About

I’m Ella. I’m a mother to four children, Harry, 10, William, 8 , Ben, 6 and Edward, 4. I love my life but there is way too much laundry.

After Second Son was born, and probably a bit while I was pregnant with him, I suffered from severe post-partum depression. I avoided deliberately crashing my car into a tree and now I’m a bit better, better enough to have had another two children anyway, without everyone thinking I should be locked up.

My third son was a failure to thrive baby and I grew quite a lot of grey hairs that year. And then my beloved springer spaniels died early of canine liver disease. We coped with all that and thought our life was on a bit more of an even keel and then on February 20th 2009 my son was diagnosed with FSGS, a rare and devastating kidney disease, and our lives changed forever. It’s fair to say that I now no longer sweat the small stuff. We deal with an uncertain outlook for him including a likely transplant in the future and the daily worries of him being immunosuppressed. You can read about William’s battle with FSGS and Nephrotic Syndrome here.

I used to homeschool my children and hope to have the opportunity to do so again one day. The wannabe teacher in me still means they get taught a lot of things at home anyway though, so I’m happy.

In the years B.C. (before children) I was involved with music which I loved. I also did a postgraduate degree and then threw myself into academia which I loved too. Now I do freelance work when people ring me up and ask me to although I have to resist my first urge to turn them down on the basis that if they saw my house and my organisational skills they wouldn’t ask me to write a shopping list for them, let alone do some work.

I worry about poverty, the environment, animal welfare and war. I wish that stay-at-home motherhood didn’t render mothers so invisible in society. I’m working to change all of these things in very small ways.

I write stuff all the time, mostly in my head because I’m busy with children, but sometimes I get to put it down on paper or on the internet. I also love music, especially pop, Britpop and, rather geekily, film scores. Mostly I live to read (even though I can’t remember the last time I had a moment to read more than a sentence or two in peace).

I blog here about things to do with life and home, parenting, learning, food and geek as well as our family life – motherhood in real-time if you like – so go, read, click here for my latest posts.

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