The Travelista

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The Travelista in the Cosmo Blog Awards 2014

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May is without a doubt, the best month of the year. There are 2 bank holidays, it’s my Birthday and it’s the month that nominations for the Cosmo Blog Awards open! After being shortlisted to win Best Travel Blog at last years Cosmo Blog Awards, I was utterly stunned and over the moon, so you can imagine my excitement of potentially making it onto that prestigious shortlist for the second year running. 

Nominate The Travelista to win Best Travel Blog!

Nominate The Travelista to win Best Travel Blog!

Last year The Travelista was shortlisted into the Best Travel Blog category just 4 months after it was launched into the blogosphere (not bad going if I do say so myself). I went to the super stylish London awards ceremony in the XO tower and loved every minute of it – check out my Cosmo Blog Award lowdown post. I mingled, drank Cosmos and made friends with some amazing fellow bloggers including Hitched and Ditched, Kaori from Kaori Anne, Hannah from Hannah Leigh, Nicola from Nics Nutrition and Kate from Pretty Little Us. Overall, the whole experience made me fall in love with blogging even more and made me even more determined to make sure I made it back there the following year.

On arrival at the Cosmo Blog Awards 13

On arrival at the Cosmo Blog Awards 13

One year on and my blog has transformed my career, taken me away on travels and most importantly,  I have built up a loyal readership and following of fellow Travelistas. If you are one of the fabulous individuals that visit my blog on a regular basis or if you have simply just stumbled across it now and are intrigued to see more, please take 2 minutes to nominate me to win Best Travel Blog in this year’s Cosmo Blog Awards 14.

Winning Best Travel Blog at the Cosmo Blog Awards 2014 would mean absolutely everything to me, and help me continue to inspire others to travel , help aspiring travel bloggers and prove that blogging really can change your life!

