It’s been a while since I posted here and I’d usually apologise but as a new mum, an entrepreneur and a world traveller, I hope most of you will understand why this blog has had to take a backseat for a while.

However, I’m back with this (rather long) post and hopefully in the new year a few more with a bit of an experiment to come…

But for now, this post is for friends out there who (like I was) are on the fence about having kids…and no it’s not going to be one of those “kids are the best thing that could happen to you” type posts but a realistic view from someone who’s been on both sides of that fence…

So, the Munchkin is now 5 months old and we’re back on the road, currently in Thailand.

How’s parenthood treating us?

It’s wonderful, amazing, spectacular and all those things you hear uttered by parents everywhere about their precious little darlings. Mali is the light of our lives, truly.

Every cliché holds true about parenthood – it makes you see things in a different light, it gives you a new sense of purpose in life and you understand now why even the tiniest of developments makes you glow with joy and want to tell the whole world. But it is not all roses and chocolate…I’m coming to the other side in a bit!

For now though, here is a short list of “things I realise now that I’m a mother”:

1. Why new parents bore the pants off everyone else with their “Guess what baby Jo did today? He rolled on to his side & sprayed drool all over himself”-type conversations.
   - Watching the development of this tiny little thing as they learn more and more about their own bodies and the world around them is a privilege. It is fascinating and I will never grow tired of it.
2. Why you see babies with bits of sleep in their eyes, snot on their faces and other bits of stuff which hasn’t been wiped off. Are their parents just lazy?
   - When you know your baby will have a meltdown if you go within 1cm of their nose, you can live with the dried snot stuck there! And have you tried getting something out of the corner of a tiny eye without poking it & again, making the baby cry?!
3. Why there’s an endless fascination with baby’s bowel movements & nappy habits. Surely there’s something more interesting to focus on?
   - It’s a really good sign of health & that everything’s working when your baby is “regular”. Yup, we even charted every poo & wee for the first few weeks of Mali’s life and still do now that we’re weaning her on to solids.

So have I now “turned” into one of those doting, “this is the best thing that has ever happened to me” type people?

Um. No. Definitely not. While Mali is the light of my life, I remember talking to a friend of mine (a mother herself) a few months before we found out I was pregnant and I totally agree with her assessment of motherhood… she said:

Now I know my child I’d never want to be without them, but if I knew then what I know now about being a parent and raising a child, I might not have chosen this.

And I have to say that I know *exactly* what she means. I would NEVER want to be without Mali now we have her, and it’s not like she was planned either – but knowing what I do now about what it is to be a parent (and we were pretty realistic to begin with – which is why we’d practically decided we didn’t want to have children!) I’d have to think very hard about doing it again, if I had to do it all over again.

Parenthood is hard.

It’s not so much the recovery from an unexpected c-section, the sleepless nights or the additional costs. It’s about the responsibility, the umpteen choices & options and the decision-making.

I distinctly remember saying to Jonathan about a week after Mali was born “I want my old life back”. It’s a huge adjustment – one that so many people underestimate and the responsibility you have is huge.

As you might expect, we’ve chosen to go a different path on a number of things with Mali. A good example is her vaccination schedule – we’re not following the NHS route but instead have researched an alternative path & schedule. Have we done the best thing for her? We think (hope) so but you just never know. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Running a business & parenthood is really hard.

We knew that having a baby was going to be tiring. But we’d (naively) hoped that we’d have the kind of baby who would nap for hours on end, go to sleep without fuss and that we’d have a few hours every day to run our business.

Hmmm, it didn’t exactly work out like that. Mali has never been a great napper (she still only naps for 30m at a time) and while she’s now in a pretty good sleep routine, until she was about 14 weeks, it was a nightmare.

The only time we had to work on our business was when Mali went to sleep – and that wouldn’t often happen till about 10.30/11pm. These days, at a more sensible 7pm, we still get a good few hours to work and get to bed at a reasonable hour. But it’s still not ideal.

Travelling, running a business & parenthood is really, really hard.

We don’t do things by halves and we’ve now resumed our nomadic lifestyle. We honestly weren’t sure how we’d feel about this and whether we’d even want to once Mali came along but we’re back on the road, baby in tow and having a ball.

But again it’s hard. There are so many more things to consider, so many more things to research and so much more to fit in. We’ve got a pretty good schedule going these days where we spend the day with Mali, get her to bed then work in the evenings. It’s going well but we’re still chasing our tails at the moment. That’ll change soon. I hope.

