So here’s the first in my new series of ‘Mum Life Hacks’.

In this part of the Mumbelievable site I want to share with you things that I find which might just make our lives that bit easier or better in some small way. (Read: more time for responsible drinking.)

The first hack also happens to be my first foray into vlogging. Eek. Enjoy!

In a couple of days Xav turns three.

Everyone tells you that time somehow fast-forwards when kids are growing up. I think I’m really lucky because I had some experience of this before he was born. My youngest brother was born when I was 15 and we bought him his first (legal) drink in February. It feels literally as though five minutes ago I was holding my baby brother for the first time when he was 20 minutes old, so I already knew I wanted to make every day count with Xav.

I do my best to remember this vow. At some point in every day I remind myself to be mindful of the fact that he will never be this age again. I stop and take pictures and video so we can cherish the small moments. I get down on his level and try to see the world from his beautiful, innocent, happy perspective.

But that’s not easy to do when you wake up after yet another interrupted night’s sleep to begin what you wish didn’t feel like Groundhog Day.

Inevitably you feel like telling the little voice saying “These are precious times” where it can stick it when you’re knee-deep in toddler negotiations wondering whether it’s acceptable to swig gin at 9.45am.

Then the guilt arrives. I berate myself for thinking this way. Many people would give anything to be in my privileged position. I’ll look back on this time and wish I could be back here.

The problem I have is that I know it’s perfectly normal that I don’t cherish EVERY moment.

How could anyone cherish every moment? That’s not realistic. No-one does.

When I read or heard the saying “The days are long, but the years are short” for the first time I couldn’t believe how perfectly it summed my life up.

Our days are long. Our days are messy, complicated and exhausting. They’re also filled with fun, beauty and wonder all at once. This is the whole truth of what it means to be a parent.

And yet I meet so many mums (and dads) who skirt around this truth and feel that somehow they’ll be judged as inadequate if they admit the full extent of their feelings.

Wouldn’t it be incredible if we could give ourselves permission to answer honestly when someone starts this kind of conversation?

Yes, it’s true that time goes too fast. That every single day my precious little legend boy does something that makes me want to stop time dead in its tracks and stay suspended in that moment forever. That I stare at him and marvel that I get the privilege of being his mum. That I’m excited about the adventures we’ll have together and be forever be grateful for everything he has already taught me.

But it’s also true that most days I wonder at some point what the hell has happened to my life and that I find the contrast between the monotonous demand for routine and my formerly-unpredictable life suffocating. That I quite often feel trapped in my own existence that I have willingly and purposefully created. That I regularly mourn the loss of the freedoms I used to take for granted.

These are both sides to my truth, and I am sharing them with you in the hope of helping you to be honest and proud about yours. We shouldn’t fear being judged because we’re all navigating the same path the best way we can.

The days are long, but the years are short. I’ve found so much meaning and reassurance in this one sentence.

Xav turns three next Thursday.

And he still drinks milk in the morning and at night from a bottle.

We’ve tried on numerous determined occasions to introduce a different vestibule for his beloved white stuff, and each time the score ends up: Xav – 1, Parents – 0.

He’s nowhere near giving up his bottle.

And I’m not going to force him to. He doesn’t tantrum (we’re v lucky that way), but each time we’ve attempted to make the switch, he brings out the big guns and comes to full-on batshit-crazy mode in approximately 2.6 seconds.

I know the reasons why it’s not advisable for him to still drink his milk from a bottle. I beat myself over the head with all the health visitor and dentist garb for a year and a half and worried that he’ll be bullied at pre-school for being toothless.

But now I’ve decided I won’t beat myself up any more, and I’m going to stop worrying.

I’ve gone with my instincts to trust that he will give up the sauce when he’s ready to.

His bottle is comfort for him. He loves bedtime snuggles with his milk and a favourite story. He loves to get up and go and have a mummy cuddle on the sofa with his morning milk. Those are precious times for all of us.

We’ve also discovered he’s got sensory processing issues which explain why he’s such a picky eater. (Milk has always been his main source of protein.)

