MaryByrne's Blog

So, I seem to have lost the ability to call my daughter by her first name. It's not a new problem though, in fact, it probably started about seven years ago. There is no reason for it; I absolutely love and adore her name - I personally spent nearly two weeks deciding on it, honestly! But her beautiful name just never seems to come out of my mouth – well, unless she is in trouble that is. My...

So let’s have a discussion about the midterm. Yes, the dreaded M-word: the bane of all our lives whether you are working or not. Stay-at-home mums have to deal with kids disrupting a carefully organised schedule that has taken a long time to get right, while working mums have the horror of trying to figure out the logistics of who is going to mind the kids while they are at work. And the fact...

Many of us like to think a Bring your Child to Work Day would be the perfect way to balance out our working and family life (although some might relish the time outside of the home – it is definitely a lot less stressful!) But at the European Parliament, every day is a Bring your Child to Work Day, thanks to MEP Licia Ronzulli. When the Italian MEP brought her six-week-old daughter, Vittoria...

Us mothers are like magnets to guilt. It is so all-consuming that when we do experience a rare hour or two guilt-free, we feel guilty for not feeling guilty. It can’t be good for our health, can it? There is never any real let up and the list of why we feel bad, usually house and parenting related, is never ending: the house is a mess, we haven’t spent enough time with the kids, we gave them...

Being forgetful is definitely a mother’s prerogative. With so many things to remember, stuff to carry and kids to get out of the house, it is pretty easy for silly things, like forgetting to turn off the light in the morning, to simply slip out of your mind. However, problems arise when you start forgetting important things like not bringing your keys to work, going to get milk and picking up...

Mums come in all shapes and sizes with different ways of parenting their kids. There are those who let their kids roam free in nature, those who have their children involved in every after school activity imaginable, those who let their little one try anything and then there’s me - the overprotective mum. If I could, I would totally wrap my little one in bubble wrap but I have yet to find one...

Announcing you are expecting can be both an anxious and an exciting time. No matter how unbelievably happy you are, o nce your news is out there, brace yourself because you have just become an open target for unwanted parenting advice and passing comments. Before the sentence is out of your mouth, you are likely to be on the receiving end of not-so-subtle comments about how all the fun things in...

Whether you look to Disney movies for inspiration , or find it out the window in nature , choosing your baby’s name is definitely up there as being one of the toughest tasks of motherhood. a From the moment you announce that you are expecting, the politics start, most notably within your family where each person has a list of names they think you should go with. Every visit is a baby name...

In recent times, we've seen more and more stories about children – usually young girls - writing letters to their father’s bosses, begging them to let Daddy off early so that he can spend time at home with them. There was the girl who wrote this sweet note to Google or m ore recently, the six-year-old girl who wrote to Southern Rail asking them to get her Daddy home on time to tuck her in...

The grass is not always greener on the other side. If you know the joy of having a large family - and by large, I mean in quantity not weight - you may often wonder what it’s like on the other side; the side where you only have one child to care for. And while I certainly won't dispute that there are a number of positives (most notably when it comes to how much of your income goes on...