We are Hayley, Joolz & baby Frankie, aka The Stanton Family.
We started our adventure after we met online whilst living over 100 miles apart. Joolz was living in Middlesbrough and I was in Manchester, but it wasn’t long before we settled together in the North West. Like with many new relationships we lived life to the max, following Joolzy’s beloved MFC around the country, partying in various cities, travelling as much as we could and fulfilling our shared love of food at all the foodie joints we stumbled across on our way.
I took countless photos and videos with the intention of sharing our experiences on my socials, but life was so busy that I didn’t always get the time, so much of our story remains untold.
My intention is still to share all of that with you, but for now all you need to know is that we got married and had a baby and still feel like we are in the honeymoon period.
So… having just thrown ourselves into parenthood in the same month we turned 40, I decided it would be a good idea to start a blog about this new chapter of our mid-life.
Before I started my maternity leave I was full of enthusiasm about all the things I would accomplish with my new found free time.. how naïve was I? Now I realise what people mean when they say going to work is actually easier than being a stay at home parent. Alas, I will persevere and try to document the rollercoaster that is keeping a small human alive, with the little time our daughter allows me for myself!
So here’s what you can expect if you follow our blog:
Travel. Both Joolz and I are relatively well travelled, (I think that’s what comes with not having kids until you’re 40!) and although we don’t want to take our daughter on an airplane for a good while yet, we won’t let that curb our shared sense of adventure. Both sides of our family have experienced the heartache of terminal diagnoses in the last couple of years and we sadly lost my brother in law who was only 40 eighteen months ago. If this hasn’t given us a reason to live then nothing will, we want to show our daughter that life really is about grabbing opportunities with both hands and running with it, not getting sucked into the mundane rat race and waiting for retirement. Our goal is to buy a motorhome and live on the road for a while, I’d love for you to stick around and see how we do!
Football. Being from Manchester I have always supported Manchester City, but my wife is an avid Middlesbrough supporter and season ticket holder so before we had our daughter we spent most weekends either at the Riverside or travelling around the country for away days. Often we would make a weekend out of it and spend time seeing different cities, or turn the days out into longer road trips or EDT’s (extreme day trips) so I’ll recap some of the stuff we’ve done in this blog. Needless to say, this season looks a bit different, but it won’t be long before we are taking little Frankie to her first footy match, after all we still need to complete the 92! (iykyk)
Food. I almost named the blog The Scrantons because we all love our food. I am *very* lucky to be married to Joolz who is the master of the kitchen. We often eat out and I’ll certainly be sharing our experiences as we eat our way around the world, but the bar is high for any restaurant we visit because Joolz really can cook better than most places we dine in! If you follow our Instagram page you may see me refer to Russell… this is one of my nicknames for Joolz, because she can literally go into a kitchen where the ‘cupboards are bare’ and ‘rustle up’ a good meal in no time. I also call her MJ which is short for My Joolzy, but that’s nothing to do with food and everything to do with me being a soppy cow!
Fertility treatment. Being a lesbian couple we were missing a vital ingredient in order to conceive our daughter so we needed the help of a very kind donor and some very special doctors. I will talk about IUI, IVF, using donor sperm and miscarriage. Buckle up.
Realism. I have seen so many posts on socials throughout my pregnancy which made parenthood look easy. Babies that sleep through the night from what seemed like birth, breast feeding mums with enough milk to supply the local body builders as well as their newborn, and girls who look like they’ve fallen out of vogue magazine whilst doing the 3am feed. I am none of these things, and I won’t pretend to be for the sake of followers either. I will be real and I’ll talk about all the things that people shy away from!
If you google (or ChatGPT as is more common now) ‘How to start a blog’ the advice is to find your niche, think about your target audience and then expand your content type with time, once you have a steady following. Obviously I didn’t take that advice, I’m a Leo. I don’t know what my niche is, maybe in time I will, but for now I’ll just use this platform to muddle through whilst I fine tune my writing skills and talk about what I’m most passionate about. My family.
So if you’re up for hearing about the highs and lows, the raw and real, and the nitty gritty of my journey into motherhood, stick around and enjoy the ride.
Hayley x
The Stanton Family 