About six months ago I looked into alternative milks as Xav had eczema. I started to give him soya milk, then eventually a combo of goat’s, almond and hemp milk so he could get the benefit of all the other nutrients too seeing as his diet is so restricted.

Within a week his skin had 100% cleared up, and within six months my tiny 2nd centile boy has put on a massive 2kg. More weight than he has put on in that period since he was a newborn. I’m literally over the moon!

And if I’d taken the advice I’ve been given since his first birthday and removed that milk from his diet, where would we be? Who knows, but I’m willing to bet we wouldn’t be looking at such a brilliant weight gain.

My point is this: our instincts as mums are good. We should follow them unashamedly. I’m going to stop making excuses for the decisions I make on Xav’s behalf, because that’s doing myself an injustice. It’s my prerogative to follow my instincts and time and time again, they prove that they know what they’re doing.

I’m telling you this because I want the same for you. I think every single mum deserves to feel empowered to follow her own instincts and do what’s right for her family without having to justify herself or fear judgment from others.

Yesterday we had some friends over and Xav asked for some milk. He’s cutting the big bad molars so he’s eating even less than normal, so I obliged. I thought about explaining to the girls that yes, my almost three-year-old is drinking from a bottle. I know it looks weird.

Then I stopped myself.

I won’t justify my parenting decisions any more.

Yes, I’ve bottled out of this battle. But I’d do it all over again because it’s what’s best for Xav.

I deserve to feel empowered to make those decisions and hold my head high, because I know I’ve done the right thing for him – just as we all do each day.

Hold your head high mama, you’re doing great.

Dear 2012 Ursula,

I know you’re bricking it.

I know you’re not 100% convinced you’ll be up to this parenthood gig.

You don’t think you’ve got a maternal bone in your body, and joke that you’re ‘made of stone’ because you just don’t get gooey over babies.

You love your life. It’s super fun and you don’t think anything’s missing from it right now, so you fear that this might make you less of a mother.

You’re scared that you won’t live up to your own expectations of what a parent should be, let alone everyone else’s.

You’re petrified you’re too selfish and that your heart isn’t big enough to love a child as it deserves to be loved.

The unknown scares the bejesus out of you.

But I wish you could see how every single experience of your life up until this point has been creating exactly the right person you need to be to grow and nurture the little boy who will become yours.

And I wish I could show you that this tiny person will fill a hole in you that you never knew was there until you look at him. That being his mummy will make you feel just about as complete as it is possible for a person to feel.

I wish you could dare to imagine that the life you’ll create will make you better in every sense and will give your life a profound sense of purpose.

You will finally understand what someone means when they say their heart ‘swells’ when you look at or think about your child.

You will be capable of using and trusting your instincts to take care of him as no-one else could.

You will fight for what is best for him and you won’t accept anything less from anyone.

You will be challenged more than you can possibly imagine, but I promise you’re up to it.

You’re naïve to all of that, in the most extraordinarily beautiful way.

Please, stop being threatened by the person you could become. Stop feeling so afraid of the life you could have.
There’s nothing to be afraid of.

You can do it. And you will do it.

An entire world of possibility is about to open itself up to you and my biggest wish for you is that you will embrace it with strength, determination and one mother of a sense of humour.

All my love,

2016 Ursula X

When I was expecting my baby, I was naïve. How could I not have been? I was about to get the job of my life with zero training or preparation.

So I prepped as much as I could. I was religious in my research of all things parenthood and filled my brain with as much information as I could soak up. I watched how my mummy friends were doing it and marvelled at their insane abilities to juggle their lives. I tried to make conscious decisions about the type of mum I wanted to be.
I decided I wanted to breastfeed. I was under no illusion it would be a picnic, but I crossed my fingers that we’d be lucky and it would work for us.

Feeding is such an emotive subject. For me the route you choose as a new mum is one of the most innately personal choices you’ll ever make, and everyone’s way should be respected. Ultimately I believe every single mum is a hero and all that matters is that a baby is nourished and loved.

When Xav rocketed into our world five weeks earlier than expected, he struggled to feed from the get-go. After five days he still wasn’t settling for longer than about half an hour, and I was going absinthe-hallucination mental.

