We’ve got a guest blog from one of our own clients today, Dean & Steph from Daddynatal and Bump, Birth & Beyond. They’ve had a brilliant week, going from teaching local classes, to national coverage via a TV appearance. I thought it would be really helpful for other people who have small businesses to hear that opportunities for national coverage are out there, if you’re prepared to work hard and make the most of the opportunities available….. 

While everyone else seems to be winding down for Easter things have never been busier at Bump Birth and Beyond Ltd. It has been a hectic week, but a very positive hectic week!

Our busy week kicked off on Saturday, listening to the first interview Dean had recorded for The Baby Show broadcast on Star Radio. The interview was focused on the role of the dad in pregnancy, and very exciting for us, as it was the first ‘official’ interview Dean had done, and it definitely was a great learning experience.

Then, Sunday saw us officially announce our partnership with Peterborough City Hospital at Peterborough Baby Show. Bump, Birth and Beyond are now running DaddyNatal and Active Birth Classes, on behalf of the hospital, free to parents. How fantastic to have a Head of Midwifery who is so forward thinking, she really is one of the first in the country to recognise that fathers/birth partners have huge antenatal education needs which have never (until now!) been met.

There was an excellent response to the news of the classes, with signups both on the day and since. Both courses are already 10% full, and we are still awaiting the formal press release and for the community midwifery team to start promotion yet!

Sunday also marked the completion of the first part of training for our new Daisy Birthing teacher, Alison. Courses have been so successful that Steph cannot keep up with demand on her own, so we are extremely excited about Alison’s arrival. She will commence teaching in June which will allow us to offer more courses in even more locations.

On Monday and Tuesday evenings, Steph was out teaching her regular Daisy Birthing classes in Peterborough and St Ives. Steph teaches classes to around 40 pregnant ladies a week, as well as managing all the bookings and day-to-day admin of the company. And she looks after our two toddlers full time as well!

Little did we realise what more the week still held in store… At 10pm Wednesday evening, Steph arrived home from yet another Daisy Birthing class to the news that Dean had been invited down the next day onto The Vanessa Show on Channel 5 to talk about fathers at birth. Turns out a producer had heard his interview on The Baby Show website and wanted him there for a discussion segment about birth! How could we refuse…?!

So scrapping all previous arrangements for Thursday, Dean travelled to London to record the show. To say he was nervous would be a major understatement! He was petrified to be doing his first TV appearance only a few days after his very first ever live media interview! But, of course, he was also really excited. The people were brilliant and he had the pleasure of meeting and talking to Pearl Lowe and Christina Hopkinson, as part of the segment on the discussion of fathers at birth. They were lovely and certainly put Dean at ease (although nerves kicked back in once the cameras started rolling!). You can see his appearance here and judge for yourselves how Dean got on at The Vanessa Show.

Feel free to comment as we would love to hear your feedback. It was a long day though – Dean left home at 11.30am, and didn’t get home again until 8.30pm (luckily Thursdays are Steph’s evening off!)

But there was still work to be done… Friday saw us at a meeting at Peterborough Hospital to discuss some of the logistics of our partnership, and then followed by an agreement that we would produce contact and reference packs for the community midwives, so that became our focus on Saturday!

However, the support and excitement of what we are doing, coming direct from the midwives is so refreshing. It really is a pleasure to be working with them all.

And finally, we finished the week on Sunday with one of our Couples Antenatal Workshops in Kettering. Our classes are jointly run between the both of us, to make sure that we cover all the essential points from both the mum and birth partner perspective. It was a really great class – we thoroughly enjoyed it, and then arrived home in time to spend the remainder of the afternoon in the garden with our two children.

So a busy week made busier by some unforeseen media appearances! A great experience though and we look forward to seeing what the next few weeks brings us.

So that was our hectic week how was yours?

It seems like the press have very much highlighted the fact that Mariah Carey has decided to decorate her bump and her tweet about it after going into false labour over the weekend.

To me it seems a great bit of fun to be had – and to be honest has probably helped some of the boredom during those last few weeks of pregnancy.

