The Rise of the Mummy Blogger

Unless you’ve been living underneath a rock, or you don’t have children and you don’t read blogs, in which case you probably didn’t mean to stumble onto my page, you’ll probably have come across the phenomenon that is ‘The Mummy Blogger’. It’s become a total 21st century cliche for women to have a baby and start a blog. I should know, that’s exactly what I did. I read somewhere that there are around eleven thousand parenting blogs in the UK at the moment and there are more appearing daily. But where have we all come from? Why are we suddenly springing up, sharing our lives with the internet and expecting anyone to care what we have to say?

Personally I love reading blogs, way before I became a Mum I would read fashion and lifestyle blogs on the train to work in my job as a Jewellery Buyer. It was a great way of reading what real people, similar to myself, had to say about things I was interested in.  I would sit on the train glued to Bloglovin’ scrolling through countless posts and taking every one of them in. Fast forward three years, I was pregnant, clueless and a tiny bit terrified about how much my life was about to change. I started to find my way to blogs from women who were feeling exactly the same as me, they were going through the same freaky body changes and coping with the same crazy hormones. Unless you are lucky and have a friend going through pregnancy at a similar time to yourself, it can be a very isolating time and so it was reassuring to know that I wasn’t alone. I started following blogs written by girls of similar ages to myself, at a similar stage of pregnancy and I was able to read along their journey with them. I still read them now and it’s like checking in with an old friend to see how they are doing. How are they finding motherhood? Is their baby developing at a similar rate to Darcie? If I am searching for a recommendation for a product or trying to figure out how on earth to get my baby to go to sleep. I will turn to these blogs for reviews and ideas. I trust blogs much more than I would a magazine. If a blogger, that I read frequently, recommends a product, then I trust her to be truthful in her review.

To go from reading blogs to writing my own was a natural progression. I had toyed with  the idea of starting one for years but I hadn’t really ever known what to write about. Becoming a Mum meant that I suddenly had lots to say and not having many ‘Mummy friends’ meant I didn’t have a many people to say it to. Writing a post about how many times Darcie wakes in the night means I can get it off my chest in such a way that I then don’t have to bore my family and friends with it for the sixteenth time. Writing down my thoughts and emotions became almost like a therapy. I think a lot of blogs start the same way that mine did, I just wanted to write, I didn’t care at all whether or not anyone read it, it just felt good to write. That’s why I blogged for 6 months before telling anyone. Just writing was enough for me. Then I reached the point where I wanted to expand on my little blogging community, I wanted to reach women who might for some reason care or be interested in what I have to say. I wanted to share my opinions and hear other’s in return. I wanted to write about how I feel and read comments to say that others had been feeling the same way. It can be very lonely being a Mum, particularly a stay at home Mum, and so through blogging I have a sense of community. A lot of my readers are other bloggers and it’s lovely to be able to read and respond to each other’s posts.

Mummy Bloggers are also starting important conversations and creating awareness for issues that affect millions of women all around the globe. It only takes one successful blogger to write a post that goes viral about a certain topic and suddenly everyone realises that its okay to talk about Post Natal Depression or how freaking lonely you are even though you hang out with 3 little people everyday. I love that we live in a world where theses things are being talked about much more and much more openly.

There is a convenience to blogging too, anyone can do it. For me, I started my blog on the WordPress app on my phone during a night feed. It was that easy to do. I still write posts during feeds and also nap times. If I can take five minutes throughout the day to write something down then I feel that I’ve had some ‘me-time’. I find it satisfying to be able to work on something just for me and having a project like this helps me to regain a lot of my sanity in the chaos of Motherhood.

For anyone thinking about starting a blog, I would say ‘just do it!’. Do it for yourself and just because you want to, don’t do it to gain followers on social media or to be sent freebies but do it because you want a platform for your voice. Even if nobody read my blog I would still write it. I love that I’ll be able to look back at it in years to come, and I’ll be able to show it to Darcie too. I love that I can write when I’m feeling sad or when I’m feeling happy and just release those emotions in a way that I’ll be able to relive them in the future. I think the rise of ‘the mummy blogger’ is fantastic as it means there are thousands of other women out there taking that little bit of time for themselves, connecting with other Mothers and generally having a good old chinwag.