Family, Instagram, Parenting

What I do for a living, and why I don’t talk about it much

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If you’ve come over from Instagram to read this, you’ll probably know that I’m coming to the end of my second maternity leave with my son, Wilf, who is now 10 months old, and that I’m due to return to work in January. I’ve received a lot of messages over the past few weeks asking what it is that I do for a living, and when I’ve answered – I’m a doctor, training in general practice – I’ve had a few people ask me why I never talk about it, or why it isn’t in my Instagram bio. And I’ve had a couple of messages to the effect of, “it’s a bit odd that you share so much of your day to day life, your family, your home; but you don’t want people to know what you do?”

I get it. I mean, I do choose to share a lot on Instagram, sometimes quite personal insights into my life and how I feel about things, and your career is a big part of your life. One of the beauties of Instagram is that you can find like-minded people, and really feel like you get to know them through their posts and stories. Maybe a couple of those who messaged me felt that they thought they knew me from watching me on Instagram, and now it looked like I’ve been hiding something. But I’m not trying to hide it – not now anyway. It’s just that to me, my work completely unrelated, and separate, from my non-work life, which is what my Instagram account is about.

| So why do you choose to compartmentalise your work life?

Medicine is a vocation. It takes years and years to train, and many doctors live and breathe it. It becomes a huge part of their identity. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that at all, if you’re happy with living like that. I felt like that for a while: I was working full time as a junior doctor in a hospital, sometimes working as much as 90 hours in a week, so that you felt like you were at work more than not. I did actually spend a whole year living in hospital accommodation when I first graduated, so I literally never left. Most of my friends were doctors. My husband was a doctor. My in laws were also doctors. Some evenings Ben and I came home and just talked about work, and I’ve been to dinner parties where it’s 99% ‘medic chat’.

I was finding it all quite stifling, and I felt like I’d lost my personal identity as anything other than ‘doctor me’.

Then I became pregnant with Oscar, and went on maternity leave. That’s also when I joined Instagram, and I started using it ‘properly’. Over the next year or so, I felt like a wall around me broke down, bit by bit, and I found it incredibly liberating. I recognised that I used to be so creative, but that I hadn’t been for the best part of ten years. I went crazy with these long-suppressed creative urges and it felt amazing.

I took photos; all my inspiration came from what I saw on Instagram. It was completely whimsical but I thought it was wonderful. I discovered flatlays. I styled shelves. I didn’t even know shelves could be styled, but other people were doing it, and it made them look pretty lovely. I learned calligraphy. I re-taught myself to knit. I played with flowers and made wreaths. I wrote. I hadn’t written creatively in over 10 years and it all came back to me, slowly, like it was a foreign language that I used to know.

I feel like I started my maternity leave as ‘Hannah the doctor’ – it was very much part of my identity, but I don’t think it represented me very well. I was suppressed creatively. It felt quite all-encompassing. I ended my maternity leave as ‘Hannah’. SO much happier. I felt like me. And I felt like a far more well rounded individual; balanced. Whilst I was at work, I dedicated 100% into my work, as being a doctor is so much more than just a job to pay the bills. But when I left work, I could leave it behind. I didn’t take it home with me. I was a mum, I had a few hobbies that I loved, I had new friends and I came home and chatted to Ben about anything and everything, not work (well, mostly!).

I’ve taken this separation between ‘work me’ and ‘non-work me’ quite literally, as I have chosen to practice under my family name, and live under my married name, and I have chosen to take the title ‘Mrs’ rather than ‘Dr’ in my non-work life. I’m proud to be a doctor, don’t get me wrong, but for me, I realised that I didn’t want it to be such an intertwined part of my life and identity. I know some others who feel the opposite, and are happy to carry their ‘Dr’ title publicly, introduce themselves as doctors at parties they attend, and feel that as a vocation it is natural that it is an integral part of their identity. I totally respect and admire that.

| Well, that was a bit of a monologue. Anything else to add?

So, I guess there are a few other reasons that I enjoy to be known as ‘Mrs’ rather than ‘Dr’ to anyone other than close friends, and why I avoid talking about my job if I am casually asked.

One is that subconscious (or conscious) assumptions are made by some people, in my experience, when they find out that I am a doctor, and I find that often they are wrong assumptions – so I prefer to avoid them being made. One example of this, is when I was a first time mum with a newborn Oscar. My midwife on the postnatal ward seemed to think that I should know exactly what I was doing, and didn’t offer to help with breastfeeding, and I felt she was quite dismissive when I asked for help – as if there were others more in need of assistance than me.

Another reason is that I like to avoid getting into any political discussions, or be on the receiving end of rants about the NHS, and you’d be surprised how many times I’ve told someone what I do for work, to be met with, “Oh, you know I saw my GP this week and s/he was absolutely dreadful. No help at all!” Or even worse, “Oh, you know my wife/aunt/dog has this terrible cough and we simply can’t get an appointment with our GP, could you take a look?” I’ve found it’s far safer to tell Mr X at the neighbour’s Christmas party that I’m a photographer, or even better, a content creator – they’ll look at me as if I’m speaking a foreign language and move on!

| Well, now we all know. The cat’s out the bag. Are you going to become a medical blogger or something now?

No, no. Definitely not! I’m Hannah Straughan, and I write about family, parenting, our home life, travel, photography, Instagram, knitting, flowers – or whatever I fancy. But there may be some posts in the future, where I will talk about topics such as childbirth choices, or breastfeeding issues, and whilst I will not be issuing any medical advice, they will inevitably take on a slightly different perspective given that I have a medical degree.

So there we go. This wasn’t intended to be any kind of big ‘announcement’; it isn’t, and it wasn’t supposed to be so wordy, but as usual once I started thinking about it all and writing, it kept coming. Please do shoot if you have any thoughts or questions at all!

Hannah x

All images by Melia Melia.

Family, Motherhood, Parenting

My experiences with breastfeeding | Wilf

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My experiences of breastfeeding with Wilf - Hannah Straughan blog, a motherhood and lifestyle blog from a thirty-something UK mother.

A couple of months ago, I shared my breastfeeding experiences with my first son, Oscar. If you missed it, you can read it here. I naively believed that having had an easy breastfeeding journey with Oscar meant that it would be exactly the same for my second child, and whilst overall it’s been a very positive experience, I’ve encountered a few hurdles along the way that took me by surprise.

Whilst Wilf’s birth was a million miles away from Oscar’s, the start of our breast feeding was pretty similar, and felt comfortingly familiar. I had been looking forward to breastfeeding again, and Wilf latched on for a feed about an hour after he was born, and just like Oscar, he spent the majority of the day and night attached to me until my milk came in on day three. I’m aware that one concern of mothers that require a Caesarian birth is that milk takes longer to come in, but evidently that isn’t always the case, as mine took exactly the same time after both births.My experiences of breastfeeding with Wilf - Hannah Straughan blog, a motherhood and lifestyle blog from a thirty-something UK mother.

My experiences of breastfeeding with Wilf - Hannah Straughan blog, a motherhood and lifestyle blog from a thirty-something UK mother.

My experiences of breastfeeding with Wilf - Hannah Straughan blog, a motherhood and lifestyle blog from a thirty-something UK mother.

My experiences of breastfeeding with Wilf - Hannah Straughan blog, a motherhood and lifestyle blog from a thirty-something UK mother.

My experiences of breastfeeding with Wilf - Hannah Straughan blog, a motherhood and lifestyle blog from a thirty-something UK mother.

Images by Dominique Bader Photography

| The honeymoon period

For the first three or four weeks of his life he existed in that blissful state whereby he would eat peacefully, snuggled against me, and then fall into a ‘milk coma’, soundly sleeping and treating us to a few windy smiles of appreciation. This all changed quite suddenly in the second month of his life, when, unlike Oscar (who found a breastfeed deeply soporific and would nurse to sleep whenever allowed), Wilf started to pull off after a feed, smiling and wide awake, and look around him. This pattern has continued and now at 9 months old Wilf will never nurse to sleep, and even at bedtime I have to finish a feed and put him down in his bed afterwards. Whilst in many ways this is a great thing, I won’t pretend I didn’t enjoy being Oscar’s human bed for naps at times! Firstly, the effort to settle them down to sleep is minimal, secondly you get to gaze and cuddle the sleeping angel in your arms and thirdly, I had the perfect excuse to catch up on Instagram or watch something on Netflix, rather than getting on with the enormous pile of laundry, as I was ‘trapped!’