I decorated my bump, with clothes mind you. But does everyone feel that sense of pride in showing off thier bump? I wore lots of stripey and tight tops to highlight the fact I was growing a little person. I loved the attention I got but I know that others feel completely different.

So if you want to show off your bump feel free to do so below and even if not tell us your thoughts on decorating your baby bump

With thanks to Nikki Pilkington (all round social media queen) and her blog for giving me the heads up on this one.

There’s an interesting bit of software that lets you know how other people are seeing you on twitter. I’m going to use it with my clients as it’s a quick and easy way to show them how others perceive you.

Here’s mine:

Hello, good evening, and welcome to the nut house…

I’m still here – I’m conscious that I’ve not been blogging that much on here recently. I promise it’s not the novelty of www.cambridgemummy.co.uk  In fact,  it’s the opposite. There’s so much I want to blog about and get your opinions on that I could write for days. But it’s all top secret so I can’t. And I don’t want to be that really annoying person who says “it’s top secret” – anyone who knows me well, knows I’m not a tease. That’s far too much like hard work…

So instead, I’ll tell you that I’ve been reading a fair bit of pregnancy related materials recently (NO. I am not.) and I have to say, that as a mum of two, I’m now wondering why people read some of it. Why did  I lap it up so readily first time around? Because all it does is scare monger and put the fear of god in you, some of the things just aren’t helpful. Why do the women with the worst birth stories come out and volunteer to tell them?

"idyllic" family image - we don't hold hands like this..

Why can’t we hear more of good, positive, inspiring experiences? I think there’s a book waiting to be written – birthing positively – yes, it hurts like you’ve never known it before, but it’s all so worth it, and your fandango heals and you move on as a family together,  having for the most part, the best experience of your life, which you wouldn’t change for the world. Maybe it’s not a book, maybe that’s all there is to it??

There’s an opportunity here for businesses in the sector to do more to sell on a basis of enhancing experiencess. Though the problem is that fear sells, doesn’t it – baby proofing your home is the first thing I thought of. And there’s a huge market in that isn’t there?

Am I being naive in thinking that we could be a bit more positive about what we are adding to the lives of a new family – more sleep, less trips to A&E, happier meal times, more durability out of clothes that babies wear when weaning and ways to learn cool stuff together?

It’s already out there, I just want to see us phrase it more positively to families. What do you think?

Right, quick one here. Ten good things in 2010, and ten not so good things in 2010:

Not so good things:

1. My dad’s cancer scare. Dad told “you have prostate cancer, we need to scan to see how far it has spread”. When he didn’t have cancer at all. That was a bad week with me all but selling our house there and then for us to move nearer my mum and dad.

2. My £125 swimming costume from La Perla that looked great but has started to disintegrate after very little wear, because it doesn’t like chlorine. Do you know of any pools that don’t have chlorine. Apparently the pools I swim in, have too much of it, so it’s my fault. #LaPerlaFail and get no more of my hard earnt money.

3. The rude man on holiday who said I was “fat”. Very loudly. At the swimming pool.

4. Working too many hours. Enough said.

5. Not keeping to date nights with husband. We couldn’t afford it, children we ill, I had to work, there was nothing at the cinema. Etc.

6. Two New Baby Guides being behind schedule. Not good.

7. Missing out on our September Sands holiday because I was too busy working. Shame on me.

8. Putting my foot in it with friends. Valuable lesson learnt about keeping my mouth well and truly shut.

… and that’s it. I can’t think of any more. So I’m quite pleased with that…

Good things in 2010:

1. Going on our first posh, 5*, all inclusive holiday together. And using childcare in a guilt free fashion!

2. Finding the balls to sit down quietly next to the rude man who said I was “fat” too loudly at the pool, and tell him how I’d gotten such a dispraportionately large belly via an emergency c section that went wrong and left me with a very bad infection that made me very poorly indeed, and how thankful I was that my husband was nothing like him.

