Wordless Wednesday: Our Week in Instagram

Other Wordless Wednesdays you might like:

Autumn

Attempts at a Self Portrait

Ted

The Value of Friends

I have this friend... I'm not going to mention her name.

We met aged 11, at secondary school, but lost touch when I left after GCSEs.

We got back in touch via Facebook, and were pregnant at the same time. My friend's daughter was born a few months before S. She lives about half an hour away from here, so I only saw her a couple of times before S was was born. She gave me some baby clothes and sage advice about not expecting too much from myself.

I don't have a picture of my friend, so here is one of me and S.

At the time I didn't realise it, but my friend suffered awfully with post-natal depression after her daughter was born. Despite this, she could see that I was in a terrible situation myself, and that perhaps her support could come in handy. She turned up here several times with bags of her daughter's old clothes, other useful things, boxes of home made food, and most importantly, a shoulder to cry on. She sent me cards in the post that make me cry even now, a year later, when I read the kind words she wrote.

At a time when I really wasn't sure if I was capable of being a mother, she told me time and time again that I was doing a fantastic job. She never once complained about her own situation or told me to just pull my socks up and stop whining.

On S's birthday, she sent me a card to congratulate me on surviving a year as a mother.

One day when she looked after S for a whole afternoon, they made a card with a love heart on the front made from paint prints of S's feet.

Now that I'm in a stronger place, that friend is still there. She still reassures me when I have doubts. She still offers sage advice (and it's usually spot on) and she never sounds condescending or holier-than-thou. 

I realised the other day that when it comes to listing "people I would trust to look after S for an extended period of time" she would be at the top of a fairly short list. 

I find myself wondering how I could ever have been so careless to lose touch with such an amazing friend for over ten years when I left school. How did I not see the value of this person who is always there for me, who has never judged me, and never once asked me, "why didn't you just leave him?"

I find myself feeling terribly guilty that this friend has run around after me, visited me, picked things up for me, given me things, looked after S for me, reassured me, thought to text me when I was quiet on Facebook... and what have I done in return? My list is considerably shorter. I must set about fixing this!

Review: BabyCup

I'm not going to lie; I wasn't asked to do this review, I blagged myself some free Baby Cups because they looked so great, and I wanted to try them!

Babycup is the clever work of a lady called Sara Keel, who could never find the cup she wanted when weaning her three children, so decided to develop the exact cup she needed. She trialled the first Babycups in late 2012, and received rave reviews from dentists and orthodontists because it supports oral health, speech and jaw development, and encourages sipping.

Babycup recently won a bronze award in the Best Feeding Accessory category of the 2013 Loved By Parents Awards.

You can see, then, why I was keen to get my grubby little mits on some!

Until now we've used non-spill beakers with valves inside the spout, which require a lot of sucking to get any drink out - great for not spilling stuff everywhere, but these have been implicated in several concerns, such as jaw development, speech problems and tooth decay. These days many health professionals recommend using an open cup as often as possible. Most open cups for kids, though, are massive - difficult to negotiate, easy to spill. A Babycup is about the size of a shot glass, but made from BPA-free, phthlalates-free plastic. And in much nicer colours than any shot glasses I've had over the years!

You can get them in packs of four blue, pink, green and yellow - or in a multi-colour pack with one of each.

Babycup is recommended for an age range of 6 months to 2 and a half years. S is 15 months now, so a perfect age to start with it.

I started off just giving her a little water in a cup at meal times. At first, she wasn't sure what to make of it, and ended up spilling a lot of it!

She picked it up fairly quickly though, and even started using it one-handed!

We use Babycup at every meal, and hopefully as she gains more control over not spilling it everywhere, we'll use it all the time and completely replace the non-spill beakers. At the moment, she's still doing the comedy "what's the time... wait, why are my legs wet" thing though!

It's also worth pointing out here that Babycups make an excellent toy phone.

The RRP for Babycup is £7.99 for a set of four. I think that's pretty reasonable, considering you'd pay that for one non-spill beaker.

For more information, email Sara@Babycup.co.uk, or find her on Twitter: @BabycupHello.

Disclaimer - I received a free pack of Babycups in order to write this review, but the free product was not dependent on my writing a favourable review.

 Here are some other products I have reviewed lately:
The Bravado Bliss Nursing Bra
Nature Paint
Vistaprint Photo Books