Another, very welcome difference between the boys was Wilf’s frequency of feeding. From quite early on he settled into a pattern of 3-4 hourly feeds, with a longer stretch of 5-6 hours at the beginning of the night, and would simply refuse the breast if he was offered it before he was hungry.

And just as I had relaxed, and began to feel every so slightly smug that I was into the fourth month of exclusively breastfeeding my second child with what felt like very little effort, when, BAM! The problems that would have me convinced that our feeding days were over, started.

https://www.dominiquebader.com

| Four month distractibility and breast refusal

Wilf was 15 weeks old and over the course of a few days he became more distractible and fussy when feeding – a totally normal and unavoidable behaviour change for the 4 month mark, and I lamented the end of our quiet, peaceful, feed-anywhere days. For anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, from around 4 months onwards, any distraction will prove too exciting for your curious little one: you talking, someone else talking, any movement in their field of view – and they will pop off the breast to check it out, leaving your boob hanging out, and if it’s at the start of the feed, with milk spraying out all over you and your baby. Sometimes this popping on and off will happen repeatedly throughout the feed and if you’re out in public, and anything like me, you’ll end up red faced, flustered and soaked in milk. Oscar behaved like this, but being the little milk monster that he was, he would still feed in pretty much any environment, so I assumed that it would be the same with Wilf.

One morning I was out meeting some friends for cake and coffee and Wilf woke up in his pram, so I picked him up to feed him. He latched on, then after a second pulled away and cried. I tried a few times to put him back on, but the same thing happened. A took a deep breath, then picked him up for a cuddle, thinking I’d try again in half an hour. But the same thing happened – he was completely refusing to feed. Now it was about an hour after his usual feeding time, so I thought, I’ll try somewhere quiet. We were in Harrogate, about half an hour away from our home in York, so I walked back to the car and tried again there — the same again, just an angry Wilf shouting at my boob. As I am writing this I realise that it’s not such a big thing, but at the time the feeling of my baby ‘rejecting’ me, and not being able to nourish him – the one thing I’m supposed to be able to do – made me burst into tears.

When we arrived home I tool him up to our bedroom, closed the curtains, and in the cool, dark, quiet room he latched on and guzzled away, hungrily, as I took a deep sigh of relief.

This pattern of complete breast refusal when there were too many distractions and external stimuli continued, so I took to feeding him immediately after waking in a dark, quiet room, and avoided going out for the whole day, and this seemed to solve the issue.

Then, about a week later, I was putting Wilf to bed: his usual routine of bath, massage, get into a fresh sleepsuit, breastfeed and then put down in his Snuzpod. He seemed sleepy and settled, but when I tried to feed him he pulled his head away crying, and the more I tried the angrier he became, his face turning red and his little fists tightly curled. Eventually, in tears I gave up and handed him to Ben. I defrosted some milk and he chugged it hungrily, finishing the entire bottle and falling asleep with those little sharp intakes of breath that kids make after they’ve been sobbing. I sat down, pumping to relieve the pressure of the dinner that Wilf had politely declined, and felt a pit of dread that this was his way of saying, “thanks, but I’m done”.

Thankfully, through that night and the following day he fed well at the breast, but every evening for a week, at bedtime, the same story replayed and we would give him a bottle of expressed milk, and I would pump. After a week or so of this pattern I had recovered from my initial, overly-emotional reaction of feeling rejected, and decided that it was probably a good thing if Ben took over one feed a day. And perhaps Wilf sensed my calmness on that evening, as he decided that one week of nursing strikes were enough for him, and he has resumed his bedtime breastfeed ever since.

My experiences of breastfeeding with Wilf - Hannah Straughan blog, a motherhood and lifestyle blog from a thirty-something UK mother.

My experiences of breastfeeding with Wilf - Hannah Straughan blog, a motherhood and lifestyle blog from a thirty-something UK mother.

| Milk blisters and nipple vasoconstriction 

Shortly after Wilf’s distractible feeding started, I developed pain in my left nipple that was worst during a feed, but also there on and off when not feeding. Initially I couldn’t work out what was causing the pain, but one day I saw what looked like a tiny white blister on the end of my nipple. I googled this and quickly found the answer – a milk blister. How had I managed to be 4 months into my second child, and only just hearing now that this existed?! It’s where a thin layer of skin forms over one of the tiny holes that milk come out from your nipple, causing a blister of milk and pain on feeding. It can also lead to blocked ducts and mastitis if it’s not resolved quickly.

I read that a gentle way of treating it is with hot compresses and salt water, but ultimately the blister needs to be gently removed so that milk can flow again, which is what I did. Unfortunately, what this left was effectively a wound which was incredibly sore in itself, and felt similar to the cracked nipples you experience in the first few days of feeding. I applied plenty of Lansinoh cream, but I was still getting pain, both during and in between feeds. At best I could distract myself from the discomfort, and at worst the pain during feeding brought tears to my eyes. I had another look to see why the pain was so bad, and I found that on occasions my nipple looked completely white in colour, as if the blood had drained from it. A quick bit of reading answered my worries again – nipple vasoconstriction – this time something I had heard about before. It’s when the tiny blood vessels in your nipple constrict, preventing blood from getting in temporarily, so that it turns pale and is very painful. It’s similar to a condition called Raynaud’s, where your fingers turn white and painful in cold weather, but it can also be caused by damage to the nipple, which is what was causing it in my case.

The milk blister/cracked nipple/nipple vasoconstriction created a vicious cycle and all in all it didn’t totally resolve for about 6 weeks. Thankfully, after being close to thinking that the pain wouldn’t stop, and I’d have to stop breastfeeding, thing eventually settled down.

My experiences of breastfeeding with Wilf - Hannah Straughan blog, a motherhood and lifestyle blog from a thirty-something UK mother.

Image by Dominique Bader Photography

| Illness and low milk supply

Back in September, predictably coinciding with the new school term, when there are heaps of bugs being shared around, all four of us were struck down with a nasty sickness virus. First Ben had high fevers and nausea, then Wilf, and then finally Oscar and I got the full gastroenteritis whammy. Not nice. Whilst Ben juggled Wilf and followed Oscar around the house with a sick bowl, I took to my bed, trying hard to keep hydrated with sips of water but struggling to keep anything down. Ben delivered Wilf to me for his breastfeed, but I was shocked (and quite upset) to find that, for the first time ever, I had nothing. No let-down, no swallowing sounds from Wilf. He lost interest and I had to give him back to Ben, to offer him a bottle.

I won’t lie, I was really worried that this would be the end of things before I was ready to stop, but I persevered in offering Wilf the breast regularly, and trying to eat and drink something myself. Forty-eight hours of illness, not eating and being dehydrated resulted in my supply plummeting, and it took a good 7-10 days to recover, after I was feeling better.

Since then, I’m relieved to report that breastfeeding has returned to being uneventful and enjoyable. As I write Wilf is 9 months old and we are still happily exclusively breastfeeding, in addition to a solid food diet that we started at 6 months.

| When will you stop breastfeeding?

I would love to continue to feed Wilf until his first birthday, as I did for Oscar, but now that I have got this far I am happy to go with the flow for as long as it is working for both of us. I have always wanted to feed my boys into their second year (this didn’t pan out with Oscar as nursing came to a natural end when he was 13 months old), but I have a feeling that Wilf will have different ideas! One positive I can report, is that after over five months of being unable to feed Wilf anywhere other than at home, in a dark, quiet room, his distractibility has slightly settled down and I can now feed him in the light (!), although if there is someone else in the room he will still pop off to see what they are up to. Such a nosy little bear!

I get a lot of messages related to breastfeeding over on my Instagram account – questions and requests for advice and support, which I love to be able to offer. It’s inspired me to write a comprehensive breastfeeding support/problem troubleshooting post, so do keep your eyes out for it if you are interested.

Hannah x

My experiences of breastfeeding with Wilf - Hannah Straughan blog, a motherhood and lifestyle blog from a thirty-something UK mother.

My experiences of breastfeeding with Wilf - Hannah Straughan blog, a motherhood and lifestyle blog from a thirty-something UK mother.

Last two images by Melia Melia Photography

Family, Interiors, Lifestyle, Motherhood, Parenting, Photography

A room tour | Our bedroom and a baby corner for Wilf

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Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

From time to time, I post a photo of our home interior to my Instagram, and although it’s not the main theme of my account, I always get a lovely response from them. I love interior design, although since we started our family it’s taken a bit of a backseat as an hobby simply due to lack of free time. I’ve been asked a number of times to share some interiors-themed blog posts and I thought it was about time I did!

