Blog List

While myself and my husband of sixteen years have yet to reach a stage where we designate one evening a month to sex, it’s fairly safe to say that we’re not quite as amorous as we were when we met in our twenties. And I’m going to be honest here, I prefer it. Don’t get me wrong, I fancy my husband every bit as much as I did when I met him 21 years ago, but sex round the clock can be...

Remember when you gave birth and people on the internet immediately started judging your post-baby nutrition plans? Yeah, me neither. And thank God for that because my plan once I delivered Ella was to stay in sweatpants for the foreseeable future and do everything in my power to keep this tiny human alive. That was it. I had no aspirations past giving round-the-clock care to my new arrival and...

The news that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists had issued new guidelines this week regarding alcohol consumption and pregnancy brought a whole host of memories back to me. Guidelines, stipulations, rules and regulations; when I was pregnant with Ella seven years ago I could have repeated each and every statute verbatim. Hell, my partner said I was mumbling them in my sleep and...

I am currently on maternity leave and am very aware that my time for returning to work is fast approaching. This is something that has been playing on my mind lots over the last week or so. As I begin to organise childcare for my little ones, I feel somewhat in denial that my time at home with them is coming to an end. I enjoy every moment I spend with my children, but I know even when I return to...

Saturday felt like one of those days where nothing I did for my children was enough and it was also one of those days when I questioned everything about motherhood: What was the point of it? Here I am bending over backwards for these children and I’m still not measuring up - do they hate me? How can I be getting it to so wrong? It was a rare Saturday where I didn’t have a work deadline to...

My six-year-old daughter Ella has a penchant for the dramatic. She does wonderful impressions, positively revels in the limelight and sees herself treading the boards on Broadway some day. Unfortunately however, she doesn’t leave the theatrics at drama class or performing arts club. Ella is, and I’m sorry if this sounds a little harsh, a drama queen 24/7. While I enjoy her twirling around the...

So I’m finished, done, finito, it’s over, that ship has sailed and I’m happy to wave it off on its voyage from the dockside. I’m referring of course to the baby making years. My name is Tara Duggan and I have completed my family. This news will come as enormous shock to my nearest and dearest who I’m certain were expecting me to announce the impending arrival of another little bundle any...

Becoming a mum for the first time was incredibly exciting. It was like I had officially become a proper grown up - as if being married and having a mortgage wasn’t grown up enough for me already. After I slowly (very slowly) got used to being a new mum, it began to dawn on me that I had not become the mother I had always envisaged in my head; in fact, I was nothing like her. When I was pregnant...

My eldest is what educational professionals might term ‘a reluctant reader’. She can read a book no bother; she just won’t bother. This in turn bothers me. Open a paper on a day ending in 'y' and there will be some new piece of research showing the benefits of being read to as a young child and then continuing to read from that point. We are told that reading regularly for pleasure...

Having three sons I always thought that life would be reasonably easier than if I had three girls. I wouldn’t have the ‘first bra’ talk. I wouldn’t have the ‘cat fights’ over clothes. I wouldn’t have the ‘period’ talk...or so I thought. My eldest son was about 11-years-old at the time and he insisted on asking ‘what are they, Mum?’ every time a sanitary towel advertisement...