So, would I recommend parenthood?

In a heartbeat if that’s what you know you want. I’ve always believed parenthood these days is an inherently selfish thing – nobody thinks “I’m going to bring a child into this world because the world needs it”. People have children because they want them. We’d decided we didn’t but then we had one. And we feel privileged and blessed to have been able to do so.

But if you have a choice and you’re on the fence about it, take it from me – it’s fantastic but if your life feels complete without children (like mine did), don’t let anyone pressure you into having them with their “it’s the best thing that’ll ever happen to you” spiel.

It’s rewarding, it’s thrilling, it’s fascinating. It’s hard work. It can be an uphill struggle and it’s exhausting. But then so is travel or charity work or running your own business.

Mali Hope Woodward born on 4th July 2009 by emergency C-section after 2 days of pre-labour and a 12 hour active labour – at a whopping 8lbs 110z.

According to the progress tracker on Babycentre she’s apparently practising her breathing technique (and no Daddy, she’s not a fish!), hence the hiccups. Strange sensation and quite disturbing until I realised what it was.

Whenever I mention the mini-me on Twitter (did you notice that smooth transition!!!), I get a wide variety of responses from the cheeky/rude (from the young ‘uns) to the “aaaw tell me more”. It’s weird but quite cool to have so many people “involved” in my pregnancy/life who I’ve never met.

As so many have been predicting recently, Twitter seems to be hitting its stride and gaining popularity amongst non-early adopters and non-geeks (even my Dad’s on Twitter!).

For some time now though, I’ve been noticing a few knock-on effects on blogging and potentially on business – as Twitter gains in popularity. And they’re not all good…

Devaluing expertise knowledge?

It has become quite common-place to ask for (and receive) advice on Twitter about how to do x, y and z – particularly techy things like WordPress stuff. There’s a fine line to tread for any WordPress coaches/consultants out there who obviously want to demonstrate their expertise & knowledge but yet end up often giving a ton of help away for free for something they’d usually charge good money for.

There’s nothing at all wrong with giving away free information, if this is part of your strategy to attract new business – but I don’t believe the “free content” and “free expertise” model is going to be sustainable for many people for too much longer – so it’s not something I enjoy seeing happen on Twitter.

Replacing blogging as a two-way communication tool?

Since Twittering, I’ve noticed that many people who previously would have commented on a blog post now respond via Twitter. The result?

Fewer blog comments – this isn’t a problem at all, unless you subscribe to the idea that people use the number of comments on your posts to judge how popular your blog is (I don’t, by the way). But I’ve seen a number of bloggers bemoan the lack of comments on a post – despite having received feedback via Twitter.

I see this as a positive sign – the more channels readers have to interact with you, the more engaged they potentially become. You just need to stop judging a blog by its comments.

There are a few more things I’ve noticed but I don’t want to turn this into a rant – and I now have a huge, comfy new sofa to go and sit on (yes, we conceded and ended up having to buy a decent sofa for our time in the UK) – you have no idea how an additional stone in weight makes my bum bones feel even more bony!

Once we’d found out about the baby and realised that for a number of reasons, coming back to the UK for the birth was the grown-up thing to do, I’ve been dreading it and trying to come up with last-minute escape plans.

Now we’re here though, it’s really ok (note, that “ok” is not “fantastic” but it’s certainly not “dreadful”!)…A large part of the being ok has to do with the fact that we couldn’t wait to get out of Dubai. As nice as it was staying in my brother’s pretty swanky pad, we started to dislike quite a few things about the place including:

• Ridiculous cost of living – who can afford to pay £30 ($50) for a whole, organic chicken?
• Dry, arid air and permanent air-conditioning everywhere
• Lack of green spaces, nature & places to walk without being choked by traffic

Being in the UK however, we’re enjoying:

• Organic everything at prices we can even afford
• Fast, stable internet even without BT’s “help”
• Not having to think about, research or plan where we’re going to next (for a while, at least)
• Being surrounded by all our books again

Despite the recession, gloomy outlook and record job losses, people in the UK don’t have it all that bad – everything’s relative.

We usually make one in the sand on the beach. Seeing as we’re no longer by a beach, getting creative with clothes on our bedroom floor seemed like a good substitute :)

Hope you have a great day & enjoy your meal at Baan Rim Pa. Love from the 3 of us here xxxx