I’m starting off with a room tour of the master bedroom in our home – our bedroom – which, incidentally is my favourite room in the house. I’ve very much taken inspiration from the light and simplicity of Scandi interiors, and as a result, it’s such a calm and peaceful space, perfect for a bedroom. As Wilf shares our bedroom, I created a baby corner for him so that we could change and dress him easily, as the only other bedroom on this floor of the house is Oscar’s.

| Our Home

We’ve been in our house in York for almost five years now. It’s the first house that Ben and I have owned, and after being in rented accommodation for the best part of ten years, I was so excited to be able to call this place our home and be free to decorate it as we pleased. It’s a Victorian terraced house, built in 1890 and its set over three floors (all original, no attic conversion). The only modernisation was a small extension to the back of the house, where our kitchen is now, and we love the the house has retained lots of original features – including servant bells!! – and has gorgeous high ceilings on the ground floor.

We lived in our house for two years before we had our first child, Oscar, and during that time (my pre-Instagram days!), interiors turned into a hobby of mine, and I would scour Pinterest and interior magazines for inspiration. We didn’t need to make any major changes to the house when we moved in, but over the course of about a year we gradually re-did each room in the house, with some just needing the walls repainting, and others needing floor to ceiling renovation. We did pretty much all of this ourselves, and we often spent a weekend tackling a room – I actually really enjoyed it!

| The Master Bedroom

I’ve linked some of the products you can see in the images, and I’ve explained what we did to the room to get to this point. Scroll right to the bottom to see the ‘before’ images I dug out of the room!

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Linen ring sling from Mezaya Baby

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

This is the dress I changed into, to dance in on the evening of our wedding. It’s from Virgos Lounge. I didn’t plan to showcase it, I just hung it up here on a whim and it’s stayed there ever since. I love to see it – it reminds me of the most wonderful day of my life.

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

The mirror was a find at Homesense. Belly basket and Monstera plant both from IKEA.

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

These photos were taken just a few days before Wilf arrived – I was about 39 weeks pregnant here. I look enormous!

Our bed is a solid Oak four-poster from Get Laid Beds. I umm-ed and ahh-ed for ages about which bed to buy, it felt like a big decision as it’s so important to buy a good bed, plus as Ben is 6 foot 7 inches tall we had decided to get a bespoke bed made extra long (his feet hang off the end of normal-length beds, and that’s no way to live!) so our choice felt a bit more ‘final’ as it would be harder to sell on if we changed our mind. I liked the look of minimal, simple beds but I did want a bit of a statement too – then I found this design and I fell in love. I wondered for a while if it would look a bit extravagant to have a four-poster, but we went for it and I’ve never looked back. I love it. The beds start at extremely reasonably prices, but we invested a little more to get solid Oak. Of course, one of the main reasons we went for this company was that they offered bespoke-sized beds, and from memory, this was only a small extra cost. I’d highly recommend them.

The Ottoman is from John Lewis – see a similar one here. I keep all of our spare bed linen in it – so useful!

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

The picture rail is from IKEA and Wilf’s bedside crib pictured here is the Snuzpod, which we have used for both boys and is one of my absolute favourite must-have baby items.

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Who else is a fan of Ewan the Sheep? Our boys both love him!

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

These two photos, above and below, are the only two I took on a different day – you can tell as there is a tiny sleeping Wilf wrapped up on the bed! These are poorer quality photos as I just took them on my iPhone, but I wanted to show off the bedside crib in the position we had it for the first six months of Wilf’s life, attached to our bed with the side down in the co-sleeping position, and also the lovely forest print and frame which are both from Desenio.

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

This is the little changing and feeding corner I created for Wilf, and it proved so useful. I cleared a few drawers in this chest, which was bought from Debenhams online, for Wilf’s nappies and wipes, muslins and sleep suits. I bought a changing basket from OlliElla, after seeing lots of gorgeous nursery inspiration on Instagram with the same basket – I love it!

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

The cloud mobile is from The White Company, the round mirror is from H&M, the little animal prints are from Sarah and Bendrix, the moon print is from Land and Furrow, and the bespoke calligraphy is by Ffion McKeown. It’s a quote from the book Le Petit Prince, by Antoine de St Exupery and it says: “On ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur. L’essential est invisible pour les yeux.” – “One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

The grey and blush muslin blanket is from Baby Mori and the pull along duck is from Sarah and Bendrix.

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Our brown leather chair is from Laura Ashley and the leather pouf was a find in a market in Morocco. It was a perfect breastfeeding spot – I spent many hours sat here nursing and gazing and Wilf’s perfect little face.

On the chair is my hospital bag packed and ready to go (actually not a prop for the photo believe it or not, I’d just packed it that morning!). It’s a leather changing bag from Josefina and I couldn’t love it more. It’s got a removable inner with lots of compartments so that you can keep all of your baby bits separate, and it attaches to a pushchair with gold button hardware. best of all, it’s so elegant and chic, and doesn’t look at all like a baby changing bag. I’ll carry on using it for years to come as a weekend going-away bag, and it also makes a perfect camera bag, with all its compartments. Josefina offers monogramming, and I opted for the gold, of course. This bag was generously gifted to me by the brand, but I wasn’t asked to review it here – I just adore it!

The cream bobble rug is from Le Flair Vintage.

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

The sweet soft toy whale is from H&M.

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Our treasured Birthday Letters journal is from The Simple Stories, Oscar and Wilf have one each. The idea is that you write a letter to your child every year on their birthday, and then eventually it will be a gift to them.

You can find the rabbit night light here, the wooden stacking kitten is also from Sarah and Bendrix, the little toy camera is from Twig Creative and the milestone cards are by Cheryl Rawlings. The tiny moccs are from a past collaboration between Rebecca Kiff (Rebecca Raynham) and Monkey and Mole. The magnetic wooden animals in the photo below are actually Oscar’s and they too are from Sarah and Bendrix. It’s my go-to shop for gifts for my friends’ kids – the toys are sweet, simple and provoke imagination and play, plus I know that their parents will also love them as they look so beautiful.

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Please let me know if there’s anything I haven’t mentioned and you’d like to know where I found it.

| The ‘Before’

Now, it wouldn’t be a room tour without some ‘before’ shots, would it? I wasn’t sure that I had any, but I managed to dig these out!

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

The first thing we did when we moved in was to deconstruct the enormous IKEA wardrobe that covered the entirety of one wall and took up a ridiculous amount of space. I’m all for storage space, but I really did not want to encourage my inner hoarder with this expanse of space, plus it had super ugly gloss doors. When we removed it we found two alcoves hidden behind, and although they’re small it was completely dead space! We put the IKEA wardrobe pieces on Gumtree for free collection, and amazingly someone took the lot off our hands.

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

Removing the wardrobe revealed painted wallpaper that was peeling and coming away in parts, so we steamed the rest off. Unfortunately a few pieces of plaster also came away, and Ben insisted on doing the plastering himself. He’d never done it before but he watched a couple of Youtube videos and I must say he did a pretty good job!

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

The carpet was in a really sorry state – very worn in parts and lots of stains. It had to go. We had intended to replace it with a new carpet, but the we removed it we found the house’s original floorboards beneath it. They were painted black, not in the best condition and as it’s such a old house the floor is far from flat, but we wanted to see if we could restore them, so Ben hired a professional floor sander and spent a whole weekend working on them. There was dust everywhere! I’m not sure if he would have taken the job on if he’d actually known how much work it would be, but I was very grateful – it looked amazing.

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

This photo shows the nearly finished room – we treated the floor with an oil to waterproof and protect it, but it brought out the yellow/orange tones of the wood (pine? Probably – I’m not sure!), and I wasn’t keen on the colour, so I applied a lime tinted varnish, which really helped.

I painted the walls – they are Sail White matt emulsion by Crown and the skirting is just cheap as chips Brilliant White wood paint. The walls needed three coats to look really uniform, which was a faff. After having done this, I used Farrow and Ball paint on two of the other rooms and they only needed two coats. I think cheaper paint is a false economy as it takes more paint and more time to achieve the same job!

So there we have it! Please do comment below if you have any questions, and if you’d like to see more posts like this I would love to know.

Hannah x

Family, Motherhood, Parenting

My experiences with breastfeeding | Oscar

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Mother breastfeeding baby

I wanted to use this space to reflect on my breastfeeding journeys with both boys, as a kind of journal entry for myself to read in years to come, but also because I think if there’s one thing that we can do to promote breastfeeding to those who haven’t considered it, or those who tried it and found it difficult, it’s to talk about it more. Be open and honest. Because in retrospect, I was completely naive about the reality of breastfeeding before I had Oscar; some aspects are talked about in antenatal classes but there’s a whole world of information that you just just don’t come across until you’re experiencing it yourself, and then your knee-jerk reaction is to think that you’re the only one to feel like you do.

