Nappy Rash is one of those things that I think most children will get at one stage or another, either when they’re teething, or maybe have an upset tummy. It’s caused by stale wee and poo being in contact with their delicate skin and can happen whether you’re using cloth OR disposable nappies. (Aerin is in a combination of both at the mo.)

So if you find your LO has a sore bottom, what can you do?

1. STOP using disposable wipes if the skin is irritated as you’ll just make the irritation worse by applying a load of chemicals on top!

2. Swap to either cotton wool and water, or lovely washable Cheeky Wipes which will gently cleanse without increasing soreness

3. Give as much nappy off time as possible. I know this isn’t always easy, but even 20 mins really seems to help and the air really helps the rash dry out. If this isn’t possible we have used the hairdryer on low heat setting after nappy change helps (also really good for cracked nipples when you start breastfeeding!)

4. Change nappies more frequently than normal as your LO might have done a sneaky ‘no-smell’ poo and be sitting in it….

5. Use a barrier cream to protect their bottom. I like Sudocream, or a medicated one like Metanium, but if anyone has recommendations for good ‘green’ creams, I’d love to try them?

This is what we ate over a 12 day period but as you can see for quite a few of the days we had freezer surprise or similar – and if it says ‘Fish Fingers and chips’ it means that H and I were out that night!

As you can tell from the menu this is probably the period that I’ve done least cooking, partly because I’m knackered and partly because I’m in the late pregnancy / indigestion hell and don’t feel like cooking big meals that I’m not going to enjoy eating.  There’s also quite a bit of comfort food….  As always I’ll identify any highlights below.

Menu Plan

Sunday – Poached Haddock with Mustard & Spinach sauce, Mashed Potatoes & Peas

Monday & Tuesday – Freezer Surprise

Wednesday – Macaroni Cheese

Thursday -Potato Wedges, sour cream, sweet chilli sauce

Friday – Falafel in Pitta bread with Hummous and Tzatziki

Saturday – Enchiladas (Yotam Ottolenghi Plenty)

Sunday – Oven Roast Salmon with green beans, tomatoes, olives and anchovies (Jamie Oliver).  Roast Potatoes & Salsa Verde

Monday – Fishcakes (made with leftover salmon from Sunday)

Tuesday – Creamed mushrooms on toast

Wednesday – Pasta & Tuna Bake

Thursday – Charlies African Sweet Potato Stew

Friday – fish fingers and chips – Meat-free month officially over!

Highlights

Both Sunday dinners were lovely.  The haddock in creamy mustard sauce is just the thing if you fancy comforting rich sauce, smoky fish and a big pillow of mash.  The baked salmon probably had the edge on it however, especially because the children seemed to prefer it.  Or maybe it was the roast potato chunks that I served with it which were practically chips and therefore always a crowd pleaser in our house.   The salmon is one of Jamie Olivers original recipes (book 1 or 2 I think) but worth reproducing here:

Roast Salmon, Green Beans, Olives & Cherry Tomatoes

• 400 grams green beans
  200 grams cherry tomatoes
  1 to 2 handfuls black olives, destoned
  2 Tbs olive oil
  Salt and freshly ground black pepper
  1 handful fresh basil, picked
• 2 x 200 gram salmon fillet steak
  1/2 lemon
  12 anchovy fillets

Method

Preheat the oven and a roasting tray to about 230c.

Tail and blanch the green beans until tender (3 minutes) in salted, boiling water, and drain. Put in a bowl with the cherry tomatoes and the destoned olives. Toss in the olive oil and a pinch of salt and pepper. Add the basil.

Wash and pat dry the salmon. Squeeze the juice of 1/2 a lemon over the fillets, on both sides, then season both sides with salt and pepper and drizzle a little olive oil over the top.

Take the hot roasting tray from the oven. Put the salmon at 1 end of the roasting tray. Add the green beans mixture next to the salmon in the tray.  Lay the anchovies over the green beans and place an extra couple of lemons halves in the pan for roasting too.

Roast in the preheated oven for 10 minutes.