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  • Theo’s first smile 😊 Theo is now 20 weeks old but he is “6 weeks corrected”. This means it’s 6 weeks since his due date, so if he was born on time he would be 6 weeks old. So although my little boy has been living and breathing on earth for over 14 extra weeks, developmentally he is only 6 weeks old. It’s a strange concept to get your head around at first, and I’m not massively keen on the “corrected” terminology but it is what it is. If we’re out and about and people take an interest by asking his age (and omg they do so much), I tell them his corrected age. Being so early I have been wondering if Theo’s developmental milestones will be a little slower but this week Theo has given us his first “social smile”, right on track at 6 weeks old! This is a huge milestone, although the smile was at Grandma and not at me. Our little miracle continues to amaze us every day. We are so proud of him 💫
  • Mental health 💭🌿 It’s a topic I’ve never talked about before because honestly, I have never been affected by it. I would see things about anxiety online and just feel very disconnected from it as I didn’t truly understand what it was, but all that has changed. I went from having a super healthy pregnancy to a very poorly premature baby in the space of a few days. I’ve held my babies hand whilst he fought for his life, fearing that we’d never get to take him home. I lived in an intensive care unit for 6 weeks, met parents with heart-breaking stories and have been exposed to all the possible health issues of prematurity. This week my Health Visitor helped me to realise that all this has manifested itself into quite a severe health anxiety. It felt like a huge weight off my shoulders to acknowledge this and to talk about ways I can get help with this new found anxiety, and process the rocky experience I’ve been through. She told me about a local mental health service which today I self-referred myself to. It may take a long time to psychologically recover from all that we’ve been through, but today I made a positive step towards getting there, so I can enjoy my boy without this dark cloud of anxiety looming over me. Does anyone have any advice and tips for dealing with health anxiety? 💭💫 Photo taken whilst Theo was still in hospital 💕
  • Adventure awaits my darling boy! Before Theo was even meant to be born he had already spent time in 3 different hospitals, in 3 different cities. The nurses all joked he was doing his own “Tour de Yorkshire” (clearly the travel life chose him 😅). When I was pregnant, I had plans to be on a plane with him once he was a few months old. I envisaged myself exploring a new city with with him strapped to my chest whilst navigating with Google Maps. I wanted to jump in two feet first to the whole “travelling abroad with a baby” thing, but it turns out life had other plans. Being premature, Theo’s immune system is much less robust and he is more susceptible to infections compared to a term baby. Whilst this isn’t going to stop us from seeing the world, it means we want to stay close to the NHS for Theo’s first year. So what does this mean for my travels and the blog? Well, you can expect to see a new emphasis on UK travel content, with plenty of mini breaks, local staycations and boutique hotels which we can enjoy as a family, with Theo. Any overseas trips I do will continue to be baby-free for now, for the next 12 months at least. Although I’m excited for my content to reflect my new journey into motherhood, I’m not about to become a ‘mummy blogger’. I want to maintain my own identity and I think my blog will play a big part in that. My life has evolved so it’s time to allow my blog to evolve with me as I start this next chapter of my life. I hope you all stick around for the adventures, no matter how big or small they may be. Swipe for the cutest morning sneezes 💫🌍👶🏼 P.S Thanks Auntie @hannahfrancesm for Theo’s cool new sleepsuit (from @shopmatalan)
  • The woman who has held me together since my life fell apart. When Scott had to go back to work and Theo was in hospital in Sheffield, my Mum dropped everything to come and stay with me in the hospital accommodation for 6 weeks. She was there for me on my darkest days, when my heart was shattered into a million pieces and I didn’t think I could keep going. She sat with me beside Theo’s incubator day in, day out, even though she was not allowed to touch or hold him. She spent hours researching everything there is to know about premature babies. She must have sterilised my expressing kit for me over 200 times 😂😩. She is the most selfless woman I’ve ever known and now that I’ve become a Mum myself I appreciate her even more. Today is her Birthday and we got to spend it together as a family, eating cake and drinking prosecco (just the one aperol spritz for me👌🏼). Theo got to meet his cousin Amelie for the first time and it was the first day my Mum got to spend time with both of her grandkids together. I was nervous to take Theo out into a restaurant for the first time but he was so good and slept for almost the whole time! Happy Birthday Mum and thank you for everything you’ve done for me. Today was good for the soul 💫🎂
  • (AD - Gifted) Our first outing ✨🍃 We took Theo for a pram walk around our favourite place in Leeds, Temple Newsam. I’m not going to lie, it felt like a pretty scary task and my head was full of worries. Are we really allowed to actually take our baby out and about? After everything with Theo being so medicalised for the past +3 months, it felt so alien to just get out of the house and do something *normal* as a family. Having done nothing but spend my days in hospital, I sort of have to integrate myself back into society too. I’ve been institutionalised 😅 We only managed a short stroll before the rain came in, but it still felt like a huge accomplishment and was amazing to take Theo (and ourselves) out for some fresh air. Baby steps! People who saw us walking around will have had no idea what we’d been through to get there. Mamas, what was your first outing with your newborn and how did it go? Our Pram is the new Day3 from @myjoolz (hiding under the rain cover) and we absolutely love it! Head to my stories for a closer look at the pram #myjoolz💘
  • Never in a million years did I think I’d get to finally breast feed Theo. Alongside the rollercoaster ride of having a premature baby, I’ve had my own physical challenge of expressing and maintaining my milk supply when Theo was too tiny to orally feed. Since the day Theo was born, I was encouraged to start trying to express breast milk. The Neonatal doctors explained that breast milk, especially colostrum, is like medicine to premature babies. The antibodies and immunities it carries cannot be replicated by any drug or formula. As Theo came so early, my body was nowhere near ready to produce any breast milk but after almost a week of painful hand expressing, my milk came in. In order to keep my milk supply up I’ve had to express 8 times a day by electric pump, every day, for the past 17 weeks (now you can see why I haven’t had time post anything on Instagram😅). Amongst the stress and anxiety I was going through in the Neonatal unit, expressing so frequently was incredibly tough. There were so many times I wanted to give up, but knowing it would benefit Theo and improve his health kept me going. As Theo got bigger he developed the sucking and swallowing skills needed to breast feed so we gave it a go. He took to it amazingly! At that moment all those painful hours of expressing at 2am suddenly became worth it. It was one of the first ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ elements of motherhood that I got to experience. Unfortunately Theo can’t be exclusively breastfed as there aren’t enough calories in breast milk alone for him to have a ‘catch up’ growth. He’s on a special feeding plan created by the Neonatal dietician which combines prescription formula with some of my breast milk and extra calories and fats. So although sadly our breastfeeding journey can’t be long term, it existed, and for that I am proud ✨💕 Thanks to my friend Emily who spontaneously took this family photo of us, even though I still felt so awkward about getting my boob out at the time 🙈

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