Breastfeeding, and everything related to it, is fully laden with emotion. Guilt, self-doubt, uncertainty, feelings of failure – and add to this the fact that your body is awash with hormones that leave you in tears for absolutely no reason at all. Even if you have an easy ride, it is still really hard at the start, and I think simply knowing that is completely normal in advance is what I needed (and what I think a lot of other new mothers need) as a way of reassurance that if you grit your teeth now, it will get easier.

[Just to add, before I go on, that for some breastfeeding is incredibly challenging, for various reasons, and depending on your situation and feelings, gritting your teeth and continuing is not always the best option.]

If you’ve read my birth story with Oscar, you’ll have seen that Oscar was placed on my chest immediately after he was born and latched on and started suckling when he was about 20 minutes old. I didn’t really know what I was doing but he certainly seemed to, and for that I feel incredibly lucky. We stayed in that position, skin to skin, and suckling on and off for about 2 1/2 hours. In the first three days Oscar easily spent more hours feeding, day and night, than not, and he preferred to sleep with a nipple in his mouth! We spent one night in hospital, and the next morning the midwife asked me how many times I’d fed him overnight. I looked at her, confused, and answered, “erm, continuously?”

Although Oscar’s latch seemed to be fine, with all of that suckling I suffered with the obligatory sore, cracked nipples that leaves you wincing and curling your toes in pain at every feed, despite religious use of Lansinoh lanolin nipple cream. I have yet to meet someone who hasn’t experienced this in the first few days of breastfeeding! For me, it was worst between about day 3 and day 7, and by 2 weeks I found breastfeeding completely pain-free.

My milk came in somewhere between day 3 and day 4, and I was shocked to wake up to huge, hard painful breasts that looked stuck-on – like I’d had a boob job! I had a really strong let down, which I could feel as a tingling sensation soon after starting a feed, and I could hear Oscar gulping away frantically. I soon realised that he’d decided that my flow was a bit too much to handle, and would let excess milk dribble out of the corner of his mouth, all over my clothes. After that I always had to tuck a muslin in my bra at the start of a feed, to avoid walking around with a wet patch on my top all day! I also quickly learned that I needed to wear breast pads day and night, and at night that meant wearing a sleep bra to hold them in place.

Oscar put on weight beautifully, and as breastfeeding was going so well, from about 2 weeks old I started giving him a bottle of expressed breast milk to give me a little break – we continued to do this about once a week to keep him used to the idea of a bottle. The only problem was that I couldn’t go longer than 3 or 4 hours between feeds before my breasts became painfully engorged; I think this began as a result of Oscar wanting to feed so frequently (he seemed to ‘graze’ – a little feed every 1-2 hours, and only ever from one side at a time), but in turn I would offer him milk very frequently to ease my discomfort. This was one of the main issues I found with breastfeeding Oscar – it was SO frequent. He rooted and cried for milk every 2 hours, day and night, for the first 6 months, and I obliged. I was absolutely and utterly exhausted, to the point that I cried and I have huge blanks in my memory of that time, through mind-numbing tiredness, but I never considered giving up – and I want to make a point of saying that I wasn’t trying to be a martyr, I really didn’t want to quit – I loved breastfeeding so much. Every single time I nursed it was me and him, in a bubble of oxytocin, and all was right with the world. It was an addictive feeling and those frequent moments of bonding and togetherness are what kept me from resenting him for allowing me painfully little sleep.

The other breastfeeding-related issue that I suffered from recurrently was blocked ducts/mastitis, which I’m sure was as a result of my overproduction and tendency to engorgement. On three occasions I had the full whack of symptoms – high fever, flu-like symptoms and an exquisitely tender breast with a wedge-shaped firm, hot, red patch that was agony to feed from. On each occasion, I managed to get away without antibiotics as the symptoms began to improve after about 48 hours of feeding to drain the breast, paracetamol and bed rest. I’ve gone on to suffer with this recurrently with Wilf; I seem to be prone to it.

After the early days, breastfeeding Oscar was very straightforward, he would never say no if I offered him a feed and I sometimes used my ‘magic trick’ simply to pacify him if he was upset.

We continued exclusively breastfeeding until I went back to work at 9 1/2 months. I breastfed him morning and night, and on my days off work, but at nursery he would have cows milk in a bottle. Around his first birthday, he started to pull off me after his bedtime breastfeed and look around expectantly for more, whereas before this he would nurse to sleep every single evening. I offered a bottle of cows milk, which he accepted. After that, I would offer more milk in a bottle after his breastfeed, and most of the time he would want it, and eventually I felt that my supply was pretty low and not filling his tummy for bedtime as much as he would like. One night, when he was about 14 months old, he pushed me away in favour of the bottle, and that was that.

I don’t remember our last feed, and thinking about it now makes me feel a bit emotional. I would have definitely continued to nurse him for longer, but I feel like he made the decision to stop, and other than my feeling a little sad that it was all over, it was painless.

So there we are – what I always thought was an uneventful breastfeeding experience with Oscar and yet I still found over a thousand words to say about it! Wilf, on the other hand, was a completely different story, and I’ll be sharing that next week. I’d love to hear from you – did any of this ring true for you? Did you have a hard/easy ride with breastfeeding? Do leave a comment below.

Hannah x

Family, Travel

Another Place The Lake – a luxury family hotel in The Lake District

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another place the lake

I’ve been lucky enough to have done a fair amount of travelling over the past decade, and have stayed at some truly amazing hotels, but I was happily surprised to find that Another Place was the first I’ve visited that had me booking our second stay before we’d even left. As a family with young kids, I felt like I’d hit the hotel jackpot.

Perhaps it’s because having two children has meant that we have to be more picky about the kind of holiday that we book, and with many hotels being either non child-friendly, or not allowing kids at all, our offerings are more select than they used to be. I have a definite ‘type’ in mind when it comes to choosing a hotel, and I know that lots of you will be right on the same page as me. For me, it’s always indie over chain, small over big, a luxury feel with lots of thoughtful touches but with a relaxed vibe, rather than one that is so fancy that it leaves you feeling a little intimidated. And of course, beautiful interiors (did someone say ‘instagrammable?!’) are also at the top of my list. But now, add to that mix the ‘child-friendly’ factor and your search results are suddenly cut right down, as lots of places that fit the above criteria will have decided that toddler tantrums throw off their hard-earned groove. When I think of a kid-friendly hotel, I imagine a big resort with creches and playgrounds, and whilst we will undoubtedly end up on such a holiday one day and most probably love it, at the moment it’s not quite my ideal scene.

Step in Another Place The Lake. The sister hotel to The Watergate Bay Hotel in Cornwall, it pretty much ticks every single box for me: small, friendly, boutique vibe. Feels like a luxury hotel, but you won’t get any disapproving glances at your wellies or flip flops. Gorgeous interiors, what Ben and I would call hipster (with the caveat that we’re probably a little bit hipster for Yorkshire, but definitely not for London!). Spa and infinity pool. Creche and kids club. There are a handful of places that fit the bill down in the South of England, but for the Lake District this place is in a league of its own.

Ben, Oscar Wilf and I first visited Another Place in February for two nights, when Wilf was only 5 weeks old, and it holds special memories as our first holiday as a family of four. I made this short film of our stay if you’d like to take a look (it snowed!). Our second visit was for three nights in June, for my birthday. Here’s what we got up to…

| Sunday

We arrived on Sunday at lunchtime and as it was a beautiful day we had a picnic down by the lake. There was a huge meadow of buttercups in front of the hotel, so I sat there feeding Wilf feeling blissed out while Ben and Oscar paddled and threw stones in the lake.

I was booked onto a paddleboard lesson in the afternoon, so I got kitted out with a wetsuit by the team there and headed out onto the lake with an instructor and one other guest. I’ve tried stand up paddle boarding a few times before and I absolutely love it! It feels so freeing to be out on open water, just you, a board, and a paddle and it’s brilliant exercise – my poor tired abs need it after having two kids! We ended up doing a 4 mile round trip; I definitely felt like I’d earned my dinner!

I returned to the hotel to find Ben and Oscar having an absolute ball in the swimming pool whilst Wilf watched on from his pram. The stunning infinity pool is definitely one of my favourite things about the place – plus there is a wooden sunken outdoor hot tub for the grown ups.