Another fantastic recipe which we tried for the second time was again from Yotam Ottolenghis ‘Plenty’ and was for Enchiladas.  I’m not suire if it’s the enchiladas or salsa that has me hooked though – I LOVE the salsa so much I’ve been making it randomly for evening snacking.  (Yes, once baby comes, I’ll be replacing the crisps with healthy carrots, but until then…)

One surprising winner was the creamy mushrooms on toast.  Again, not a recipe to make if you’re watching your weight but as an indulgent comfort food it was right up there:

Creamy Mushrooms on Toast

• 500 grams Mushrooms
• butter – 40 grams
• 1 onion / 3 shallots
• 2 cloves garlic
• splash of madeira or white wine
• parsley
• seasoning
• Bread for toast – I used home-baked wholemeal, but sour dough would be perfect too

Method

• Gently fry the shallots / onion in butter until softened, then add garlic and cook for a further minute
• Add the mushrooms and fry until the water oozes out and is reabsorbed again
• Add a splash of wine / madeira / wine vinegar to deglaze the pan
• Once it bubbles away, add the cream and then simmer gently for about 10 minutes
• Add parsley and seasoning to taste
• Serve on thick slices of toasted bread

The last highlight was Charleys ‘African Sweet Potato Stew’, the recipe for which was posted in my comments earlier this month.  Just two words describe this – De-licious!

Hi Helen
Give this a whirl, It’s delicious.

african sweet potato stew
serves4-6

1 inion
4 tbs oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tsp grated fresh root ginger
1/2tsp cayenne pepper
12oz sweet potatoes
1 tbs curry paste
1/2pt passata
1/2pt veg stock
8oz spinach leaves
8oz mushrooms
4tbs peanut butter
2tbs chopped fresh coriander

1. peel and chop onion and gently fry it in the oil with garlic, ginger and cayenne for 10mins.

2. peel sweet pots, cut into cubes. add the curry paste to the onion mixture and cook stirring for 1 min. add potatoes, stir to coat and fry for 3-4mins. add passata and stock, bring to boil and simmer for 15-20 mins till potatoes are almost tender.

3. roughly tear up spinach. heat a little more oil in another pan and stir fry the mushrooms till they start to release their juices. add to the potato mix with the spinach and cook for 5 more mins or till veg is cooked through.

4. mix a few spoonfuls of the stew juices with the peanut butter to soften it slightly then stir back into the potato pan. add the coriander, season and heat through.

We eat this with couscous.

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this meat-free month and it has inspired you to try something new!

As you might know, I’m expecting baby no 4 in just over two months time and would like this one to be a home birth.  Why?  Well I just really like the thought of pottering around at home in labour, getting into the bath near the end, pushing the baby out, having a nice shower and back into my own bed for a snooze with H and bubs. My last two labours have been very straightforward water births in hospital, just gas and air and I’ve gone from zero to delivery in about 6 – 8 hours, so this isn’t an unreasonable idea.

We wouldn’t have to hang around hospital for 6 hours afterwards, with me covered in crud and waiting for a shower. I’d have a bit more dignity too, rather than lying naked, semi covered in towels, boobs out and baby attached. Not a pretty sight.

We’d be able to help ourselves to a bite to eat too (during and afterwards!), rather than relying on dodgy hot chocolate from the vending machine and a couple of bits of toast.  And then what bliss, to be able to climb into my lovely comfy clean bed and snuggle up with my baby girl and H.

So why am I feeling like I have to justify my decision?

My H is happy to support me whatever I decide because as he quite rightly points out, it’s my body. But he’d rather we go to hospital because he perceives it as safer. My Mum (who works in a maternity unit in Belfast) thinks I should go to hospital. As do the majority of midwives in her work but that’s probably because there were a grand total of 91 home-births last year in the whole of Northern Ireland, as opposed to 35 just in my local area. Again, they cite ’safety’ as the main reason for this.

My friends range from being vehemently opposed to thinking I should definitely go for it. The key behind whether they support me or not seems to be based on their own birth experiences which is fair enough. But what are the facts and what am I considering when I make my decision?

