How to make a blow fish you can blow along

This is a really simple craft toy to make and you’ll have loads of fun blowing your fish along.  All you need is a couple of items you’ll probably have around the house and plenty of puff!

Home birth and the Press

Today the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit released the results of a cohort study between April 2008 and April 2010,  looking at care in labour, delivery and birth outcomes for the mother and baby for 64,000 'low risk' births in England.

It covered 97% of NHS Trusts providing home birth services and nearly 90% of midwifery units took part.

What I find so interesting is how robust academic data can be interrupted in such different ways by our various British newspapers and media.  So while many of the broadsheets offer a balanced and fair coverage some of the tabloids (and those with the highest circulations) choose to focus entirely on picking out and sensationalizing any statistic that potentially generates shock and fear among their readers.

How to make a dancing deer from coloured card

Here’s a great little craft toy – made all the better with the use of fasteners that allows the deer to jump and dance around.

How to spend less on your new baby

The Guardian published this great article with some useful links about the cost of having a baby.  I loved it because I can really relate to the couple in the article as when Maya was born we didn't have much money so using washable nappies was primarily a financial choice - the environment and health issues were learnt later.  We probably spent less than this couple as we luckily had a lot of hand me downs from my sister who had had a baby just 11 months earlier.

If you've been in one of our shops or on our website you might wonder how shopping with us could save you money as we are not and never have been a pile it high sell it cheap nursery store.  I've often heard people walk past the shop and comment that it is expensive without even coming in! This bugs me because if they had done some simple things like:

1. used washable nappies instead of disposables
2. bed shared instead of buying a cot
3. breastfed instead of bottle fed
4. used a sling instead of buying a fancy 3 in 1 travel system that they only used for 2 months, they would have saved hundreds if not thousands of £'s.

Saving money on the big items means you have more to spend on the things you love - like chemical free toiletries or a few gorgeous treat items of clothing.

I'm not saying never buy disposables, a cot or a pram, we sell them and they are useful when they are useful, but my point is to not buy them without assessing if you realy do need them, and if you decide you do need them buy quality that will last and can be useful (ie it grows with the child) can be resold or passed on when finished with - a great example is the Stokke Tripp Trapp.

There is so much stuff that is marketed to vulnerable parents-to-be who to be safe tend to buy too much rather than feel like they may be caught short. I love taking customers on a tour around the shop to show them the essentials, which when you get down to it is very little.  So in fact a visit to us can actualy safe you money, leaving you spare cash to spend on things you really need or love.

How to take beautiful baby pictures

When you newborn arrives it's not only a wonderful and unique time it's also a period when many of us have an almost overpowering desire to want to capture and record every single moment.  The first yawn, the first stretch, the first holding of your finger - I know when we had Jacob, our second child, that pretty much all of the delivery was captured!

Opening of the Milk Bank for the South West of England

5 years ago I helped to set up the Precious Drops fundraising campaign to set up a Human breast milk for Bristol and the South West of England.

Milk banks used to be widespread in UK hospitals until the Aids/HIV scare in the 1980's which led to many of them being shut down.

This is the first new milk bank for many years and will save many babies lives.