We were booked into the main hotel restaurant, the Rampsbeck, for a three course meal that evening. If you’re dining there, the cost is inclusive of a freshly cooked buffet-style kids tea between 5-6pm. We were so impressed with the food on offer and Oscar gave it a big thumbs up. If you have older kids, they can eat with you in the restaurant at an early sitting.

As Oscar had skipped his nap that day and was super worn out, rather than taking him to the kids club whilst we had our dinner, we put him to bed in his room and made use of the video monitoring service that the hotel provides on request. I know this can be a controversial topic and many parents wouldn’t feel comfortable doing this, but in the setting I felt happy leaving Oscar asleep, knowing we could both see and hear him on the monitor at all times. He stirred once during dinner, and I was back in our room to help him back into bed within about 20 seconds. We chose to keep Wilf next to us, sleeping in his pushchair.

Dinner was delicious and really beautifully presented, and the service was impeccable – it felt like a real treat for us. The only slight downside was that the portion sizes were on the small side, but I thought that the pricing was very reasonable. Towards the end of the meal we realised that we had been watching the monitor rather than relaxing fully, so we asked to have our desserts in our room, which was absolutely no bother for the helpful staff looking after us.

| Monday

The following morning, after the most delicious breakfast (the DIY home-made waffles were everything!), we took Oscar up to the creche for a play. He told us that he didn’t want to go, but once he saw that there was a pirate ship and he had pretty much the whole place to himself, and the attention of two nursery nurses, he barely looked back at me as I said “see you in a bit!” Ben borrowed a wetsuit and a visibility float and headed out for a swim on the lake, whilst Wilf and I sat by the lakeside, taking in the view. After we managed to prise Oscar away from his new best friends in the creche, we headed out to Pooley Bridge to catch the steamboat across the lake. Ben was nearly as excited as Oscar about this, who was hopping about with glee for the whole ride. What is it with toddlers and vehicles?! Give him a boat, train, or tractor and he will think Christmas has come early!

After getting off at Howtown, we had a dreamy little picnic on a secluded beach on the lake, then loaded the boys up in their carriers to go for a walk. We had planned to follow a lakeside path, but at one point on the route we saw a branch in the path that led steeply up a hill, and we decided to hike top a few paces to get a better view of the lake over the trees. A few paces turned into a few more, and then a few more, as the view just got more spectacular, and 20 minutes later we were at the top of Hallin fell after a dizzy and very sweaty climb with two sleeping boys on our backs! It was totally worth it for the breathtaking view over Ullswater, and we’d definitely recommend it – except next time, we’ll take the actual Hallin fell footpath which is a much more gentle climb!

We headed for an early tea all together in The Living Space, which is a relaxed, open bar area with plenty of comfortable seating and family games dotted around. This area is dog and child-friendly and it was lovely to have an alternative menu to choose from for a change – more bistro style than gourmet dining.

|Tuesday

The following day was my birthday, and the boys piled into bed with us for cuddles and gave me their cards to open. After breakfast I had a treatment booked in the hotel’s spa; a full body massage. The spa was cool, peaceful and relaxing, and without my two gorgeous, busy boys to run around after I had the most blissed out hour in the hands of the Swim Club’s lovely spa therapist. I think I need to start every birthday from now on with a massage!

 

We had a chilled out day, walking by the lakeside, dipping our toes in the lake, walking around the hotel gardens and taking another dip in the pool. We also headed out for a drive whilst both boys napped, taking in the beautiful vistas of the Lake District. On the way home, we stopped at Aira Force, a waterfall close by to the hotel, and did the easy circular walk around it with the boys.

Ben and I had another delicious three course meal in the main restaurant, the Rampsbeck, whilst Wilf slept in the pushchair next to us. This time, we took Oscar up to the kids club to play and watch DVDs during our meal, rather than using the video monitor, which he absolutely loved. I was so impressed with all the different options available at Another Place to ensure that the mums and dads get that little bit of together time, it sets it apart as a family hotel that really feels like a luxury romantic couples hotel at times.

| Wednesday

We checked out the next morning, after a leisurely breakfast, and headed to Lowther Castle which had been recommended to us by the staff. The spectacular castle ruins is now home to beautiful gardens which sprawl up the walls and through windows, jumanji style. The instagrammer in me kept thinking about how it would make the most amazing photoshoot location! But the highlight is The Lost Castle, the most epic adventure playground I have ever seen! It has been built within a forest, and is an echo of Lowther castle itself, with zip wires, turrets and walkways. Maybe best enjoyed by slightly older children; I’m definitely returning with the boys when we visit next time.

As you can see, we took the opportunity to head out every day to see what was on offer in the area, as Ben and I love to explore and Ben in particular isn’t great at sitting still for long! But equally, between the spa, swimming pool, water sports, walks right from the hotel door and the many peaceful spots within the hotel to put your feet up with a good book, you could easily arrive and spend a long weekend here without getting back in your car. In fact, next time we visit, that’s what I plan to do, particularly as Wilf will be old enough to spend some time in the kids club – even if Ben has other ideas!

So there we are, Another Place The Lake, the first place we loved so much for so many reasons that we booked to go again, and probably the first we’ll be booking for the third time too! I’ve created a short film of our experience and would love for you to take a look.

Hannah x

We were kindly gifted a part of our stay at Another Place The Lake, but this post was not sponsored and as always all opinions are entirely my own.

Instagram, Lifestyle, Nature, Photography, Tips

How to make your own floral crown

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I’ve got a bit of a love affair going on with flowers, and it’s growing stronger by the day. I’ve always been an admirer of all things floral, but I think it was around the time that I had Oscar, and I started using Instagram regularly, that I really fell head over heels. When Osc was tiny, like so many other parents I used to go for daily long, long walks with the pram, as for a while it was the only place he’d settle in the daytime. Our walk usually took us past one of the two street flower stalls in York, and treating myself to a bunch of blooms became a bit of a tradition that has stayed with me since then. Rather than buying a pretty mixed posy, I tended to go for one or two different types of stem, usually inexpensive types, and often a bunch of foliage such as ruscus or eucalyptus too. I loved taking them home, unwrapping them and having five quiet minutes to myself to trim each stem and arrange them, appreciating each bloom. It was my little bit of mindfulness in the midst of a chaotic day.

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll know that I love a floral wreath or crown, and with the summer solstice coming up soon I thought it would be nice to share with you how to make your own floral crown to wear. It’s so simple to do, I promise! In Sweden, the summer solstice is widely celebrated and it’s a tradition for women to make and wear floral crowns. That’s a good enough reason for me to as well! I actually took these photos quite a while back, but I never made use of them. I’m going to be making another floral crown this year though, and I will share the finished result on my Instagram – I’m thinking bigger and blousier than the ones I’ve made before!

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| How to make your own floral crown

What you’ll need:

  • A selection of blooms and foliage of varying sizes and complementary colours. I used garden roses, stocks, sweet william, astilbe and jasmine, which are all available at this time of year. Try foraging in your own garden for supplies – you only need a couple of sprigs of each variety.
  • A short section of stiff florists wire (or any covered wire), cut to length to fit over your head from ear to ear, like an alice band.
  • Florists tape
  • Scissors or secateurs
  • A length of ribbon, around 1m long
  • Some thin florists wire to secure and larger flower buds (optional)

Florists tape and wire can be found in craft stores or online – I bought mine from Hobbycraft.

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| Step 1

Cut your blooms to length. Aim for a 1-2 inch stem. Shorter stems will make a neat, compact crown (but make sure they are still long enough to tape down!) while longer stems, or those of varying length will make a more wild-looking crown.

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| Step 2

If you have any larger blooms it can hep to anchor them with thin wire, although you don’t have to do this. Cut around 4 inches or wire and bend in half, like a hair grip. Insert into the centre of the flower, from front to back, and pull so that the wire is concealed. Twist the wire ends. You now have a flower head on a wire stem, which is easier to build into your crown and bend into position.

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| Step 3

Take your stiff wire, which is now shaped like an alice band. Wrap the ribbon around the wire, starting from the centre outwards, and tape into place. You should have enough free ribbon on each end to tie around the back of your head.

| Step 4

Start to build your flower crown!

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And there you have it! One flower crown, perfect for wearing for summer solstice celebrations, music festivals, photo shoots or just to do the washing up! I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading this and feel inspired to give it a go; if you do make your own floral crown I would absolutely love to see it! You can share it with me by tagging me in your photo on Instagram – I’m @hannah.straughan. I’m thinking of doing a similar post to show you how to make your own winter wreath; it’s using a different method to this, it’s super simple and looks amazing. Let me know if that’s something you’d like to see!