Safety
In a recent study of 330,000 planned home-births there was no difference in the perinatal infant mortality rate between the planned hospital birth community and home births. No difference. That surprised me but the numbers speak for themselves. So I could challenge all those people planning hospital births about why they are choosing such a risky option….

You’re less likely to need intervention if you choose a home birth. Less intervention means less chance of needing a C Section, less chance of haemmoraging afterwards from a little cut made by an inexperienced junior doctor.

If you do bleed or the baby needs resuscitation, the home birth midwives are equipped with the same basic equipment that would be available in hospital – drugs or oxygen as appropriate.

Cord Prolapse is the one nightmare scenario as it requires a crash C-section but even with cord prolapse there are early indicators such as the baby being in an unusual position and the baby’s heart rate dropping. And it’s very unlikely to happen in ‘normal’ pregnancies, something like a 1 in 300 chance?

Other children

I’ve been very lucky in that all my labours have started overnight, so I’m reasonably certain that if it happens again, then my other 3 will be sound asleep and will be blissfully unaware that their little sister is making an arrival until they wake up next morning. I don’t think it’s necessary for them to see me squeeze the baby out, but I fully intend to prepare them for any noise by explaining that when Mummy is pushing their baby sister out, it’s hard work and I might sound like a cow mooing! So potential trauma to other children is very unlikely.

Mind you, I’m more likely to go to hospital just for some peace and quiet if I start to labour midday with my two youngest at home!

Mother’s Intuition
You’ll notice that I described my 2nd & 3rd labours as easy and straightforward. My first should have been, but due to a combo of meconium in my waters and a horrible midwife who insisted I lie flat on my back which (unsurprisingly) slowed things down, I ended up with a forceps delivery.

However it was very nearly a C-Section because at one point the horrid midwife was insistent that the baby’s heartrate was dipping. The room filled with medical staff in scrubs and my H was asked to sign the C-section consent form. I was sure that we were both fine however and kept repeating ‘We’re fine, my baby is fine’ and kept up my deep breathing and kept calm. Sure enough eventually the medical team concurred with that everything was OK and left me for another while to get on with it. I’m sure if I’d been able to sit up as I wanted then I could have delivered him myself, but unfortunately I never got the opportunity.

My decision
As long as everything looks good at 38 weeks (baby in good position, nothing weird or wonderful), I’m going to plan to stay at home, but also happy to transfer to hospital if anything looks awry. After all, I’d have been making the trip to hospital anyway….

And I promise to shut up about it now.  For at least another 8 weeks.

We generally ignore it. He gets whatever everyone ielse is having and if he refuses to eat it, he gets nothing else until breakfast time. His big brother went through the same phase (which lasted about 2 years!) and now eats properly again. Hallelujah.

There are two foods guaranteed to be eaten at dinner time however, broccoli or potatoes. Chipped potatoes are preferable, but mashed, roast or boiled are also acceptable. He likes them unadorned with cheese or beans, just a bit of butter on the side is fine. No2 son would, in fact, eat potatoes for every meal apart from the fact that my concerns for his health and well being have so far dictated otherwise.

Until my husband sent me through this article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11864290 about a US man who ate nothing but potatoes for 60 days, in an effort to prove that they are actually good for you. The gentleman in question is an executive director of the Washington State potato commission and was trying to debunk the myth that potatoes are bad for you. He got through 20 potatoes a day (!) and over the period he lost 18 pounds in weight.

Apparently potatoes are a good source of fibre, potassium and vitamin C, so great news for my fussy boy. In fact a bowl of mashed potato with full-fat milk would in fact be a relatively balanced diet as the milk would provide fatty acids, calcium and protein.

So if you’ve got a fussy potato eater like me, you can rest easy that their diet isn’t so unhealthy and just wait for them to outgrow their fussy habit….

I have to say that it’s a bit of a fluke that I’ve made this as a christmas gift because the main ingredient, tomatoes, obviously aren’t in season. And because we timed our house move poorly this year we didn’t get to harvest all the tomatoes we’d grown in the garden.

