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It is natural for endless questions to be whirring around your head and to feel apprehensive about the answers or not knowing where to go for answers. One of these questions that we know a lot of ostomates have after surgery, as they start to recover, is "what clothes can I wear with a stoma?" Many people panic that they'll have to dress in clothes that don't reflect the person they are and/or spend their lives hiding in baggy clothes.

As I've been building my confidence, learning all things stoma life & sharing my experiences along the way since 2011, I have always enjoyed helping others. I have built my Instagram following of just over 9,000 followers (how crazy is that?!) in 3 years to share my reality of living with a stoma and my day to day life.

Podcasts are undoubtably a brilliant form of self care. Putting those headphones in and escaping from the outside world, you can curate what you need in that moment. I listen mostly when I am doing something arduous like making dinner, ironing or running a long distance. In this blog I am sharing some of my favourites, covering a varied spectrum of topics. These topics serve me well through education, mindfulness and laughter. If you have any recommendations don’t hesitate to message me over on Instagram @gutsymum I would love to hear what you listen to! The POODCAST @the_poodcast Now this is one for the drive home where after a long and stressful day, you literally need to laugh out loud....

October was a very special time for me as I entered my first 10K race in Cardiff, South Wales. Whatever possessed me to do it you ask? How many of you who are reading this with a chronic illness have found they can’t be as active as they once were? For me it was like a light switch was flicked and I couldn’t do anything without being in pain anymore. Its debilitating, demoralising and can lead you down a dark path mentally with the mental health benefits you loose over night. My health journey has been quite the fair ground ride. Born with Hirschsprungs Disease, multiple surgeries, 3 stomas and having a child which has the same yet more severely,...

Today is world mental health day and I just want to say I am not okay. I don’t need to share with you pictures of me at my lowest because that was last year and I managed to write to you all every week and pretend everything is okay. That’s what we do isn’t it? Fake it till we make it? Social media is full of unhappy people trying to make other people think they are happy or that their life is perfect. Perfection is in the eye of the beholder. Take my life for example…. If you take out the fact I’m ill give or take always have been and will always be ill, the fact 00Steve is always...

Tomorrow is World Ostomy Day and I just wanted to take a minute to talk about what it has been like for me over the last 4.5 years of having a stoma both the good, the bad and the ugly. This is by far my favourite image because falling pregnant with Button was just such an uncertainty especially after losing Bean just a few months before; knowing I could get to this stage in pregnancy was so amazing and also terrifying as anything can happen with pregnancy.  My ileostomy has given me so many opportunities that I couldn't have dreamed about such as: falling pregnant twice even if Bean didn't make it they gave us hope being able to run...

You may have seen across social media that in the news a judge in the UK ruled that a man could exercise his right to “control the end of his life” if he needed to have a stoma. I will include both links to the news stories and I can only speak from my own opinion on this matter and euthanasia which you are completely entitled to disagree or agree in part with.   Nobody wants to just merely exist and for many of us that was how it felt before we had our ostomies, but there are those of us who genuinely don’t like their stoma and have issues and as sad as it is it shows it isn’t...

*Trigger warning* naked stoma in post. September in the awareness calendar is Urology one of the biggies; yet not many people know much about our waterworks and related organs – often this includes me! What I love about the way awareness is raised in this instance is that people affected share black and white photos relating to their specific urological condition. So obviously urostomies are mentioned a lot as well as nephrostomies and catheters. Then there is the range of conditions from cancers to kidney failure. I think the choice of it being black and white makes it stand out from the crowd and I find myself pausing and reading the captions as I’m scrolling through social media. So what is urology and what...

You may have noticed across social media that this week is Crohn’s and Colitis awareness week; both of these are forms of Inflammatory Bowel Disease and make up a substantial amount of the ostomates in the world. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about what each one is according to the medical information you can find on various outlets. Firstly we will start with Colitis as more people on social media seem to have Crohn’s and Colitis isn’t mentioned as much or so I feel – maybe this is because once you have an end ileostomy you can’t have active disease or if you have a Jpouch you may go into remission hopefully long term but not...

I asked a close friend, confident and someone I highly respect to write a guest post for what it is like to advocate for people rather than just hear it from me! Read on to hear The Spoonie Mummy give her views. Advocate Noun; A person who publicly supports or recommends a particular cause or policy A person who puts a case on someone else’s behalf So now you know what an advocate is, what is it like to be one? My name is Natalie and I have dealt with chronic illness my whole life. Aged just fifteen months I was diagnosed with juvenile (rheumatoid) arthritis. Aged seven, I was also given a diagnosis of chronic iritis, a disease of the...