I don’t remember it occurring to me that I could quit. I just cried and thought ‘Fuck. Is this what it’s like? Is it really this hard?’

The neonatal heroes helped me to find a feeding combination that seemed to work for him. Unfortunately it was about as high-maintenance as it gets. Breastfeeding so he could get used to the boob; expressing and bottle-feeding because it was easier for him to take and we could monitor what he was drinking, and formula top-ups thrown into the mix too.

We carried on this crazy regime when we got home from hospital. I ended up feeding him for countless hours a day, expressing six times a day (with a baby who went bat-shit crazy every time he wasn’t being cuddled…not all that easy to do) as well as sterilising bottles and preparing tiny little formula feeds (it seemed like a hell of a lot of effort for 10ml that he’d hurl back up again) and trying to appear as though I was loving this new motherhood gig. Feeding him was a 24-hr affair and we were all completely drained.

In the haze of zero sleep and general new-mum overwhelm, I thought that’s what we had to do to get him fed. That that was just how it had worked out for us.

I bawled and told him how sorry I was as I sat in his nursery trying to feed him and he just lay there screaming. I cried down the phone to health visitors, begging them to help me. I sobbed to the GP as I came down with yet another bout of the evil that is mastitis (five times in total. Yowser). No-one seemed to be able to come up with anything beyond checking his latch, which they said was fine. Everyone dismissed his severe reflux as something that was common in preemies and would improve with time.

That was until we met the man who became my God: our cranial osteopath. Within about three seconds of meeting Xav he explained that during the birth his skull had twisted and caused damage to the nerve centres controlling his gut and suck reflex, which was functioning at around 30%.

He worked on Xav every week for almost a year. Slowly, his digestive issues got better. The Cranial God did all he could to reassure me that I hadn’t caused the problems somehow. But still, good ol’ mummy guilt plagued me.

At five months, Xav fed for 24 hours with just the boob and nothing else. I’m not sure I will ever feel such victory again. It was a monumental achievement for us.

As we approached the six-month mark (my original goal had been to feed him for six months, reassess then potentially carry on) the fight in me started to wane. I’d overcome an eating disorder before we decided to have a baby and at the time I’d thought it was one of the toughest things I’d face in my lifetime. My battle to breastfeed had somehow eclipsed it, and then some.

Psychologically, I was defeated. I felt like I’d cheated Xav because he hadn’t been 100% breastfed and I was contemplating giving up. I felt like I had failed catastrophically at the one thing nature had intended me to do for my baby. My confidence was non-existent. I knew that I was enduring the kind of sleep deprivation used to torture information from people, and the stress it caused me (and obviously him as a result) was pushing me towards an edge I was desperate not to get to.

Eventually I broke (we’re talking rocking in a corner) and admitted I just couldn’t carry on. My husband and I decided enough was enough. We bought anti-reflux formula and overnight, our baby changed. He slept better, fed better and when he was awake he was happier. And so, the guilt changed. Should we have just done this all along?

My all-consuming bloody-minded determination to do what I thought was ‘best’ for him had potentially caused him (and me) months of unnecessary suffering and stolen precious days of new baby joy. When I think back now to those first months I don’t miss them; I shudder. (Typing that has just made me cry. It’s so hard to admit.)

I know that everyone has tough bits to deal with as a parent. And through it all I have felt nothing but extraordinarily lucky that we have made this perfect little legend of a human.

But I’d received the message loud and clear and it was on repeat in my head: breast is best.

No-one told me that sometimes, it might not be best. That there were caveats. Of course, people told me that I could quit and that was ok. Yes, they said I’d done everything I could to feed him.

Our feeding palaver wasn’t best, though. The stress, pressure and guilt around it almost wrecked the most beautiful days of my life. I’m so thankful that my bond with my amazing boy wasn’t affected; it could so easily have been.

I’ve said I’d go through it all again, but the brutal truth is I’m not sure I could.

Sometimes, when breastfeeding causes such harm to mum and baby, I don’t believe it’s best. It’s ok to say ‘Enough is enough’. If baby is content and growing and you’re happy, that’s what’s best.