However when I popped into my new favourite local farm shop the other day they had VERY ripe tomatoes on clearance, at £2 per kilo. So I grabbed a kilo, some ginger and chillies and knocked up 5 pots of this lovely savoury jam. The chillies I used were the standard red chillies rather than birds-eye ones so the jam has a nice kick without being too hot. It’s great with cheese sandwiches, potato wedges and goats cheese!

This recipe is based on one from Darina Allens Ballymaloe Cookery Course however I’ve tweaked it slightly as the original recipe used golden caster sugar. I only had soft brown sugar and standard sugar available, so used equal quantities of these instead.

Ingredients

• 1 kg tomatoes
• 8 red chillies
• 2 inches of peeled ginger, roughly chopped
• 8 cloves garlic
• 60ml fish sauce
• 200ml red wine vinegar
• 550g sugar (golden caster, or mix soft brown / granulated)

Method

• Place chillies, garlic, ginger & fish sauce in food processor and process into a paste.
• Put vinegar, sugar, tomatoes and chilli mixture into a saucepan and heat gently until sugar crystals.
• Bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 40 minutes – 1 hour.
• Once cooked, store in sterilised jars. Ready to enjoy immediately!

But then I got to thinking about what we’d do for christmas pressies for everyone, especially those hard to buy for male relatives. There’s nothing they particularly want or need and I don’t want to buy random slippers / toiletries / scarf and hat sets as it just seems a waste of money.

So I’ve worked out a plan of yummy things to make and I’m going to make two things per week between now and Christmas. I’ll be sharing one of the recipes each week with you and aiming to make the ones which need time to mature first.

This week I made spiced pickled pears. It’s based on a delia smith recipe that I’ve made a few times which my Father-in-law especially likes, however I’ve varied the quantities, sugars and spices used based on what I had in the house! The quantities given filled two x 1 litre kilner type jars and two 500ml ones.

Ingredients

• 2.4kg conference pears
• 800g sugar (I used a mixture of soft light brown sugar and caster sugar)
• 1300ml good quality vinegar (Delia recommends 50/50 white wine and cider vinegar, however I also threw in some raspberry vinegar that I’m trying to use up)
• 7 or 8 inch cinnamon stick
• 2 lemons cut into thin slices
• 1 1/2 teaspoons (or a bit less) whole cloves
• 1 teaspoon schezuan pepper berries
• 1 teaspoon black peppercorns

(Delia recommends juniper berries and mixed pepper berries but I used what was to hand).

Method

Put all the ingredients except the pears in your largest saucepan and slowly bring to the boil over a low heat. I didn’t use my biggest saucepan initially and had to transfer the contents part way through making. Give everything a stir round now and again to dissolve the sugar crystals.

While that’s happening, peel the pears using either a very sharp knife or, best of all, a really good potato peeler. Leave the stalks and the base florets intact. As you peel each pear, put it into a bowl of cold water to stop it going brown before cooking.

Once you have all the pears peeled, check that the sugar has completely dissolved into the vinegar, drain your pears and add them to the saucepan. Bring everything back up to a gentle simmer and let the pears cook for about 20 minutes or until they look slightly transparent and feel tender when tested with a knife.

In the meantime, sterilize your jars, either by washing thoroughly in warm, soapy water, rinsing, drying and heating in a moderate oven for 5 minutes or run through a hot dishwasher cycle.

Using a draining spoon, transfer the pears and slices of lemon to the clean jars. Try to get slices of lemon pushed down the sides of the jars as it looks pretty like that – I used kitchen tongs to do this.

Now boil the syrup furiously for about 5 minutes until it has reduced and gone a little syrupy. Pour in enough to fill the jars right up to the neck and completely cover the pears. Then scoop out the spices and add them to the jar as well. Any leftover syrup can be discarded. Cover and seal the jar and, when the contents are completely cold, wipe and label it and store it in a cool dark place for about 1 month before using.

The pears will keep well for 6 months.

The good news is that we get to choose another print – all to ourselves. The bad news is that there’s too many pretty colours to choose from and I need help. I’m uploading all my favourites below – please leave me a comment and let me know which you prefer (you can choose more than 1!)

