Anna Kettle's Blog, page 7

How smart are you with your phone?

 Suffering from phone distraction 

I have a question which I’ve been asking myself a lot lately: Are you in control of your phone or is your phone in control of you? Because often for me, it seems like it’s the latter …

Too often I find myself picking up a what’s app message and then get sucked into another unrelated Facebo...

A few thoughts for Valentine’s Day

 A love/hate relationship

Valentine’s Day is kind of a weird social phenomenon, don’t you think? And one that many of us have a love/hate relationship with…

When I was single, I tended to live in quiet dread of this stupid calendar date, and the way that it could so easily make me feel a little bit small or ‘less than’ othe...

When joy & sadness dance

 A moment in time.

When I switched on my laptop this morning, a screen saver popped up with an image of a road through the Florida Keys, which was taken when we took a family holiday there back in May 2019.

And this picture felt significant for a few different reasons…

Firstly, how I feel today could not be more different f...

Perspective is everything

 3 little words…

I don’t know about you, but I have found the past few weeks pretty hard.

We’re now in our third national covid19 lockdown here in the UK, it’s cold and it’s rainy, and we’re all stuck at home again. It’s ten months on from when we were first put into restrictions, and it’s fair to say that everyone I speak ...

We can do better

 Miscarriage & advanced maternal age

Anyone who has been reading this blog for any time, will know that over the past three and a half years my husband and I have been dealing with recurrent miscarriages through our mid to late 30s.

Then finally we both turned 40 this year and found ourselves unable to get pregnant again; ...

Why I’m quitting resolutions

 New year, new start?

A new year is finally here! Who can believe it?!

2020 was certainly a mixed bag for many of us, full of frustrations, restrictions, and cancelled plans. And even without the disruptions caused by Covid19, 2020 was a tough year for many, with racial tensions, political tensions, economic pressure, and ...

My Fave 20 in 2020

Being at home so much in 2020 has been hard, but one of the silver linings has been having far more time to read.

I think I’ve read more books this year than ever before. Not one or two a week like some people seem to manage. I didn’t even do that as an English Literature undergraduate when literally ALL I had to do in an...

Beyond the manger

 God with us

One of the names for God that you tend to hear used a lot at this time of year is ‘Emmanuel’, meaning God with us. It appears on countless Christmas cards, and it’s enacted through countless nativity plays at schools, churches and nurseries all over the world.

I wonder if there has ever been a time where we’ve ...

When there’s no Christmas miracle

 No news isn’t always good news

I haven’t posted an update on our fertility journey for a while, mainly because nothing has been happening…

Literally nothing! We tried to conceive again following our last miscarriage, but nothing happened.

Then, as we were just about to start on a fertility drug, services temporarily closi...

When Christmas isn’t very merry

 Are you dreading Christmas?

Are you facing this Christmas in the aftermath of infertility or some kind of loss this year? If so, perhaps you feel like a spectator looking in on everyone else’s joy, unable to muster up any genuine enthusiasm for the season?

Is a part of you dreading all of the seasonal festivities before th...