If you look through my website you’ll see that nothing’s been published for over three years! Let’s just say, life got in the way. To try and get back into the groove, I’ve signed up for the SEMrush Content Marathon.

Over the course of this week, I’ll be having a lesson per day and be following it up with an assignment. The first task is to just get writing. So here goes!

Just an average evening in the Birchley house…

Yesterday, my poorly one-year-old spent the day chilling with Granny while Mummy was at work. She had her 13 month injections last week and they’ve really knocked her for six.

Bubba was clearly tired so once we got home it was time for bed. We’ve been following the same bedtime routine for about six months now. Bottle, pjs, teeth, stories and then I turn on her Ewan the Dream Sheep and rock her to sleep while breastfeeding. This used to take about half an hour. But recently she’s started to fight sleep. The rocking becomes more like trying to wrestle a, a… well a toddler that weighs nearly two stone! On too many occasions it’s taken me over an hour to get her asleep and into bed.

Last night she went down too easily. I was back downstairs by 7.15pm and sat down to watch my SEMrush video. Within 15 minutes, she was awake and crying. It took me until 8.45pm to get her back asleep. My arms were killing me, my back was sore and I was feeling pretty emotionally exhausted.

I thought she’d now be settled for the night, so I sat back on the sofa ready to get the video watched and the assignment written. I managed to write the introduction paragraph to this post before she woke up. Cue a heavy sigh.

The next couple of hours consisted of crying, rocking, feeding, crawling across the sofa, thrashing about in bed and finally me clambering into the baby’s cot bed and falling asleep with her feeding. I woke up a little chilly to the sound of my husband coming home from work after 11pm. All that I had the energy to do after that evening was go to bed!

Motherhood is hard. But it’s also the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. Her needs will always come before mine but I really hope she feels better soon! That cot is too small for me.