She blinded me with flash photography.

My husband, Andy, won't mind me admitting this but for the first couple of years I did feel like a single mum. We were like the proverbial ships in the night, only grunting at each other after our equally tiring days. Our sole purpose in life at this time was to keep our baby safe, secure and fed (not in that order). My choice of breastfeeding meant that Autumn was dependent on Mummy mostly and the fact that I could stay at home that first year, with the cushion of redundancy payment helped hugely. I've always been a creative type and would sit with feet up, boobs out and baby attached daydreaming about this idea and that. Some of my ex-colleagues would say that's how they remembered me at work, without the baby of course. Meanwhile, Andy was under immense pressure to work long hours to pay all the bills because, as mentioned in my first blog, that money soon burnt holes in both our pockets.

Years passed and bringing up baby got easier - they say the first 6 months are the hardest, with worn-out parents getting little from the experience (sorry to say this but it's true). Rewind to the day before Autumn's birth and I made a vow. Well two actually. One was to be the best mum ever and, if I was lucky enough, to breastfeed as long as physically possible (2 years and 2 teeth later, if you're interested). The other? To document our little girl's life through pictures. This latter vow was a personal wish for Autumn to have more (and better) memories of growing up than I do. I only have a handful of photos and sadly own only one of me as a baby. In this digital era I count myself lucky that I am able to take so many photos and make so many memories for Autumn.

Having used my lovely Nikon D50 to take some beautiful, well I am biased, photos of my one and only I realised that I had a knack for capturing something and so I decided overnight to become a professional photographer (I'm laughing at this whilst I type). Never been one to concentrate on one thing, nor enjoy courses, revision, you name it I won't read it. Anyway, Hevco Creative Photography was launched. Buoyed by the fact that I'd won a recent Facebook photo competition I began to think this was going to be the 'It' I'd been waiting, and clearly was destined, for. I was going to make a significant contribution to the household income. To further my chances of becoming successful I created a brand (I'm good at that) and set up my first Facebook page. (https://www.facebook.com/hevcocreative)

About this time Autumn had been attending a wonderful playgroup at a local church. The lovely ladies there encouraged me to set up a portrait shoot in a back room. Now my camera is good but not that good. So with the help of a very dear friend with a very dear(!) camera/flash/lens I took part in my first, and to date only, children's photo shoot (see test shot of my lovely girl above). This was partly successful had it not been for my nutty mother-in-law who chose to walk in front of shot just as I'd been able to settle my final 3yr old subject. A scouse mother-in-law is not to be questioned even when potentially ruining your career before it's actually began. Funny now but at the time I was furious!

My short-lived career as portrait photographer is over, for now. But my love of concept photography is always never far from my mind. I've since entered other competitions and either won or been short-listed. I enjoy updating my Facebook page and will eventually, honest, get around to advertising my gallery and hopefully sell some of my work.

There's just one more thing I need to do and that's find the time to back-up the 11,000-and-counting photos already on my hard drive. I can't do everything. But I'll give it a go.

Back where it all began.

*Stretches fingers, strokes chin, thinks* Casting my mind back I can't believe it's only been 4 years since I left my busy, stressful, often brilliant, job in the city. But leave I did. And for a very good reason.

After 7 years of kinda trying I at last fell pregnant. You see the idea was that having been married relatively early (it was 11.15am but I meant I was 24) I made the decision to pursue my burgeoning career until at the age of 30 I would fall pregnant at the first attempt and myself and husband would be youngish parents with a mortgage and a good job each. Fast forward the seven years and it wasn't looking too good. I had quite a few of what I like to call 'investigations', then my skin (psoriasis, but I'll talk about that separately) became a potential factor plus my age blah de blinking blah. But hang on, during this time my lovely husband Andrew decided to take the overdrawn bull by the horns and sorted out our money problems (well, until baby came along of course) and hey presto that little red line appeared on that white stick and we, the royal we, were at long last pregnant. So taking away the pressure and worries of our debts our little miracle-in-waiting appeared.

The pregnancy wasn't without its issues though. Being 37 meant I was on the 'high-risk' list, having a chronic skin condition also meant that I was at 'risk' of organ failure due to labour (really). Once pregnant, suddenly steroid creams are not the be-all and end-all in skin management so being lucky enough to have private health I was assigned an amazing dermatologist who eventually signed me off for the majority of my pregnancy due to the 'high-risk' factor. I was on low-dose steroid creams and UVB sun treatment (all safe for pregnancy). No alcohol except the odd glass of Guinness or red wine (if you can steer clear totally you should) and best of all, no housework including ironing. My husband was an absolute saint and treated me like a princess. (If only that were true of all prospective dads, hey?).

Anyway, during that time I was the healthiest, brownest and slimmest I'd been in a long time. Sounds odd doesn't it? Once our beautiful Autumn was born, by c-section - not because I'm too posh to push, somewhat of a snob but no where near as posh as I think I am, but because it was dangerous for both of us - our lives changed forever. Having a child changes everything. And I mean everything. Not least the fear of going back to work when the child reaches 3 months. That's what we were faced with due to me being the breadwinner. I'd recently worked on a high-profile project and was on a great salary plus all the benefits which come with working in a City financial house. BUT the stress of working there, the prospect of handing our beautiful Autumn over to a stranger (no parents on hand to help us out, don't go there) and the imminent recession meant I made a huge decision helped by the fact that the company were actively seeking volunteers and I asked for redundancy. So for Autumn's first year on planet Earth we lived like we'd won the lottery. I received a year's salary tax free. Looking back it was a sickeningly large amount of money to what we have now and how we live now. That's set to change though. Watch. This. Space.