I have always struggled with my body image. As a chubby child, I had low self-confidence. I convinced myself that I was not an outdoors person, and tried every excuse not to be involved in physical activity. Many would have deemed this laziness, but growing up in a farm, there was no time for laziness. No, it was much more than that. It was a fear of embarrassing myself, a fear of never being good enough, a fear of not being perfect. 

By the time I had reached the age of 10, I was already morbidly obese. I ate for comfort, and the more I ate, the more I needed to eat to quell the feelings of inadequacy. I tried to hide from the world because I didn't think anyone could love me. There was quite a lot of emotional turmoil in my family home, and this only served to further my need to eat my feelings. There was nobody to talk to, so I hid my feelings in the candy under the mattress, and discarded my feelings along with the mountains of candy wrappers. 

By the time I reached my early teens, I had pushed myself to the other extreme. I barely ate. I became a master at making my plate look really full when it was, in fact, very empty. I worked out lots of tricks to fool people into believing I was eating. I think for a while if may have even fooled myself. Instead of eating, I would cut my food on my plate and spread it out so that it looked like there was vast quantities of food. There wasn't. I took over making meals so I knew exactly what was going into them and so I could serve them to ensure I had control over the portion sizes. 

Everything became about control. Instead of eating my feelings, I exercised. A lot. The cycle was brutal on my body. Everybody was too busy to notice. I was only ever encouraged to continue the abuse to my body, unwittingly, by well-meaning people who encouraged me to continue on my weight loss escapade. I was told how thin I looked, and I thrived on the attention. It made me feel good. I hadn't ever felt good about the way I looked. But it still wasn't enough. I continued to spiral out of control until I became ill. Really ill. The first warning sign was that my period stopped. Being young, I saw this as a bonus. No more nasty pain or inconvenience when I needed. Keep in exercising. After several months, though, I began to worry that maybe it wasn't such a good thing. Months passed, until finally my mother realised something was wrong. Asking if she needed to buy me any "supplies", she suddenly realised that she hadn't bought any for a long, long time. 

After 9 months, I was sent to a specialist, who after rigorous testing, and assuming I was pregnant (I was a teen after all, what other explanation could there be.?!) finally discovered that my body had stopped ovulating, stopped functioning as a woman because of the appalling treatment of my body. I had to take tablets to re-regulate my cycle and I had to start eating. The idea of eating terrified me. I went through a series of men and a series of horrible life events until I found the man that I was later to marry. He accepted me for who I was, genuinely loved me no matter what, and forced me to eat. The result was I let go. I let it all go, and I gained massive amounts of weight. Shameful amounts. And the hardest part was that I just didn't see it. In my mind I was still that thin girl, but the reality was much different. In reality, I had ballooned and by the time I realised what I had done, it was too late. I was eating my feelings again. Old habits die hard. 

It took a significant health scare, a total breakdown in fact, for me to realise that something had to change. In the only way I knew how, I threw my heart and soul into my weight loss journey. I lost so much weight that I was half the person that I had been before. I exercised to excess. But I felt great. I loved having the attention of men again. I loved that I could buy nice clothes. I loved that I had enough confidence to actually go swimming. I still wasn't happy with the way I looked, but in my own warped way, I guess I accepted it. 

Just a few weeks after my wedding, I was in the best shape of my life. Things seemed to be looking up. Then, after 10 years of waiting, I found out that I was pregnant. It felt amazing. But then it didn't. Morning sickness destroyed my spirit. Low blood pressure made me terrified to leave my home. I could barely eat. I couldn't exercise. I was crushed. I became a shadow of who I was. I was ecstatic to be pregnant, but getting through each moment was soul-destroying. Morning sickness lasted my entire pregnancy. I felt so isolated, and despite barely being able to eat, the weight stacked on. 

