Marianne Monie
Moderator

Hello!

I'm Marianne Monie and at the moment I'm 28 years old. My husband Tom and I live in Bedfordshire with our two children: Matthew who is 2 and a half and Rhiannon who is 3 months. To read more about us take a look at my pregnancy diary and baby diary for Matthew or my pregnancy diary, baby diary or birth story for Rhiannon. I work part-time as a civil servant and Tom is a full-time research scientist.

Like lots of new mums I have developed an active interest in virtually everything baby-related, but in particular feeding. When Matthew was born we had great difficulty learning how to breastfeed over the first couple of months. He had an undiagnosed tongue-tie and lost 20% of his birth weight in the first week of his life (a whopping 1.5lbs). I really wanted to feed my baby myself and with Tom's support spent weeks visiting local support groups and searching the internet to get the information and help we needed to make it work. As he has grown I have continued to take an active interest in weaning and children's diets, amongst other things.

During the early weeks and months like many mums, I received loads of conflicting advice about all sorts of things, but especially about breastfeeding. As Matthew grew bigger and feeding and looking after him became easier I decided that the best way to help other people avoid the experience we had would be to volunteer to provide support to other mums. I am now a volunteer helper at a local breastfeeding drop-in group and currently doing further training too. Fortunately with Rhiannon breastfeeding has been more straightforward.

I joined Babyworld in April 2004 while we were trying for a baby. During my pregnancy and ever since, the April05 Antenatal Club has been an invaluable source of friendship, advice and support. Over the last year I have also become a regular on several of the discussion forums, including the Feeding forum and was delighted to be asked to co-moderate it from September 2006. Since then I have also developed an addiction for real nappies also co-mod the Nappy Talk forum.

I look forward to talking to you on the Feeding forum or Nappy Talk.