LIFE: Everything Has Changed!

How many come back posts am I going to post on this blog?!  I'm hoping that this will be the last!

My last post was in October 2014, and in a lot of ways it feels like a lifetime ago.  As you will have guessed from the picture, and if you follow me on instagram, you will know that everything has changed for me in the last 18 months... I'm now a mummy!  This picture was taken in May 2015, when I was around 5 months pregnant with my wonderful little boy Lucas.  (Seeing this pregnant picture of me up on my blog makes me a little sad that I didn't blog throughout my pregnancy, those posts would have been amazing for me to look back on.  At least I can be thankful for instagram!)

Lucas is now a happy, lively 7 month old and an absolute joy to be around.  I plan to post a lot more on a Charlotte's Collection so I'm sure you'll see a lot of him on here, but for now I wanted to say 'hey' and give a little run down of what I've been up to in the last 18 months... wow, now for me to think back, which can be difficult with constant baby brain!

January 2015

I visited my new born nephew in Malta, though I didn't know I had a teeny tiny little Lucas in my tummy  - it was a good job that I had given up alcohol! 

March 2015

Our first scan, Lucas even looked cute as a 12 week old fetus!

May 2015 

My grandad passed away.  This was a really sad time for me for obvious reasons, we had a lot of bereavement in the family in the weeks up until my grandad's passing and this came as a complete shock.  It makes me sad every time I think that they won't ever meet, they're both such characters and I see so many of my grandad's expressions in Lucas that it would have been great to see them together!

In may we also went on a much need 'baby moon' to Dubrovnik, Croatia.  The weather was amazing and Chris and I were so busy at work and had been through so much that it was just what we needed to relax before the crazy busy coming months!

June 2015

A 29 week pregnant me attended Glastonbury Festival!  It was an experience... I've been to the festival before so I didn't think anything to going whilst pregnant, we had a great time but it was way more tiring than I expected.  For those that have never been before, Glastonbury is massive!  You do smooch walking just to get from one stage to another that I was ready for bed by 10pm each night!... especially since I wasn't able to drink any alcohol to keep me going!!  Luckily blow up mattresses are pretty comfy when you're pregnant so sleeping in a tent wasn't a big deal!

As we set off to Glastonbury for the weekend builders moved into our house to start our kitchen rennovations!  We knocked through our kitchen and dining room while opening up existing extension ceiling at the same time for extra height and added velux windows.  It was more than work than you'd expect due to supporting walls and the existing extension so I was pleased to be enjoying a festival while all the really messy work was underway!

July 2015

This month was a blur of builders dust, living without a kitchen and DIY!  We had a lot of help from family but Chris did a lot of the work himself including laying a solid wood floor and fitting the quite bespoke kitchen that we designed!

August 2015

Hello maternity leave. I was getting pretty big by the end of August when I was due to finish work, it was summer, work was hectic (2015 was one of the most stressful years I'd experienced at my company, not exactly what I needed given that I was pregnant!) so I was very much ready to start my maternity leave and finally start preparing for the baby!

September 2015

Lucas arrived on September 2015 by emergency c-section, 11 days late!  I went into labour naturally but he was back to back which meant he wasn't in the right position to come out unassisted... if I can muster up the courage I think I'll write about my labour and delivery story on here!

December 2015

Lucas' First Christmas!

January 2016

I'd been exclusively breastfeeding Lucas but towards the end of December this became a real struggle. January was a really pivotal month on our breastfeeding journey, Lucas had a posterior tongue tie divided, he was nearly 4 months old so it had gone undiagnosed for a long time, and by February I'd started feeding him with a combination of breastfeeding and formula.  Feeding your baby is such an important topic and I feel like we went through nearly everything imaginable on our journey where I'd hoped, but been unable to, breastfeed exclusively.  However I'm still breastfeeding Lucas today, something that I'm really proud of and didn't expect to be doing back in January.  I learnt  so much that I think it deserves a blog post all of it's own.  Watch this space!

February 2016

I turned 30!  I still can't believe that my twenties are over, but I was lucky to have welcomed in my thirties with plenty of celebrations.  I was treated to plenty of lunches and afternoon tea with the ladies of my family.  We had a night without the baby as we hosted a party that went on about 5 hours past my new bedtime (of 9pm!) and I visited Edinburgh with my boys - our first time travelling with Lucas.

March 2016

My first Mother's Day, we enjoyed snow topped hills on a lovely walk in the Yorkshire Dales.  Bliss.

April 2016

Lucas' first trip abroad.  We've just got back from visiting Chris' parents in Normandy.  Lucas loved spending time with his grandparents and we had a wonderful break in a part of France that we're lucky enough to now know really well.  Lucas did so well on the long car and ferry journeys that it's made me a lot more relaxed about our up coming trip to Malta to visit my family!

Well that was an update an a half!  Thanks for sticking with me if you read this post to the end... and for just reading it at all after the long break I took from blogging!