Taking Baby Swimming - A guide to underwater swimming

Build up to it - for younger babies and first time swimmers, don't do more than 3 or 4 submersions in 1 session, increase the number each week (or each day if you are on holiday!)

Cover the head - always ensure your baby is fully submerged, the water must cover their head. Be decisive and aim for about an inch of water above baby's head, leave them for a couple of seconds and then bring them back up to the surface.

Listen to baby - if they protest a lot, build up even more slowly. It's meant to be fun so take the lead from your baby!

Reuben isn't very keen on this but we keep persevering! 

Ready?

Go!

Piece of cake!

I'm just coming out of a sugar (and alcohol, I can't lie) induced Birthday celebrations haze to find that:

a) it's nearly a month since I started going to Sound Mind and Body and training with Dan. I love it and I feel fitter but...

b) in terms of weight loss after pregnancy? The scales have barely budged (I have lost an embarrassing 3lbs)!

I feel terrible because Dan has been working really hard with me and I am letting the side down. Ultimately it comes down to me and my food diary...!

A few weeks ago Dan went through the food diary that I kept for a week and a half after we started. Now bare in mind that this was me being 'good', I found it enlightening. The following week I was good and we had a little bit of a breakthrough on the scales, but after last week's Birthday escapades I

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Sound, Mind and Body is a boutique personal training gym that provides bespoke fitness solutions and they were looking for someone who had recently had a baby to train and share their post-pregnancy fitness goals and journey. As you know, despite my best intentions, I have been halfheartedly trying to lose the baby weight and safely exercise after pregnancy. By some happy convenience Sound, Mind and Body managed to find me!

3 months - buff-dom. I should be looking and feeling significantly more Marshie, and it'll be time to pull out the nautical pants for another before and after shot!

ready to workout

The gym itself is INCREDIBLE. It's like walking into a hip 5 star hotel with dramatic wallpaper and blood red chandeliers... except instead of big, sumptuous beds with duck feather duvets you're met with the gym equipment equivalent - top of the range treadmills, static bikes, and more fancy looking machines and free

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This week started with tears. Lots of tears. At 10:00 on Monday morning while Reuben was having his nap, I'd got everything ready for his day with Grandma and Grandad so I decided to indulge in some twitter time. My little twitter community that I follow had been shaken by the death of Mum blogger, Jennie Edspires, little girl, Matilda Mae, the day before from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. I clicked onto Jennie's twitter feed, where she had been explaining what happened and how she was feeling. I feel like I have no right, I didn't know her, but I wept for her loss. She had JUST lost her baby and I had never seen such open grief as it was happening, right now. I could feel her pain, I could imagine it, and although she didn't know, I cried with her. I ran down the stairs to scoop up my baby,

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I'm having a scales amnisty. At least for the next 4 weeks. I'm working out as much as I can, I'm feeling better and Mike says I'm looking better...but those darn scales won't budge! (In fact yesterday they went up, but I'm going to say that was trainers weight) So, therefore, rather than feeling better and taking Mike's compliments, I'm moping about. My happiness (or at least how I see myself) is prisoner to a piece of measuring equipment.

No more! I'm going to do a little experiment for the next 4 weeks...do we need accountability/weigh ins to lose weight or is it holding me back? My theory for the latter is that you try hard all week and if the scales haven't moved you're think, well what's the point? I may as well eat that dot dot dot.

JNL (I told you she'd be back!) said it took her 2 months

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OK, so I think I was getting ahead of myself with the exercise after pregnancy pointers in my last post, This darn body - losing weight after pregnancy . Most specifically, this point:

"Do 4 weight training sessions a week. Don't be afraid of bulking up - women can't physically bulk up like a man, we don't have the testosterone (unless you're taking supplements of course!). You should do 3 lots of 8 -12 reps of each exercise (if you can any more than 12 reps then your weights are too light! Man up and get some bigger ones)"

I've been trying to pump the iron, and enjoying it too but I noticed my knees were starting to hurt. Turns out our ligaments are more stretchy than Mr Soft's during pregnancy to help stretch the body (presumably the doodah area) and get the baby out (yeah, fat lot of good it did). Fine, we

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3 weeks after having Reuben I tentatively stepped onto the scales to see if I was losing weight after pregnancy. Actually, this wasn't a tentative move at all, it was a joyful one as I knew whatever happened the scales had to, for the first time in my life, say I weighted less. And boy did it. I had lost 10kg. "3 more weeks of this," I thought, "and I'll be laughing!"

That was 9 weeks ago and let me tell you, I'm not laughing. Since that day those cruel scales have barely budged, except to go up a bit and then go back down a bit.

I thought breast feeding would help it fall off, and sure those first weeks it fell off. But the fact I was barely eating, running on adrenalin and not sleeping probably had as big an impact as the breastfeeding. Since then all breastfeeding really seems

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Mike and I had our first date on Saturday night! It was 9 weeks since our 'final date' when I was 40 weeks pregnant and it felt amazing to be out together especially after our week of being at each other's throats (which I talked about in Baby Blues - Mike has since been dubbed the man child because of his tantrum over not being allowed to go to the football!). We got Reuben settled at my mum and dad's house, got ready (that was a trauma in itself, what the freak do I wear? Maternity clothes don't really work and everything else is too small - not conducive to feeling romantic and attractive, let me tell you!) and then headed out for our 9 o'clock reservation (a full 1 hour past my bed time!).

It was weird to be out, all I do is think about Reuben (he needs a feed, please

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It's three weeks since my due date and that gorgeous last date with Mike. I literally can't believe how upside down our world has been turned by this little fella and not just practical things, like making sure I eat or being able to go to the toilet in piece and quiet, but emotional things too. I spent at least the first week feeling completely overwhelmed by how gorgeous he was. I'd look at him and start crying just because I thought he was beautiful, or I'd be singing him a song and cry during the nice bits!

Other than being totally knackered and crying at the slightest thing, I'm generally amazed at how little time I have. When he's asleep the first thing I do is sleep too. If I'm not bothered about sleeping (which is hardly ever), I'm cleaning the breast pump, bottles and nipple shields (I'll fill you in

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This time last week my little Reuben had just been born…Are you ready for this? Warts and all?!

Reuben Parker was born on Sunday morning at 9:47am, weighing 7lbs and 11 oz. He is the most perfect thing I have ever seen and I am completely overwhelmed by his loveliness!

I’ve been working on this all week, when I get chance and I’m going to be honest about what the birth was like (while I can still remember – I’ll need Mike to fill in some of the details as I’m already forgetting!) but for anyone pregnant with their first baby I want to remind you that I actively avoided detailed stories of birth in order to keep positive and help prepare myself in the way I felt best. So, I want to highlight the following before you read on:

1. It was the most amazing experience of my life (and already I’m

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