I struggled with my body all throughout my pregnancy. I didn't glow. I wasn't radiant. I was fat and puffy and full of acne. I struggled to remember that I was growing a miracle. After my daughter was born, I was not prepared for the changes to my body. I was shattered to realise that my big baby belly didn't instantly disappear, despite there no longer being a baby in it. I loved showing off my baby girl, but didn't want anyone to visit me and see the whale I had become. 

I had high hopes that breast feeding would help the weight melt away. It didn't. Six months on, it still hasn't. It's still there. My body has changed completely and as hard as I try it seems I can't get it back. I don't resent my daughter, but I do wish that things were different, that I'd done some things differently. Then perhaps I would not be where I am now. I still don't like to go in public. I fear that my daughter will grow to be embarrassed of me. I'm terrified of falling pregnant in case there are complications because of my weight, if I can conceive at all. I'm terrified of gaining more and losing myself completely. I hate the web of feelings that tangle and snare around my soul. I hate feeling this way. 

I don't know how, but I must find a way to learn to love my body for what it gave me. For the miracle of life that sits in my lap as I type. I must learn to love this body so my daughter learns to love hers. To break this cycle. That is definitely something worth fighting for. 

It was Albert Einstein that defined insanity as, "doing something over and over again and expecting different results." So it's official, I am often insane.

My darling daughter has been having "one of those days." So therefore, the rest of the household have been having "one of those days" too. After her massive first Christmas yesterday, my baby girl is worn out. She is 4 months old and loves wing part of the action. She's just discovering the world and she loves it so much that she tends to forget she needs to rest, and then battles against her mama because she feels it's unfair to be missing any of the fun.

Queue toxic meltdown. After 2 x 15 min cat naps during the day, my little girl fought sleep until 9.15pm. She then woke every half hour demanding food and cuddles. By 5.00 this morning, she was awake and ready to take on the world again. Except she really wasn't. She was still exhausted.

So today has been one big toxic meltdown. I rock her. I shush her. I sing to her. I nurse her. And repeat. My husband, however, is good at often reminding me to try something different. While I'm busy trying to prevent further escalation, unwittingly I am often the cause of it. Sometimes my darling girl is desperately trying to tell me she needs something else. Perhaps a little walk. A bath. A story. Some tummy time. Even a fresh change of clothes can be the difference between a minor upset and a massive meltdown.

Every time I feel my baby escalating, from tiredness or tummy pains or teething, I try to remind myself of the definition of insanity. I try to swallow my fear and the desperation that creeps in when I see my baby upset. In trying to calm her as quickly as possible, sometimes I forget I'm being a little insane. Thank goodness my little girl just loves me, over and over again. That's the type of insanity I cherish.

I have spent so long thinking about writing a blog. What would I write about? How would I attract an audience? What if people didn't like what I had to say? What if I ran out of things to say? What if nobody read it? What if I didn't stick to it?

Like many things in my life, I am ashamed to say that the idea of a blog sat on the "ideas shelf" in my mind for a long, long time. I'm even more ashamed to admit that I have had a couple of (failed) attempted at blogging anonymously. Why should I try again when it, like many things in my life, would probably just be a passing phase? 

Then it dawned on me, the reason that the other blogs failed. The reason that they were just phases. I wasn't passionate enough about what I was writing. I didn't believe, fully, in the content of what I was writing about. I got bored. I have the attention span of a gnat. So I wrote with such great gusto for a while and then I moved on. 

But this time, I am determined will be different. Because I am writing about something that I am passionate about - parenting. A world which is still so new to me and a world that is ever-changing. A world that I will never master. A world in which I am perfectly imperfect, and for the most part, I'm ok with that.

So please, come on this journey with me. Much like the movie "Julie and Julia", I am, like Julie, in need of some support. I need to do this and I need to make a difference. Please, if you're reading, let me know you're out there. If you're passionate about parenting like I am, and if you try and fail and try again, like I do, then share this journey with me. Our children deserve that much from us...and perhaps a little more.