Joining in...

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a wee bit anti social. Now don't get me wrong, I don't mean to be, I value friendships, I like to have people around me that I can chat about the Bake Off with, drink ale with and recommend books to, but I find it hard, really hard.

When we first moved to St Albans at the beginning of Summer 2016 I didn't want to leave the house. Ever. Partly due to some mild postnatal depression, and mostly down to me being extremely anxious. Grayson was still throwing up after and in between every feed, he still wanted feeding at least every two hours, he was three months old, not napping and still waking every 40 minutes to 2 hours in the night. I was exhausted. I wanted to be at baby groups, my heart ached thinking of all the daft plans I'd had in my head of baby massage with my tiny newborn. I felt so much guilt. I just couldn't do it though.

Push came to shove when I won a place on a short baby course, I had to get out of the house every week for two hours. Other mums were there. 6 of us. Once we even stayed afterwards and had a drink. And then it ended, that was it. I didn't go to another group until my son was nearly a year old.

It took a lovely lady at the Sure Start centre to persuade me to come along to a messy play class, I was getting Grayson weighed, she worked there and reassured me, she even gave me her number and said I could call her and she'd walk in with me so that I wouldn't have to enter alone. I'm not sure she'll ever know how much that saved me.

The baby and toddler groups in St Albans were big, maybe because of that no one really spoke to each other, in the 6 months that I went to the groups (two or three a week) I only had one other mum talk to me, everyone either seemed to know each other or just kept to themselves.

I think that it was because of this that I was so nervous about going to new groups in the village after having moved. During the Summer holidays nothing had been on. I went to a couple of socials organised by people on the Mummy Social app and that was pretty much it for the first few months. 

Then it was September and it was time to jump back in. 

So far I go to two groups, one in my village on a Wednesday that is mostly attended by childminders and one on a Friday in the village across the road that is attended by some of the loveliest mums I have ever met. The smaller groups mean that I am forced to be in the thick of it, there's no disappearing into the sidelines here, and so far that's doing us just fine!

Shopping for boys

One thing I've found super frustrating since becoming a mother is the difference in what is available for girls vs what is available that is unisex or designed for boys.

When I was pregnant I didn't want to find out Grayson's gender, I wanted a surprise, I didn't quite realise though how little there would be available clothing and bedding wise in high-street stores that wasn't pink or blue!
I purchased a Stormtrooper onesie and a couple of little batman ones, there was a small selection of white or beige items available and that was kind of it. Mothercare had a few nice brands such as Little Bird and My K but there aren't many Mothercare stores around and those brands are a slightly higher price range than the generic own brands.

It has become more apparent though as Grayson gets older that the stores all seem to be buying more generic "girl" items in than "boys" items.  Maybe this is because parents buy more for their daughters than their sons, but I find it crazy. Our local Sainsburys for example had 15 girls swimwear options during this recent heatwave and only 5 for boys, out of those 5 most were brands like Angry Birds and designed to be really garish. (Don't even get me started on how nearly all the girls options were pink).

River Island had a huuuuge sale on when I went in on Thursday, I'm talking a massive childrenswear markdown, the stuff of my dreams, until I realised there were 24 girls rails and 4 boys ones. And there were even girls things mixed in with the boys as they had run out of room. Now I am totally fine with shoving my mini me in "girls" clothes if they're unisex enough but there is a cavernous gap in that market too.

It was a similar story in a large Asda store I visited recently. I love Asda bedding, if you haven't seen the cute prints they keep producing then you are missing out, I'm talking mermaid cats, llamas and adorable biscuits here. But pop to the kids bedding and suddenly you're in a sea of pink and blue and the blue section is a hell of a lot smaller than the pink. It's exasperating.

Lots of independent stores have cottoned on to parents wanting more gender neutral items, cute print leggings, tees and dungarees but unfortunately with the high-street stores not following suit it makes shopping for a little human somewhat harder, the same way that you might not want your daughter pushed into wearing princess items and slogan tees about being cute, I don't want him ending up in football gear or Angry Bird merch when he's only 15 months old and wouldn't have a clue what any of it is about!