Hannah x

Instagram, Photography, Tips

My photo editing tricks and tips

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Photograph of magnolia in bloom

Photo editing. Love it or loathe it, it’s an essential process for professional and amateur photographers alike, and can take an image from ‘meh’ to ‘WOW’. I’d go as far as saying that unless  you’re an exceptionally talented photographer, it’s all about the editing, and it takes practice to get better at. If you’re an Instagrammer, the importance of great photo editing goes beyond improving each individual photo; having a consistent photo editing style is necessary to achieve that cohesive ‘look’ that makes your Instagram gallery look beautiful, and will draw people in to click that follow button.

I’ve put together this post after I had a few people asking about my photo editing process, so whether you’re taking taking photos for your blog, want to up your Instagram and move towards your own cohesive editing ‘look’, or simply enjoy photography as a hobby, I do hope you find these tips and tricks helpful.

| The ABC of photo editing

A. Correct

First up, photo editing is essential for fixing those basic mistakes we all get in photos. Crop, straighten, tweak the exposure and temperature – even professional photographers need them.

B. Enhance

This is where the magic happens! Add a filter, selectively deepen some colours or brighten your subject. There are now apps which allow you to add special effects such as rain, fog, sparkle or lens flare. Or you can delve into photoshop and create a whimsical make-believe scene with endless possibilities! Read on to find out which apps I use and would recommend to you to enhance your photos.

C. Develop your own style

There’s no secrets or tricks to this, it’s simply about trial and error, practice, and once you know what you like, keep experimenting until you’re happy. It does take time. It is however a really important thing to develop if you want to up your photography game or take your Instagram to the next level, as having your own editing style will mean that your work is recognisable and consistent. When I was choosing a photographer to document our wedding, one of the really important factors for me was a solid consistency in both quality and editing style in their portfolio, as it meant that I could trust that the same quality would transfer to our own wedding photos; similarly if a brand wants to work with you as an influencer, it goes without saying that they’ll be more likely to reach out to you if you have a consistent editing style, as then they feel they know what they’ll be getting from you.

Something I struggled with when I was playing around with photo editing and finding a style I liked, was that I felt as though I liked lots of different styles, and my Instagram gallery seemed to change in its overall look quite regularly. I believed that I needed to select one filter, and one colour palette for my gallery, and stick with it. Now, there are some Instagram accounts that I love that have this nailed, but if you don’t want to commit to this, as I didn’t, that’s totally fine! If you look back through my Instagram gallery you’ll see that that colour palette changes through the seasons, and whilst I used to think that I was too fickle and it meant that I hadn’t yet settled on ‘my style’, I now embrace it.

One tip I would offer is to use a free grid planning app, if you don’t already, such as UNUM, Mosaico or Planoly. It will load your last 9 or 12 Instagram images, and you can add your next images into the mix to see how they will fit in prior to posting. I’m always a supporter of ‘post what makes you happy’, so if there’s a photo you’ve just taken that has e.g. a heap of green in it and sticks out like a sore thumb with the rest of your gallery, don’t despair! You could either desaturate the greens, or if that doesn’t help, just save the photo for later and start a little theme of green running through your feed, so that it fits in.

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| Getting your photos onto your phone

I do all my photo editing on my iPhone. Some of my Instagram photos are still taken using my iPhone camera, but for the ones that I take using my DSLR the first step before editing is to get them onto my phone. I have two ways that I like to do this:

  1. I download the images I want to edit directly from my camera to my phone using a wi-fi enabled memory card. This is the link to the one I use; you download a free app, connect to the card via wi-fi, et voila! Plus points – it’s quick, I can do it anywhere and don’t need to download images onto my computer first. Downsides – it’s best used to download a few select images as you have to do each photo manually, and the images are downloaded onto your phone which takes up memory space.
  2. I upload photos from my camera to my computer; then in iPhotos I select all the images I wish to use, and add them to a shared folder on my iCloud. I can then access the shared folder on my phone and either select which ones I want to download, or upload them directly to VSCO from the shared folder. Plus points – it’s a better option if you have lots of images to choose from, and the images are still on the iCloud, therefore not taking up phone memory. Downsides – you have to connect your camera to your computer first in order to do this. I have a desktop Mac, so I can only do this at home.
  • VSCO

My favourite photo-editing app, VSCO is the first I turn to for every image I edit. If you’re new to VSCO, see here for a beginner’s guide by Instagram queen Sara Tasker. It’s a free app, but I’ve upgraded to VSCO X for an annual fee; having said that of all the hundreds of presets available, I still only use a select few! I’ll take you through a quick step-by-step on how I edit an image in VSCO.

  1. First of all, I’ll use the editing tab to make basic corrections to the photo, starting off with cropping and straightening the image if needed, and then tweaking the exposure (usually slightly up, as I try to slightly underexpose when I shoot on my DSLR). I’ll then adjust the contrast and temperature, if theres an obvious need to.
  2. Next, I add a filter. I almost exclusively use the Analog series: my favourites at the moment are A4 and A6, but up until about 6 months ago I tended to use A7, A8 and A9. I toggle the strength of the filter up and down, until I feel it is ‘just right’ – often less is more. I like to switch back and forth between the image I’m editing and the last 9 or 12 images in my Instagram gallery, to check that it looks like it will fit in seamlessly.
  3. Finally I’ll go back to the editing tab and make some final changes, if needed. Sometimes I like to add clarity or sharpness by one stop, or slightly tweak the temperature again. There is a relatively new function called ‘HSL’, which stands for hue, saturation, and lightness. I’ll most commonly use this to desaturate green shades in a photo, if I feel like they are too intense.

Sometimes VSCO is the only editing tool I’ll use before posting a photo to Instagram, but there are a few other apps that I keep up my sleeve to troubleshoot various problems, and add effects.

  • PS Express

There are heaps of editing options in the Adobe Photoshop express app, but I generally used it for one function only, and that is the ‘Reduce Luminance Noise’ tab. If you’ve taken a photo in low light and the quality is poor, but you love the image, use this trick in combination with the ‘Sharpen’ tab to smooth things out. However, be careful not to go too heavy, or your photo will look like a painting! I don’t really use this function since I started shooting more on my DSLR, and I generally avoid any photography in low light.

  • PS Fix

I use the Photoshop Fix app if there is something in a photo that I want to erase, such as a plug socket! The ‘Spot Heal’ function will do this, but I find it a bit fiddly and sometimes the cover up isn’t very subtle, so I try and avoid getting ugly details in the shot in the first place!

  • Snapseed

This is a brilliant app, which I know a lot of people use as their primary photo editing app. There are heaps of different functions and effects, but I generally only use it for the ‘Brush’ tool. Using this, you can selectively ‘paint’ areas of a photo that you want to adjust exposure, temperature, saturation or ‘dodge & burn’ (lightening and darkening). So, for example if a photo has a well-exposed background, but the subject has been cast in shadow (or even just a part of the subject), you can paint the area to be lightened, and avoid having to overexpose the whole photo in order to ensure the subject is appropriately exposed. I’d urge you to have a play about with this, I love it.

  • A Color Story

This is another app that I know some people love to use exclusively, but I only use it to add effects. I’ve got the ‘Flare & Bokeh’ pack – call it cheating if you will, but I adore adding a little bit of magic to photos using these overlays! My preference is to make it look as natural as possible, so I head to this app only when I’ve got a photo that’s been taken in bright sunshine, so that it’s believable that a bit of sun flare has been captured. You can hold your fingers down over the flare overlay to change the orientation, and of course it looks most natural if you make it look like it’s coming from where the sun actually was in the photo. I’ll then always use the slider to reduce the effect to a subtle level.

| An editing recipe

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Processed with VSCO with a4 preset
Processed with VSCO with a4 preset

I thought I’d add in one example of an edit that I’ve done; I’ve selected a photo that has been pretty heftily edited as it’s more interesting for the purposes of this post, but most of my photos generally have much more subtle tweaks than this one.

From the first image, which is taken straight off my camera, I used VSCO to create the second edit. After first cropping and straightening the image, I applied the following changes:

(Using the HSL function, I desaturated the greens). To take the image from the second to the third edit, I opened up the A Color Story app, and added a small amount of ‘flare 7’ in the Flare and Bokeh pack. The whole edit took me about 15 minutes.

| What’s next?