MM9

MM6

MM8

MM4

MM3

MM1

AH3

AH2

AH1

RK7

RK6

RK3

RK2

RK1

Where else can you see all the major nursery brands under one roof, get to try and test buggies of all shapes and sizes and save yourself money?

Plus there’s usually an interesting range of speakers and the odd celeb to spot. At the NEC, this will be Katie Price aka Jordan who is launching her new range of baby clothes (???) on Friday. I’m not sure I’d EVER buy baby clothes ‘designed’ by Katie Price but it’s surely worth a look for nosiness sake!

The lovely ladies from Mums Club who offer inspiration and support for Mums in business also have a stand and are running a Baby Show treasure hunt with lots of prizes.

As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, we’re exhibiting on stand K53 if you fancy popping along to say Hi. We’re alongside Mummy & Little Me, the fab maternity shop based in Lincoln which has recently expanded to Birmingham and Leeds. I’m sure they’ll be bringing along their range of Pink Lining (Yummy Mummy) and Lin and Leo Changing Bags which are just gorgeous.

We’ve got 5 single free tickets to give away. Simply leave a comment below, and we’ll pick 5 people at random, next Tuesday 11th May at 5pm. We’ll let you know when the competition is closed and will notify winners by email.

We arrived at Gatwick on Thursday expecting to find bedlam – instead we walked straight up to the check-in desk and then straight through security. No queues, no hordes of disgruntled foreigners trying to get home. I think the whole thing was a big conspiracy…

Anyway. The show went well, so much so that I only had a quick chance to look around however luckily I didn’t have to look far to find something very cool. Rigth next door to me was the lovely and very talented Natalie from Button Bob. Natalie is an artist, who will turn your favourite photographs of your child into a unique hand-drawn portrait. Unbelievably, while Natalie wasn’t chatting to prospective customers she was working on a commission from another exhibitor. It was a charcoal drawing taken from a birthday party invite, beautifully detailed.

A real plus to having a portrait drawn or painted for you is that if (like me) you don’t actually possess one picture where all three of your children are smiling / not pulling faces it doesn’t matter. Natalie can take three separate photos to create your perfect portrait.

My favourites were the gorgeous, brightly coloured paintings with funky coloured backgrounds. In fact I’m seriously considering having one done as a Fathers Day gift (don’t tell Mr CW)….

If you’re looking for a different Fathers Day Gift, prices start from £60 and if you talk very nicely to Natalie she might even be able to offer you 10% discount.

For me, I’m glad to be home, just getting myself psyched up for the NEC Baby Show now…

Little by little over the last 6 years I have got more organised. I’m not anally organised but there are a few things that I’ve found make my life much easier so I thought I’d share them.

The first is birthday party invites. From an early age, my son would always receive a batch of birthday party invites around the same time, usually from other Mums we had met at post-natal group. As he progressed through nursery and into school they keep coming on a regular basis. I found it difficult to keep track of them and inevitably ended up rushing into town on the morning of the party to buy an expensive impulse toy purchase, card and paper which would cost £10 – £15. Which REALLY adds up if you’re attending 10 parties a year. So, first tip, is to reply and note down all invitations immediately – we’ve got one of those kitchen organisers from M&S and it’s great!

Then I came across this card and paper set from the book people. Priced at a tenner, it contains 12 cards, 24 sheets of paper, plus tissue, which is great value. I’ve used most of the cards up now, but was able to buy 14 extra cards yesterday for £2 to top up the box.

To go with the cards we generally give books – again that we source from The Book People. We buy a collection of books (6 or 8 to a pack) for about a tenner and give 2 or 3 books as a present together. Most recently these have been ‘Harry and the Dinosaurs’ and ‘Dora the Explorer’, depending on whether it’s a boy or girl birthday.

Kids get so many plasticky rubbish toys that they quickly break and discard, but everyone enjoys having a story read to them, time after time! It saves me a lot of energy, money and hassle, with the present, giftwrap and card coming to about £4?

Of course, this only really covers childrens party invitations – getting more organised with adult birthdays will come soon…  And if you’ve got any top tips you’d like to share on this, please just leave me a comment!