Live life on the wild side

 Hey Guys,  Jess here and today I want to chat to you about Perinatal Mental Health. This week (29th April -5th May 2024) is Maternal Mental Health week where a week long campaign is running to raise awareness around mental health before, during and after birth. You can find out more about the campaign here: Maternal Mental Health Alliance Perinatal mental health is all around advocating for and recognising symptoms of mental health around pregnancy, this could be feelings of uncertainty or anxiousness around the pregnancy itself,  being worried or concerned about the birthing process or feelings of low mood and depression post birth. Perinatal mental health most commonly affects the pregnant partner however they are not the only ones who are affected as the non pregnant partner can also go through mental health issues. Whilst the pregnant partner has to carry birth and feed (if exclusively breastfed) the baby the non pregnant partner has to watch the whole birth process,...

(Contains amazon associates links)   Hey guys Jess here and today I'm going to share with you a brief put together of some of the things that have helped me post birth, this is not an exhaustive list of what works, but things that you might want to try and see if they help you.  First lets share a little of my journey, induced, mass blood loss, 6 days in hospital, feeding issues, jaundice baby, 2nd degree tear, low blood haemoglobin levels, stitches, haemorrhoids, constipation, several different pain meds, other meds and blood thinners. For the full birth story you can head here: https://livelifeonthewildside.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-birth-experience.html Yes I know this is going on the internet for all to see but 1. These are all parts of being human and pushing a child out of you, if your lucky you won't get these but there is always a possibility 2. once you have had several midwives, doctors, etc looking at various different body parts and constantly talked to th...

 Hi guys Jess here with a little blog.  Those of you who are parents and have been through the act or raising a child will have heard this phrase a lot.  "It gets easier." This is in response to several areas of a child's life, new born, teething, sleep regression, toddlers, threen-ager (age of 3 attitude of 13), fearsome 4 year old's, teen years, school years, puberty....you get it the list goes on.  But my though process today is does it get easier? Or does it just change. Instead why don't we just say,  This is a phase, no body has the one answer to cure all, we are all just winging it 90% of the time and you have to do what works for you.  Because let's face it that is more accurate!  I am still in the very early stages of parenting in the new born stage with a 2 and a half week old, but I have also worked in childcare with children from 4 months to 12 years for over a decade, I've told parents, it gets easier, this is just a phase, it will pass, w...

 Hey guys Jess here,  Currently sat 12 post birth at home in the midst of the post birth life of having a new born, that's a story for another day though, today I want to chat bout the birth 'experience' a better term than birth 'Trauma', this was a phrase I picked up from 'How to raise a viking' by Helen Russell that I have started reading.  My birthing story started on the 26th March, about 2 am my water broke, or so I thought, they didn't really gush or trickle but blobbed, which wasn't what I expected, no contractions or anything like that just the waters breaking, so contacted the MAU and popped in to be check, and was advised to go home, check temp every 4 hours and if we got any changes, contractions or concerns come back, and if we didn't we would be called in.  The next 24 hours felt like the longest wait of my life! I don't do well with waiting at the best of times, I got occasional twinges but nothing huge, spent the day trying to ...

 Hey guys!  Welcome back to the blog and the first (sort of) adventure bag challenge off 2024......Well i don't think I can actually count this one as an adventure bag challenge, but it was definitely and adventure!  This year Chris and I went back over to Girona for a week away training camp, This was something we did in 2023 and thoroughly enjoyed, in 2023, we took on some running, riding and taking in the sights. This year however was a little different due to me being as late as I was in my pregnancy! At about 7 and a half months pregnant my training plan had to change a bit, running has become more difficult and actually as I write this now I have pretty much stopped the running and opted just for a walk instead. I managed to tackle one short run/walk in Girona and the rest of the days were filled with hikes, walks, stretching and yoga. This year I found myself more exhausted which is to be expected! Chris still got out on some really good long rides, took on some de...

 Welcome back to the adventure blog, and this post is something a little different, this is less about my adventure and more about our adventure. By ours, I mean the whole of bikes and laces!  Lets dip into a bit of background, this year started with another year of planning, we had races lined up, I resigned up for the marathon in Abingdon (third time lucky? )we even pencilled in Brutal again because apparently one time of brutal race events wasn't enough for us, However despite all the planning, pencilling in and events there was a slight caveat to each of them. That was the fact that we may not be able to do any of them.  This year Chris and I decided that we would actually just stop with the contraception and see what happens, I mean were not stupid we know what happens but from the perspective of a woman who has been on the pill for a while you start to get doubts on if it actually will ever happen or not, we already knew we wanted to try and have a family and as we ...