I’m very much still learning and evolving my photo editing myself, and my next project is to learn how to edit in Lightroom. I actually bought this for myself last year, but haven’t found the time to get to grips with it! My plan is to use YouTube tutorial videos to help me, and I’m really excited to get the hang of it and try using Lightroom presets on my photos.

So there we are! All of my photo editing ‘secrets’! I hope that this has been useful for you and that you’ve perhaps picked up a few tips. Would you like me to go into any more detail on how I edit my photos, maybe with a step by step example? Are there any photo editing apps that you love to use that I haven’t mentioned? Let me know!

Hannah x

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Family, Motherhood, Parenting, Pregnancy

Vlog | Wilf’s birth and first days

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Man holding a newborn baby

I’ve been completely blown away by the amazing response I’ve had to posting the not-so-perfect birth story of Wilf. If you haven’t seen it, you can catch up here and here. It’s real and honest, it still feels raw to me and I had to push aside that silly part of me that only wants to share the rose-tinted bits of motherhood. As a result, lots of people got in touch through emails, comments and DMs on Instagram to say that the story had really helped them cope with their birth that didn’t go totally to plan, and made them feel a bit more OK knowing that they definitely weren’t alone in that, and also that it’s absolutely fine to have a little (or big) cry, shout or vent about not getting the birth experience that you hoped for.

Childbirth is arguably one of the hardest things a woman goes through in her whole life, and whilst even the most straightforward, complication-free birth may be physically demanding and painful, it’s the complicated births that come with emotional pain that is much harder to recover from and forget. And whilst some might feel that if they’ve required intervention or had a surgical delivery that they’ve ‘failed’ in some way, really the opposite is true. Whatever happened in your birth story, you are strong, amazing, and brilliant.

So without further ado, here is a vlog of Wilf’s birth and first few days – I hope you enjoy watching it.

I know that I say it all the time, but your comments and messages on my blog and Instagram posts are absolutely what this is all about for me, I love hearing your take on things and if anything I’ve written about has helped you in some way – so THANK YOU.

Hannah x

Last three images by Dominique Bader

Family, Motherhood, Parenting, Pregnancy

Wilfred Hector George | A birth story (part two)

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Newborn baby with mum after caesarian section

This is the second part to Wilf’s Birth story. If you haven’t read the first part yet, you can see it here.

There were a few plus sides to having a planned Caesarian which I could be happy about, now that the decision was made – firstly, childcare: being able to plan for someone to look after Oscar on the day of the surgery. Also, not having to wait so long, as with Oscar I went nearly two weeks overdue and I was tearing my hair out with impatience. As someone who likes to plan ahead, having a birth date felt freeing, and I did relax somewhat; but it also felt a little bit surreal and deflating, as if a little bit of the magic (nervous anticipation) had been taken out. I was also terrified about the idea of the surgery, having never had an operation in my life. I not-so-secretly hoped that I would go into labour early, and progress so quickly that by the time I made it into hospital the baby would be nearly delivered, so I could have a normal delivery; but with Oscar arriving late I just knew in my heart that this was not going to happen.

The other nice bit of having a planned birth date was that I really, truly soaked every last bit of our family of three up, knowing that we only had a few days left. I had lots of cuddles and one-on-one time with Oscar, took lots of photos and on the night before the surgery we went out for an early dinner, just the three of us: it was perfect. I felt like I was as ready as I ever would be for our family to go through the huge change that was about to happen.

Wilf’s birthday

On the morning of the 2nd January we got up at 6am. It was one of the very few mornings that Ben and I were both up before Oscar, who is an early waker. I wasn’t allowed to eat any breakfast (I don’t think I could stomach any anyway), so I checked my bag one last time, folding the tiny little baby vests again and popping in a little bunny toy to match the one we took to the hospital when I had Oscar. Oscar’s childminder arrived; one of his absolute favourite people from his nursery – his face lit up when he saw her and we knew that we could relax, knowing that he would have a wonderful, fun-packed day with her. I felt too nervous and overwhelmed to get emotional about saying goodbye to Oscar, and in any case he was so thrilled to have Grace all to himself that when we wanted a hug, he looked at us as if to say, “so are you guys leaving or what?!”

Conveniently, we live a short walk from the hospital, so we set off (waddled) over on foot. It was dark and cold outside, the pavements were wet, and the roads were eerily quiet. I felt sick with nerves pretty much from the moment I woke that morning until the moment that Wilf was handed to me; I’m not really sure why, as I knew I was in good hands and that we would both be absolutely fine, but I really was dreading the whole thing and a big part of me wanted to run away in the opposite direction. Once we were in the hospital, on went the very fetching backless gown and anti-thrombosis stockings, and before I had a chance to plan my great escape we were being walked through to the operating theatre on the labour ward. My anaesthetist was someone that Ben and I both know, as Ben works with him, which was both reassuring and also a bit odd. I was still shaking with nerves as a cannula was placed in my hand and the spinal injection was done; I was a little worried about them being painful (a bit silly, in comparison with the pain of labour) but they weren’t at all. Within seconds of the spinal injection going in my legs suddenly felt very warm and heavy, and all the blood rushed from my head. I was laid down on the table and felt incredibly vulnerable; completely at the mercy of the medical professionals around me. Although the whole thing was quick, calm, controlled and pain-free for me, and I am so grateful to everyone who looked after me so well, I personally really disliked the whole experience.

I was irrationally worried about feeling pain during the surgery, so I asked the anaesthetist to check to see if I was numb before making any cuts, to which he replied, “well, they’ve already started, so I guess it must be working!” I started shivering uncontrollably, even though I didn’t feel cold. A side effect of the medication, Ben told me. All of a sudden, I heard a single cry. It was such a beautiful sound and it made me cry out with happiness. I thought Wilf must be delivered, but actually his head wasn’t even fully out – just his mouth, and he simply couldn’t wait to let us know he was there! Ben asked me if he could leave my side to watch Wilf being delivered, and I said, “Sure… But video it so I can see too!” We hadn’t planned to do that, but I love that we have a video of the whole thing for us to remember. I’ll spare you from that video though, as it’s pretty gory! We were also not very surprised to see that after Wilf’s head had been delivered, his shoulders remained pretty well stuck in me, and took a lot of coercing to get out, even though the surgeon had given me a bigger than usual incision in anticipation of this. He was another little sumo baby, like Oscar!

I had asked for Wilf to be given to me straight away, without being cleaned, weighed or having a nappy put on, as he would be if it had been normal delivery. I was met with a bit of resistance from the midwife (it’s not what they ‘usually do’) but I insisted, and apart from a minute of delayed cord clamping time, he was placed straight on my chest, skin-to-skin. The rest of the surgery took about 20 minutes but I really didn’t care how long they took, now that I had Wilf with me.

I was wheeled round to the postnatal ward and had a blissful first hour with Wilf: all the nerves had finally melted away, I had no pain whatsoever, and Wilf latched on to my breast like a total pro after about half an hour of skin-to-skin. I wish that was the end of the drama, but unfortunately it was not. One of the health care assistants came to change my sheets, and on lifting up the blanket covering my legs, she was faced with a pool of blood. I couldn’t feel anything as my legs were still numb from the spinal, so I hadn’t been aware of anything untoward. There was a moment of panic and a flurry of doctors and midwives, and I had to go back to the labour ward for intravenous fluids, a hormone drip and closer observation, but thankfully the bleeding settled down. I lost one and a quarter litres of blood due to my uterus not being fully contracted, and unsurprisingly I felt a bit waffy for a good couple of weeks after that! After all the drama, we realised that Wilf hadn’t yet been weighed! Six hours after he was born, he was finally weighed and came in at 8lb 15oz – this was after quite a number of wet nappies, so was probably a bit less than his actual birth weight. Considering Oscar had two whole weeks more of growing inside me than Wilf, it’s safe to say that he would have been a lot bigger if we had waited for a normal delivery!

Our surgeon came to see me on the ward after the birth to see how I was, but also to deliver a message: that in his opinion, I would have run into trouble if I had tried for a normal delivery, and that he felt we had made the right decision. As someone with years of experience in obstetrics, and someone who is a strong advocate of normal delivery himself unless there is a good medical reason against it, I really trusted his opinion. And of course, after the not-so-wonderful experience of having a Caesarian section, it was a relief to hear that.

