Blog Tour - Confessions of a First Time Mum

Publication date 25th June 2018

Amazon UK

About the book

Stevie’s life has changed beyond recognition since having her first baby.

Stevie loves being a mum, but between the isolation and being vomited on five times a day, she really wishes she had someone to talk to.

With husband Ted working hard to keep the family afloat, Stevie really doesn’t want to burden him with her feelings. Turning to the internet, Stevie starts the anonymous First-Time Mum blog and blasts the rose-tinted glasses of parenthood right off her readers.

In the real world, Stevie meets the formidable Nelle and gorgeous Will, along with their own little treasures, and starts to realise that being a ‘perfect mum’ isn’t everything. But when the secret blog goes viral, Stevie must make some tough choices about who she wants to be, and whether she’s ready for the world to know the truth…

A perfect laugh-out-loud read for fans of The Unmumsy Mum, Gill Sims and Emma Robinson.

About the author

Poppy Dolan is in her mid thirties and lives in Berkshire with her husband. She's a near-obsessive baker and a keen crafter, so on a typical weekend can be found moving between the haberdashery and kitchenware floors of a department store, adding to her birthday wish list. She has written three novels: The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp, There's More to Life than Cupcakes and most recently The Bluebell Bunting Society. The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp made it into the Amazon top 100 bestseller chart, so clearly someone other than her mum must have read it. She's currently working on her fourth novel – it's about friends, siblings and crafty things – and drinking far too much tea. 

You can get in touch with Poppy on Twitter @poppydwriter and on Facebook at PoppyDolanBooks. She doesn't bite. Unless you are a dark chocolate digestive. 

My Review

I really enjoyed this book, it is completely relatable and will make a whole lot of mums feel better and feel like they aren't the only ones who are having tough times. 

The whole blog posts and all in this are so funny and I really loved reading these parts they kept getting better and better the more confident Stevie was getting.

There is so much drama in this, it is hilariously good and so exciting. 

Extract 

There are some weird moments of happiness in family life. Ones I did not see coming. There are the predictable ones and they absolutely have their merits – when Ted throws Cherry into the air just by a few centimetres and catches her smoothly; when she sees her own reflection in the hall mirror and goes wide-eyed and freaked out, then melts into a cheesy grin for this beauty she’s spotted seconds later. But the weird ones have the extra layer of joy because they sneak up to you at the oddest times.
Like just now, when I jolted awake in the passenger seat, probably from my own snores, and came to in the car foggy with burger smell and full of the people I love to the ends of the earth. Cherry is open-mouthed and dead asleep. I check my watch. Forty-five minutes, I’d say. Not too shabby. 

Maybe as she’s getting older she’s napping just that bit longer? Ted has bunched up his coat and is using it as a pillow against the driver’s side window. I must have nodded off after emotionally eating my greasy, cheesy delight and instead of taking us home and nudging me awake when we got there, he’s pulled into the McDonald’s car park and joined in this communal nap.
So, here we are: perhaps not a Hallmark card snap but a picture of total happiness to me nonetheless. Is a baby ever as delightful as when it’s silent and immobile? Can you love a man more than when he facilitates snacking and sleep?

Recharged with a micro-nap, I use the last sliver of phone battery to write a quick micro-post for the Facebook page. OK, so maybe combining a blogging career with family days isn’t going to be a blissful walk in the park. It’s probably going to be more like a roll in a shitty ball pit, but sometimes weird is right. For me, at least.

The Beautiful Oddness of Parenthood
When you have a rubbish, tearful day and it’s rescued by chips and a car nap.
Picking up the ‘grown-up’ jokes in Shrek. If you’ve got to watch something thirty-seven times in a row, it might as well have hidden penis gags in it.
Your baby lunges at you for a random chew and you get a gumming on your arm which is oddly warm and relaxing, like a very localised hydrotherapy treatment.
The white noise sheep/owl/whirring of the fan is actually pretty peaceful to sleep with, TBH.
You’d forgotten Play-Doh is really great.
The Moana soundtrack. I mean, I literally feel bad for people who haven’t heard it. You’re welcome.
Being in the park on a sunny Thursday mid-morning. OK, you’re not being mentally stimulated and you might have put your coat on over your PJs just to get out of the house, but isn’t it a bit great that you’re enjoying this lovely day, in the fresh air with a rosy-cheeked babe, and so many other suckers are stuck in a windowless office staring at a spreadsheet?
Sucking up leftover fruit purée pouches. If you sploshed a bit of Cava in that, boom, you’d have a wicked Bellini. Not that I’d recommend too much of that while in charge of a minor etc, etc.
So, come on then, parents the country over, what’s your weird moment of joy?
First-Time Mum x

I haven’t put a shout out like that before, actually asking for feedback, and it still makes me wobble as I hit ‘publish’ but there’s a bit more confidence there now, a little bit of past evidence that people are keen to engage. So let’s see. Let’s see how far First-Time Mum takes me. Because Stevie Cameron’s career definitely needs a new direction and this might just be it. Like Nelle said, in her terrifying clown get-up, my confidence has been stripped away by the early baby days. To be myself again and to be the best mum to Cherry, the best partner to Ted, I need to bring that confidence back. In a big way.