Stressed mother and head banger baby!! (Mother & Baby)

Name: EmJane

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Product:	Mother & Baby
Date:	25/05/04 (159 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great read, Lots of special offers and freebies, Great product comparisons

Disadvantages: Very graphic birthing pictures!

Since i found out I was pregnant with my now 16 month old girl I bought every baby magazine I could get my hands on. I felt so overwhelmed with the level of responsibilty I needed all the advice and comfort I could get. Now that my daughter is getting older I still love to read baby magazines but am a lot more selective about what I choose to spend my money on.

Mother and Baby usually costs £2.10 but is regularly on offer for £1.99. The majority of baby magazines are between £2-£3 so the price offers good value. It is avaliable the first week of every month. The magazine itself is A4 sized and always bright and cheerful with their main article titles written in bright colours across the front.

You usually find you get a free gift with the magazine. This can be anything from a baby hat, to wet wipes, or baby books. You can regulary get story books from the Kipper Dog collection free with the magazine and these books are usually a few pounds each themselves.

Each issue is normally around 170 pages and is jam packed with advice, product reviews, personal experiences and competitions.There are a lot of adverts in the magazine, at least 50 pages are just adverts. I do not mine this though as I like to know what new baby products are out and also you get a lot of money of vouchers as part of the advert.

Am going to be a bit boastful now but I won 3 months worth of Hipp baby food as the result of an advert in this magazine. I had to answer three simple questions and send it to a freepost address. You could enter as many times as you liked, you I entered a few hundred times and I won!! It was quite funny as I didn't know I won and we had a knock at my mums house and a man was outside with a deli of 16 huge boxes of baby food. My mum was not happy as we didn't have room for it in the house. With these competitions firstly you never think you will win and secondly you would have thought you would get vouchers for it all, not get it
all in one go!

Anyway.....Obviously the content of the magazines changes each month but the main sections are:- Mum's club, from bump to birth, hello baby, best buys, back to work and toddler time.

The Mum's Club section is all about real life situations and stories from other mums such as how to potty train your baby, how to babyproof your relationship and the moment I told my partner I was pregnant. These stories are always very personal moving and sometimes even funny. The are full of pictures and often have a useful summary at the end. It has an agony aunt page for readers relationship problems.

From Bump to birth is all about the nine months of pregnancy and advice for those trying to become pregnant. They have a week to week diary of what your baby is doing and how big it is which I even read now as I still find it all amazing. There is always a lot of personal advice about pain relief and birth partners. It is of course vitual that you learn as much as you can about what is avaliable before you give birth. They have a no nonsense way of describing pain relief which I found very refreshing.

Each month they have a different birth photographed such as water, home, natural and active. This section is very graphic and I find the pictures a little too revealing for my liking. There is also an ask the midwife page when you can send your own questions in and have them answered.

Hello Baby is all about the first year with your baby. It has cut out and keep pages on how to bath a baby, change a nappy anf how to get a bedtime routine. They have an ask the health visitor page when you can have you questions about your baby answered.

The Best Buys section is one of my favourites. Each month they review different baby products such as monitors, cots, prams and food. The reviews are done by readers and are informative and offer great comparisons for you.

The Back to work section usually has a diary of
a week in the life of a working mother which is exhausting to read in its self! It also sets out pplans for returning to work and gives money and legal advice regarding going back to work.

Toddler Time is a fun section that gives you recipes, fun activities to do and funny things toddlers say. They had a great acticle recently on body parts and what to do when they discover them. They offer solid advice and often in an amusing way.

The competitions and offers are spread throughout the magazine the number of prizes avaliable each month varies but you normally find at least 12 competitions with hundreds of prizes on offer.

Mother and Baby is a great read for any pregnant lady or mummy. I have continued to buy and and shall do so until my daughter is at least out of her head banging stage - still waiting for that arcticle to come up before she hurts herself!!

Thanks for reading, Em XX

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