Stevie’s a new first time mum. Her life has changed beyond recognition since the birth of her daughter, Cherry. It’s difficult but Stevie copes…just about! Her husband Ted works hard to keep the family finances afloat while Stevie is off work and he isn’t really there for Stevie to offload her feelings onto, so she starts up a First Time Mum blog! She also meets fellow parents, Nelle and Will. Nelle, who has just had her third child with a big gap between this one and her elder two, wonders why she’s going through all this baby stuff again at her age! Will is father to his 2 year old twin daughters who run circles around him! Stevie realises, after meeting Nelle and Will, that there is no such thing as the ‘perfect mum’ and together they plough through what life deals them.

My son is 11 and it’s been a long while since I’ve had to deal with babies, but reading this has brought everything flooding back! The sleepless nights, the endless crying, the exploding nappies and the milk reflux which means no matter what you or baby wear within 5 minutes you’re covered in and smell of sour milk. Just by writing it down has triggered a panic attack, so you can imagine what it was like to read it! It was though a very funny and heart-warming look at life through the eyes of a new mum.

I loved Stevie’s character and could totally relate to her (as could any new mum!). I also loved Nelle and so wished that I had someone like her around me when I was a new mum. She’d ‘been there, done it before’ and had an air of confidence about her that would make me believe anything she said! Will’s first impression was that he was a moody dad on the verge of not coping, but as the story moves on you realise that he’s not like that at all.

A fun, laugh out loud book also with lots of tender moments. Perfect for new mums, old mums and no mums! Everyone can enjoy this book! Would definitely recommend!

Stevie is a first time mum and has a baby called Cherry who is very cute. Stevie is struggling with her new role, but has not lost her sense of humour. I’m not a mum yet but I hope to be in the future. Confessions of a First-Time Mum is a humorous (and realistic from what I have heard from friends and family who are mums) look at motherhood. Poppy Dolan goes deep into the life and mind of a first-time mum and Stevie us a realistic character. What happens when she meets Will? Read this book to find out more! The book has a fast-moving yet fun pace and I finished it in a few hours.

Huge thanks to Poppy Dolan and Canelo for my ARC of the book in exchange for an honest and voluntary review. So pleased to be on the blog tour for this one. I have also reviewed The Woolly Hat Knitting Club and The Bluebell Bunting Society which are previous titles by Poppy Dolan.
The book deserves 5 stars because of its original plot and characters that I think more than one mum-to-be or new mum will identify with.

This book brought me back to when my son was born, I related with so much of it! A light funny and sometimes laugh out loud story!

This book is going to ring very loud, funny and sometimes cringe-inducing bells for any woman who has ever had a baby.

My eldest daughter is thirteen and my youngest is now ten, so it has been a while since I was a new mum, but the memories of those early days are still clear and it seems not much has changed in the intervening years if this book is anything to go by. So many of the events in this book brought back those days and made me laugh out loud, especially the ‘poo-splosion’ incident. On my very first trip out of the house after my first daughter was born, when she was about a week old, I experienced one of these in the Mamas and Papas at Birstall Retail Park and I was ill-equipped to deal with public excretions of that magnitude, given my rookie status. We still talk about it – my daughter had a mass of curly hair when she was born that was very absorbent…

I recognised myself in the heroine (which is definitely the word for every mum there ever was) of this book, Stevie, fumbling her way blindly through the mystery that is parenthood when you first take your very first baby home. I remember so well those feelings of ineptitude, loneliness and failure, because you are now in charge of a whole person that you don’t yet know, don’t understand and who doesn’t come with an instruction manual. It can be a scary time. Stevie tries to manage some of these feelings and frustrations, particularly in the small, dark hours of the night when you feel like you are the only soul on earth awake and worries are magnified a thousand-fold in the silence, by expressing her feelings on a blog that she believes no one else is reading. However, she soon finds out that nothing is ever private in cyberspace and she is perhaps not alone after all.

Mummy bloggers weren’t a thing when my children were babies, but the rise of parenting blogs is a phenomenon that has not passed me by in recent years and this book does a lovely job of exploring the highs and potential lows of baring your soul, warts and all, to the world. I really felt for Stevie – her struggles are the struggles of all new mums but exacerbated by the fact that she is sharing them with the world and loses control of who is privy to those humiliating moments and thoughts and what their reaction to them will be. A cautionary tale for all bloggers perhaps, but it also brings friendship and support – something I can definitely relate to as a member of the ever friendly and supportive book blogging community.

This is a great fun read, studded with nuggets of painful truth about parenthood and I really enjoyed it.

This is the latest in a long line of books in this genre and it manages to provide the reader with enough unique moments to make it stand out. This isn’t the best I have read but it is well worth a read if you like this kind of story.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing a copy.

This should be compulsory reading for all teenagers - not to try to put them off having children, but to give them some idea of the reality.

Yes, the story and the writing was hilarious, but the sentiment within it was awfully, wonderfully true.
I WAS Stevie (not the blogging bit, obviously) but most certainly the zombie, lost, terrified, totally out of my depth, and totally, utterly besotted bit.

I found this novel totally relateable. It had me laughing out loud whilst deeply sympathising. I felt Stevie's pain. The horrors of that first year give me nightmares even now! The story is all the more poignant for knowing that the author went through it too. This lady has had first hand experience!

How about a book on the terrible two's next???

I was given an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was cute, light, women's fiction about the realities of having a new baby for the first time. Would be a great gift for an expecting/first time mother

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for this arc in exchange for my honest review.

Stevie is a new mum to her chunky monkey, Cherry, she is desperate to make mum friends and she has been writing a small blog while breast feeding in the middle of the night. She finds kindred spirits with Nelle and Will and soon their shenanigans are keeping Stevie sane. Soon she is exposed as a mummy blogger and her husband is in shock.

Oh how I loved this and identified with so many of the emotions Poppy wrote about! Brilliant