3. Recruiting Hannah Elsom, the glue / WD40 and all things fab that keeps Weston Communications on track.

4. Winning our first ever award, as Young Entrepreneur of the Year, for the New Baby Guides.

5. Getting on the radio as a result of 4, and starting a fledgling radio career from it!!

6. Securing our first, formal contract, for delivery of a project.

7. Developing public relations services as a commercially viable activity from 6 and other good stuff that happened.

8. William and Elliott starting preschool in Stapleford, settling in nicely, and making all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff for us.

9. Richard being able to give up his work, so I could work full time with him becoming a full time stay at home dad. Brilliant.

10. William overcoming his hatred of the swimming pool, to the point where he will now bob about happily on his woggle. We love it as much as he does.

11. Starting to do date nights with my husband.

12. Getting a new ironing board from my parents for Christmas. It’s been a long time with the old one tied up precariously with a bit of string.

Oooooh, would ya look at that? 12 great things, and just 8 not so great things. I think I’m rather happy with my wash. So I’ll leave you with some of the photos that document my year, professionally and personally. Here’s to a fab 2011 everyone…

Baby birth payments?

This is another one of those articles where I can see both sides of the coin. Parents to be in places outside of the UK are experiencing the seas of change financially. Women in Spain are reported to be keen to deliver their babies before midnight on 31 Dec 2010, to receive the last of the government’s €2,500 (£2,128) “baby cheques”. Apparently, they are seeing increasing numbers of women coming in reporting spotting and other early labour indicators. The payments were brought in, in 2007, to provide an incentive for  people to have more babies to improve the nation’s birth rate. But now that they payments are about to stop, it’s causing some women to want to bring their birth days forwards…

“What we’re seeing in the public sector is that women who are due to give birth in the first fortnight of January are coming in and saying they are spotting blood or that their waters have broken,” a midwife in a Seville hospital told El País newspaper. ”They don’t dare say so openly but we know they want to bring the due date forward. We examine them and send them home.”

Sounds like sensible stuff to me. But the article then went on with the Guardian quoting José Ángel Espinosa, Associate Head of Gynaecology at the Quirón hospital in Madrid, as saying that he would induce women early. “If they’ve reached 38 weeks and they ask us to do it, we will,” he said. But the doctor warned that he would not induce anyone who was not ready. “It’s my watch on the 31st,” he said. “And I’m not going to let anyone put one over on me.”

Surely a woman’s body usually tells her when she’s ready to give birth? I thought we always had the debate about how pregnancy is actually usually more like a 42 week experience and that we should not be inducing women before then? To induce women at 38 weeks, purely so they get a cheque, feels like a big step to be taking. Having said that, I can see why women are so keen on it – a cheque for £2K would come in hand in those first few months as parents.

What do you think of this? Is it ok to induce someone early so they get a cheque for £2k?

I waited a year to find this..

I have wanted this calendar and weather chart, for our boys, for months, no, nearly a year. I have looked online, in shops, asked people to help me find it and had no  luck. Until today. So when I came across this today, in Jo Jo Maman Babe, I bought it. Quickly! For  £32.00. And as a bonus, I’ve learnt something useful on my relatively new “seo aware” road of discovery.

But what’s struck me about it is how hard it was to find it. And I don’t think of Jo Jo Maman Babe as being a place for this kind of thing – in my mind, it’s more pregnancy clothes and newborn stuff. Which I suppose is the core product range actually. It’s funny how something like this has set me off thinking about how you can best market baby product, toddler products and stuff to families. It’s even got me checking out their seo and how they are coding this, because I really had searched high and low for in on the old interweb…

http://www.jojomamanbebe.co.uk/sp+Pictures-Canvases-My-First-Calendar-Blue+A3252

This is the long link to it. There’s no baby, toddler, children’s, or child reference in this is there? Do you search for “First” of anything? I don’t. Wonder if someone in the baby marketing team @jo jo maman bebe would be  interested in this blog post? Probably not, but I’m going to send them the link to it anyway :)

So now, the outlook’s rosy – I’ve got the present I’ve wanted and learnt work stuff too. Good result all round…

Hello, we wanted to tell you about a new project - the Bedfordshire Mums Test Panel. Do you or someone you know, have either a bump, baby or preschooler? Would you like to try new things, for free – gadgets, gizmo’s and cool mum stuff?

