So this week I made a pretty big move in terms of this blog… For the first time, I linked it to my Facebook account meaning that my real life friends and family know it exists. It was more by accident than design but hey, it happened, so if you’re reading this, and you know me – hi! Thanks for dropping by.

I’ll be honest, I’m pretty nervous about it. This seems like a massive shift. Until now, I’ve been happily typing away here, enjoying the relative anonymity and not worrying what people thought. Yeah okay, my face is plastered over the header so it’s not really that anonymous but the likelihood of someone I know happening to chance upon it was relatively low, and there’s huge freedom in that.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been becoming increasingly honest and open on here. I’ve had a pretty easy pregnancy so far and whilst I’m very grateful and so happy and excited, this baby-growing malarkey is sometimes wave-crashingly overwhelming too. I want to be honest about these things. I don’t want to present a sunshine-y, Instagram-perfect, idealistic version of parenthood because it wouldn’t be real and I’d be doing us all a disservice. I wouldn’t want someone to compare their real life to a ‘heavily-edited-best-bits’ version of my life and feel like shit in comparison. No one wins in that scenario.

So here we are. Little Pickle’s Mom. The good bits. The bad bits. And the ugly bits as well. Including last Friday, when I sat in my car in a car park for 45 minutes and just cried. Proper cried. Snot and everything. I cried because I had a cold. Because it’d been a tough week. And because I just didn’t have the energy to cope like I normally would. Because I doubted myself and had lost all my normal confidence that would usually have me ready and up for a challenge. It was a real shit moment. Hormones, eh? But I pulled myself together, dragged myself into work and even though I must have looked like I’d had a severe allergic reaction to eye drops, I was fine.

I don’t tell you that because I want you to feel sorry for me. I don’t want a barrage of ‘You okay, hun?’ messages – far from it. I don’t want attention (if you do know me in real life, you’ll know that I’m usually stubbornly proud when it comes to things like this and it takes a lot for me to show any kind of perceived weakness). I just want to write it. Because I feel better once I’ve gotten it off my chest. And that’s allowed, isn’t it?

Guatemalan Worry Dolls

Guatemalan Worry Dolls. Fancy some of your own? Check out http://www.worrydolls.com.au

So allow me this little piece of the internet. Think of this blog like a digital version of those worry dolls that you whisper your troubles to and hide under your pillow. I’m just giving you a glimpse of what’s under mine.