Throughout my first pregnancy, and the first 2 years or so of my little girl’s life, I had the never waning support of a good friend who had been through it all herself. Her name is Jo. She would text me most mornings and simply say “how was the night?” and it gave me a place to express exactly how it was. Whether it was a good one – I was only up a few times – or a rough one – I was up every half an hour to feed her – I had a safe place to say it out loud (well, written, but you get it).

Jo is a very happy, positive, glass half full… no wait… she’s a glass overflowing kinda girl, and her approach to life and parenting has challenged and supported me in ways I don’t think she’ll ever know.

One of the things she would say to me is “There are no bad days, only hard moments”. This was to say, don’t write off a whole day because you had a solid half hour of inconsolable crying, or your little one threw the bowl of food you made for him all over the floor, or the 476 times you heard the word “MUMMY” in a day drove you insane! Remember that every single day is filled with 1440 minutes. There are 24 hours. It’s very unlikely that every one of those hours or minutes will be hard.

It meant that as I dealt with each day, I could believe that there would be happy, good moments to look out for. I could view every difficult thing as simply a part of the day, and not to just sink into a pit expecting the rest of the day to be difficult. Parenting really is a rollercoaster of emotions and wildly differing experiences throughout each and every day, but many of those will be positive, happy, wonderful moments to enjoy. x