Beating those post holiday blues.

 If you're like me a holiday away from your everyday life is something to revel in and completely embrace - change of scene, food, weather and routine really is an adventure for me, I love experiencing the new and the different and I love broadening my horizons. However when it's time to come home I'm often struck down with the holiday blues and struggle to get back to real life and my everyday again.

This week we're away it Italy on our annual family holiday, a bit of baby-moon for us before we become a family of four. I know despite how much fun we will have I'll come back at the weekend and be as blue as the sky by the time I sit down to the laptop Monday morning, I can guarantee you this slump will last best part of the week too.

So with this in mind I'm thinking ahead and getting prepared and making myself a comfort list of things to help me beat those post holiday blues...

Picture Perfect

We always take hundreds of pictures on holiday and then get home and do nothing with them! This time I'm gonna break that habit and spend time organising them and printing out a few of my favourites to display around the house, I'm hoping this will help me keep that holiday feeling long after it ends.

Indulge in my post holiday body

I love the glow my body has after a break away and god knows this pregnant mama needs a bit of a body boost right now! I'm planning to make that glow last a long as possible this time by keeping my skin and hair well hydrated after a week of sun and treating myself to some indulgent products to slather on. I think a nice manicure/pedicure in a bright summer colour will help to keep me feeling lively also. The time I spend investing me will also help me feel more relaxed also indulging in some space each day to devote to me will hopefully feel like I'm back at the spa!

Being a book worm

One thing myself and the OH have always done when we go away is take a pile of books, pre children we would get through 4 or 5 on holiday, now we're lucky if we get through 2. However we take turns to have time to ourselves to read a little and I have to admit I probably get a bit more than him as he spends a good proportion of our holidays in the pool with LC, they live to swim on holiday! So anyway my goal this year is to keep up my reading habit, it's slipped loads lately and I still have my stack of books on the bedside table from the beginning of the year! I'm going make time each week to have some space to read and focus on books that keep me energised and uplifted (do recommend any you think are a good read at the bottom of this post!).

Catch my dreams

Whenever I'm away I always get inspired by my new surroundings, I'll get a taste of how I want my life to be or a feel of what I want to do or achieve in the future. I'm making note of all these ideas, hopes and feelings when they happen by having a notebook with me whilst we visit and explore Rome, I'm capturing these with pictures if I can and collecting tokens that I find that represent them too. When I get home I intend to organise, collect and write down all these things and turn them in to a step by step planner for me on how to keep my dream and goals alive, a go to book or journal of what I can do or change to incorporate these feelings in to my lifer hat I can keep reading and be invigorate and motivated by.

And that's it these are my tips, ideas and comfort list of things I can do to stop the holidays blues from creeping in, I intend to follow up at some point and let you know how I get on. If you have anymore tips or ideas I can use do share in the comment section below....

Mondays Moment of Wisdom - Pearl Number 45

"Sometimes good things fall apart, so better things can fall together" - Marilyn Monroe

I love finding these little pearls of wisdom that really mean something to my life. This one means a lot to me and I'm trying hard to apply it's meaning to my life right now. If you read my blog regularly or follow me on twitter or Instagram you'll know that me and my little family have just been on holiday and it was a much needed and deserved break. My OH booked a luxury five star stay in Portugal as a treat to make up for our heartache over losing our pregnancy earlier on in the year and it has really helped these last couple of weeks having this break to look forward to.

We left for the airport in the middle of the night, LC woke up when we did and got very excited while we all got ready to go, she slept a bit in the car on the way but considering the lack of sleep she had had she was amazingly well behaved at the airport, on the plane and generally for the first 3 days of our trip whilst we stayed in the first hotel in the city of Faro which is beautiful by the way. We found the locals so friendly and helpful and just enjoyed shopping, eating and lazing round the pool in the sunshine. On our last night there we went to an open air concert, LC loved it and surprisingly fell asleep in the middle of it all in her stroller! OH and I got very drunk and danced the night away with each other which is something we rarely have the chance to do these days, it was magical and so fun!

The next day we moved on to the Hilton resort with hideous hangovers and that's when it all started to unravel a bit, as you can imagine we felt awful, dehydrated in hot weather and had to wait 3 hours to check in so we just vegged out on the huge sofas in the lobby. LC coped with her parents being hungover very well but it was no fun for her, poor baby and we felt rubbish about wasting a day then to top it off my period which was two days late reared its ugly head which obviously for someone who is hoping to have another baby was not well received...

The 3 days following became quite odd and I lapsed a bit into a funk, I felt moody about about my time of the month, a princess was having a baby and the whole world was celebrating, people announced pregnancies on Facebook and to top things off there we several heavily pregnant mums sat round the pool in their bikinis serving as a constant reminder of what I didn't have and after almost two and a half years of trying, just couldn't achieve...

As always my wonderful OH took care of me, he gave me space to think while he went swimming with LC who just adored having several swimming pools to choose from each day. He made me laugh, he held me tight when I needed to cry and he let me pour my heart out when I wanted to talk. He also helped me to put myself back together again, look to the future and most importantly inspired me to start enjoying our holiday once more, which I did. In the time I had to lounge around while they swam I read and read so much about healing, mindfulness, fertility and moving on from feeling low and I have come across some ideas that have really stuck with me. One decision I have made is to actually start writing more about my experiences with secondary infertility and miscarriage, in the past a few people have encouraged me to write on my blog about this but I have always felt there was never a place for it here BUT now I'm starting to feel that there is, more than anything I just feel now that the processes of doing this will really help me to heal a bit, so from time to time I will be posting more on this and I hope maybe, it may help others too. I have also decided to take control of my future fertility and I am excited to be going to see a fertility specialist next week so more on this coming soon!

So in the end, after I fell apart a bit, I found a way, with a bit of help to pull myself together and our holiday started to go great again. We got upgraded to an apartment suite when we checked in at the Hilton which was so lovely and we really made the most of it. I bought some beautiful jewellery from the local boutiques, we made friends with another family and we left feeling relaxed and invigorated but also inspired and positive about really going for the things we want, we made some decisions about the next steps in our immigration plan and what may come next and came up with some ideas on how to balance our chaotic lives a bit better, now I can honestly say I'm feeling excited and motivated!

Unfortunately I did bring a tummy bug home though so I've spent the weekend getting over that but I think a little bit of extra rest has done me some good. So now it's time to see how all those better things will fall together as I have this tingly feeling inside that the next half of this year will really start to get good again!