The recovery

I spent two nights in hospital and found the recovery MUCH harder than with Oscar. I was very tearful in the days and weeks afterwards due to the pain of the wound, as well as the normal postpartum emotions. Doing pretty much anything was painful for the first few days, I couldn’t walk normally until about three weeks, and it was probably 6 weeks before I felt I could pick up Oscar comfortably (although I definitely did so earlier than this, and then suffered afterwards). If there was one positive point about the harder recovery of a Caesarian when compared to a normal delivery, it was that I was forced to slow down, do less and stay at home. As someone who gets impatient and likes to push myself, I think I really needed this to prevent me from doing too much too early, and I am SO grateful, looking back, that I spent so much time resting, recovering, cuddling and nursing Wilf most of the day and night, and generally looking after myself more. I actually napped in the daytime when Wilf did which I never managed with Oscar! I did actually intend to take things much slower that I did after Oscar was born, and I loved the advice in this book about the first six weeks after having a baby, but it wasn’t until after Wilf was born that I read this brilliant blog post which sums it all up perfectly.

A few weeks ago, Ben bumped into the obstetrician who delivered Wilf at work. Ben told me that he asked how we all were, and asked to see a photo of Wilf. He then said to Ben, “And has Hannah come to terms with the birth yet?”

When Ben told me this, I felt stunned, and a lump came to my throat. Firstly, I hadn’t talked at all with the consultant about how I felt about the Caesarian, so I felt amazed that he clearly knew that I was feeling disappointed and torn when I asked him to book the surgery – and to be honest, really impressed that an older, male surgeon was that perceptive of my feelings. But also, no one had asked me about that since Wilf’s birth. Plenty of people had asked how the physical recovery was going, but I had completely pushed behind me any emotions I felt about ‘missing out’ on the opportunity to have another natural birth. I hadn’t even been honest with myself about it. Even now, as I write, I haven’t yet shed a tear about it all, because I really do mean it when I say that first and foremost I am incredibly grateful and lucky to have another healthy, happy baby. Maybe those tears will come at some point in the future, and maybe they won’t, I’m not sure. But I do know, and it’s painful for me to admit, that when I hear or read about friends’ natural births I feel a pang of envy and sadness. My heart does hurt a little that I will never experience that ever again.

I’ve mostly written all of this down for myself, and it truly has helped me to process it all. And I know that I’m OK. More than OK.

I’ve also written it down because I published Oscar’s birth story on here, and it would be unfair to not document Wilf’s just because 1) it wasn’t all I had hoped it would be and 2) it was a surgical delivery. I love (and still do) reading others’ birth stories but there does, very understandably, seem to be a sway to write about natural births and the ones where it all went well, and omit the gory/less romantic/Caesarian birth stories. Which can fuel the feelings of ‘failure’ experienced by women who need medical intervention during their birth. I say this to myself as much as I do to you: whether you have an unassisted delivery, forceps, epidural for pain relief or a Caesarean section – you still gave birth, and none of these variants should lead to feelings of inadequacy. You brought a life into the world. You gave birth. End of.

I’m feeling super vulnerable pressing publish on this… It’s definitely been cathartic for me to write though and I do hope you enjoy reading it. As always I would love to hear your thoughts!

There is actually one last bit of this story that I will be sharing very soon, and that is a vlog of Wilf’s birth and first few days in the world. I’ll post a link on Instagram when it’s published, so keep a look out for it there!

Hannah x

Family, Motherhood, Parenting, Pregnancy

Wilfred Hector George | A birth story (part one)

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Parents with newborn baby

I’ve sat down to write this a handful of times, but each time I just stared at a blank page for ten minutes before deciding that it wasn’t going to come. If I’m completely honest with myself, the truth is that I’m not really totally cool with how it panned out. That’s not to say that it went badly, or that I didn’t get the birth that I wanted, because I really believe that as long as my baby and I are healthy then all is well – I do mean that. But if you asked me how I feel about it… I’m just not sure what to say. So, for my own form of catharsis, I’m going to write it all down, even though part of me wants to stare at a blank page and avoid it a little longer.

If you haven’t read my birth story with Oscar, you can see it here, and I’d recommend reading it first, as it’s the beginning of my story with Wilf.

With Oscar, my first child, I had a normal vaginal delivery with just gas and air as pain relief. My birth plan was to deliver my baby safely by whatever means were necessary, but I knew that I was dearly hoping for a birth with as little intervention as possible. I stayed at home for as long as possible, practicing my natal hypnotherapy breathing and visualisations, and I used the birthing pool once I got to hospital. I had to get out of the pool to deliver Oscar, but I found the whole experience incredibly positive. I stayed calm and felt in control throughout, and my lasting memories are those of euphoria and feeing like a complete superhero (my brain has cleverly erased the memory of the pain!)

As my pregnancy with Wilf progressed, and I started to think about the birth, I genuinely couldn’t wait to do it again. Yes, it was the most pain I had ever experienced, but also the biggest endorphin rush in my lifetime, and definitely my proudest achievement.

Moving on to my second pregnancy, at my 34 week appointment with the midwife, my bump was measuring big – as in, off the chart. I wasn’t surprised or worried, as Oscar was a big baby (9lb 2 oz for my 5ft 4 frame), but she told me that I’d have to see the consultant. The only thought that crossed my mind was that I might be offered a growth scan, or an early induction of labour.

Pregnant woman with a big bump

The following week, I saw the obstetrician. This was a senior consultant that we had met before (we had an early pregnancy scan with him) and Ben has worked with him. We both trust and respect him greatly. He told us that, although it was difficult to accurately predict, he thought that Wilf was shaping up to be even bigger than Oscar. He read carefully through my birth notes with Oscar (which I had never seen before) before delivering his recommendation in a calm, measured manner.

I had shoulder dystocia with Oscar (this is when the baby’s shoulder gets stuck in the mother’s pelvis after the baby’s head has been delivered).

In my memory, I know this had happened but I simply didn’t realise the seriousness of it because, 1) I had just delivered Oscar’s head and I was in a world of pain, and 2) once it was all over I had just become a mother for the first time and that was the beginning and the end of everything.

I had a ‘high’ risk of having shoulder dystocia again

It is impossible to predict just how likely I was to run into this problem again, but previous shoulder dystocia is the single biggest risk factor for having it again.

If I did get shoulder dystocia with Wilf, there was a 1 in 4 chance of a bad outcome

‘A bad outcome’ meaning either harm to the baby (brain damage, nerve damage to his upper limbs), or death.

My options were: 1) Have a planned Caesarian section or 2) Have a normal vaginal delivery. If my decision was to go for the latter, they would ensure that a senior midwife, an obstetrician and paediatrician were present at the moment of delivery, in case things did not go smoothly.

I left the appointment with my heart racing and my head spinning: I had not envisaged being told what we had just heard. I had been convinced that if I had had a normal delivery once before, the next time would be even quicker and easier. I had started to prepare for the birth with my hypnobirthing CDs already. I told the consultant that I needed time to think about my decision; he said “of course,” and booked me a follow up in two weeks time. I asked him, I pressed him – what would you recommend? What do you think I should do? He wouldn’t answer this, as he stressed that only I can make that decision. But he did say that if I still wanted to go for a normal delivery, that was fine – as long as I felt that the risks involved in doing that were acceptable to me.

Ben and I spent the next two weeks thinking about it; talking about it, but I felt like I was going around in circles. I chose to tell a few people close to us, that I respect, about our predicament, hoping to get some clarity. Every single response was, “well, you must have the Caesarian, surely? You’d be crazy to take that risk!” I tried hard to rewind what had happened, thinking that if I had never been sent to see the obstetrician, I would have never realised that Oscar was actually one of the 3 out of 4 cases of shoulder dystocia that are fine, and I wouldn’t know the risks I was facing, and could carry on planning my natural delivery. But it had all been said out loud, and now I couldn’t ignore it.

I finally found clarity on the day before our next appointment, at 37 weeks, perhaps just through the pressure of having to make a decision. There was one phrase that the consultant used that I kept coming back to – “was this an acceptable risk?” The odds were in my favour – 75% chance that Wilf would be just fine, and that’s only if I did get shoulder dystocia again. But the possible bad outcome, if things did go wrong, was catastrophic. Of course this risk was not acceptable to me. No way. And for what benefit would I be taking this risk? For me to have the experience (and hopefully the joy) of having a natural birth. I mean, it would be purely selfish, and if anything went wrong, I could never have lived with myself for making that decision.

I went into the appointment and asked for the elective Caesarian, knowing it was absolutely the right decision but in all honesty, really disappointed that it was happening. It was booked there and then for 2 weeks time, when I would be 39+3 weeks pregnant.

I’m going to leave it here for now, at the risk of losing some of you to my endless rambling – this is going to be a long one! I’ll be posting the second part of Wilf’s birth story next week.

Hannah x

Photo of a mother with a newborn baby