We need Bedfordshire mums and mums to be, to road test different products and give us their verdicts on a whole range of products. In our first batch of items for testing, we’ve got a foot muff, bottles, a baby bouncer and a breastvest. To give mums an incentive to do this, we’ll be running a range of competitions and  prize draws for everyone who participates. After they’ve been used for the tests, we’ll be donating the items themselves to local Children’s Centres wherever possible. Ifthey can’t be donated after use, we’ll do our best to give them to the participants. If these initial things don’t sound of interest to you, that’s ok, as we’ve got lots of things coming up for testing.

So if you, or someone you know, would like to become a tester and give us your opinions on them, please reply to me with the following info:
Name:
Phone number:
Email address:
Postal address:
Age of child / children and their  gender (or due date):

We would love photos of you using products with your babies, or you trying things out and will be writing everything up and publishing it in local papers and on the www site – http://www.bumpsnbabes.com/ If you aren’t happy to do this, it’s not a problem, but will help us in choosing which items to ask you to try as some will lend themselves to photos better than others…

Just email me at liz@westoncommunications.org.uk with your info and I’ll get back to you with everything you will need. Look forward to hearing from you soon…

Really? Big corporate organisation? Size matters does it? There’s nothing I hate more than businesses assuming that because we are relatively small compared to them, we aren’t powerful.

Images courtesy of www.beahottie.co.uk

Do you think not for profit organisations which work with mums, babies and families prefer something that’s unique, saves them money and helps them meet their insurance requirements or, something that’s a nice to have on site but doesn’t help with any insurance requirements and causes run ins with the biggest worldwide brand in our field?

Any Heads of Midwifery fancy a catch up shortly? Would love to get your thoughts on this one. <waits for the phone to ring>   I don’t like arguing with anyone really. but it’s irked me. This suggestion that we do isn’t powerful, when Heads of Midwifery rate and love us, and so do the local businesses and parenting communities we work with…”  grrrrrrrr.

Time for a brew me thinks…

This is an interesting, heartfelt post from Gerry at Bumpsnbabes.com She was talking about her daughters pregnancy and how it was bringing up a whole range of emotions for her, so I asked her to write a blog to find out more….

Well what can I say my daughter Carrie-Anne is due to have my first granchild on November 13th. My feelings are a mixture of pure exitement mixed with extreme fear – there are 3 girls in my family + my mum and we have all had traumatic times whilst giving birth (including my poor mum that had 4 of us). This forced both my sisters to have only the one  child and for me well I thought and said  never again and then 11 years later conceived whilst on the pill. The feeling of not being able to help when my own baby is in pain terrifies me!

I cannot wait for the day when the birth part is over and I can do what Nanny’s do – help out with the baby – plenty of cuddles and kisses for me.  Suprisingly enough my 16 year old (6ft) son has gone all gooey and has been speaking to his sisters tummy and has named baby Munchkin and cannot wait to be an uncle. Christmas is gonna be great with our new little one and for sure I will not be cooking the dinner as I will be too busy with baby business.

People always ask me now as to what buggy she will have – being a partner in BumpsnBabes has obviously tempted me in to all sorts being surrounded by georgeous baby things and put my lovely daughter in a very priveleged postion as she will have the best of the crop (she is having an i Candy Peach). The problem is every time something comes in that is new I think mmmmm one more thing wont hurt where do you stop!! ??

Having said all that, Carrie-Anne has chosen not to know the sex of our precious one but I think its a little girly but all anyone ever wishes for is a healthy bundle of joy. I’m a very exited Gerry xx

What Gerry has written is so lovely. And heartfelt. And gave me an insight into how my mum sometimes tries to tell me that she feels, seeing me with my own boys. Did you ever talk with your parents about their expriences of childbirth? What did they tell you? Is it hard to fathom your own parents as being new parents themselves? Please tell us in the comments…..