A day in the life of a stay at home mum

 Being a stay at home mum is a bit of a rollercoaster ride. It has huge ups, and massive downs, and twists and turns unexpectedly, and occasionally makes you want to throw up. It also has the ultimate highs and that amazing feeling of being completely invincible.

I decided before Henry arrived that I wanted to take the full year of maternity leave that was on offer. We've been making sure that we have money saved for the last three months of the leave when maternity payments stop so we should be fine.
It's been an odd few months getting used to being at home with a little one and developing a routine.
More often than not our days are pretty consistent, with the occasional curveball thrown in for good measure and to keep me on my toes.


We start our day between 6am and 7am. I'm not going to lie, some days this is harder than others. Dann is either on his way out, or has just left for work. Henry has his milk in bed cuddled up with me. It's a sweet and slow start to the day, usually helped by Dann making me a cup of tea before he leaves.

From there we head downstairs and have a play on his playmat (similar one here). I'm currently trying to teach him about reaching and grasping. He loves bashing his hanging toys around and has developed the sweetest laugh. Plus we're working on our tummy time with the help of my old brestfeeding pillow!
About two hours after his feed he'll start to get tired so I put him in his swinging chair for a nap. He'll usually nap through until around  10am where he has a mid morning milk. We then have some more playtime, and another nap of 30 - 60 minutes, ready for lunch between 12:30pm and 1:30pm.

After more milk - we use the Tommee Tippee Perfect Prep Machine which to be honest has been the best thing we have bought for Henry in terms of making our lives easier. We also use Dr Brown's bottles which we've found great, and seem to have kept his wind to a minimum - we have another play. This can last an hour or two, sometimes with a short nap thrown in, sometimes not. Our afternoons have been a little hit and miss of late, but involve a lot of play and cuddles. Usually he will go down for about an hour or two, but  sometimes it's as little as 30 minutes.

He usually has his dinner feed at 4/4:30pm and I try to keep him awake from now - though not always very successfully. On bath days, he has a sink bath at 6:30pm ready for bedtime milk always at 7pm along with a story. He usually is out by 7:30pm, in his Sleepyhead pod, though our little heatwave has made some evenings run into an hour.

Then it's adult time with Dann until we go to bed. I'm usually up again between 2am and 4am for his night feed, though I'm currently training him to learn that this feed isn't necessarily a required feed by trying to resettle him without the milk, before getting him any. I do of course give him milk if he really wants it.

Of course this routine isn't set in stone and I try to remain flexible as much as possible, whilst trying to stick to the routine a little. What I like most about this routine is that Henry kind of set it himself. He gradually moved to this routine by himself and we just tailored it to make it slightly better for the long term by moving his feeds slightly earlier in the day. We work round the routine at the weekends, and when I go out to see the girls during the week, and it seems to work for us 90% of the time.

So that's my day - most of the time - well on a good day anyhow!!

Are you a stay at home mum? What's your day like? Or if you're a working mum how did you transition across? Leave comments and links below!