle like teething cures they want to share before I pull all my hair out I would really appreciate it as not much is working right now but after an extremely hard night made even more so by not knowing how to soothe my sobbing child I can say we finally have a tooth which means this chapter of baby life is getting closer to an end and you know what this morning she is happy and exploring her new friend in her mouth with a curious tongue which makes me smile.

Excuse any spelling or grammatical errors please I am typing this with droopy eyelids.

 

Cakes and bakes 2012 part 1

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This year I have started to enjoy baking a lot more than I used to, perhaps it’s because I feel like I’m starting to get the hang of it or maybe its just the excitement I get when I pull a cake out of the oven and it’s turned out just how I wanted it to ( it’s possible I need to get out more) At the moment it seems as though nothing is guaranteed to be perfect ..work, going to sleep at night, eating an uninterrupted meal to name but a few and to make a perfect cake makes me feel good.

Here are some of the cakes I’ve made so far this year:

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There is : Divine chocolate birthday cake, farmhouse orange Victoria sandwich and apple and almond cake which are all from Mary Berrys 100 cakes&bakes book which I made as part of the @weeklybakeoff on twitter

Also a basic Victoria sponge made from a family recipe which I will try to add later today and peanut & banana muffins from a new recipe by Rachel Allen which I found online:
http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/573813

And finally a lemon cake with fondant icing which should look like a surfboard (slightly more like a rugby ball in my opinion but it tasted good) which I made for my OH’s birthday.

Hope you enjoy reading, let me know what you think.

So much to say so little time to say it.

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I have been wanting to write a PROPER blog for some time but I rarely found the time before I had Izzy and well now time is a precious thing..with a spare 30 mins I can exercise,cook, bathe and clean my house with the speed that only a parent will know. Anyway I am still going to attempt to write regularly and I would love your comments. One of the things I have found difficult (there have been many) since having Izzy is the lack of time for making proper meals and I love to cook so I will be posting some recipes for quick, simple meals that still make you feel like you have made the effort. I will also be writing about being a mother, ideas/tips I have picked up from other mums on twitter/baby centre and more than likely asking for your help.

Ok first post done. Tada.

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