I hope you’re all well and staying safe in these strange times! My maternity leave is shortly coming to an end, so I will be doing a phased reopening of my shops – hey if the government can do it for life, I feel like I can too! My www.fragmentdesigns.com shop will be opening on the 10th September for the day, and then again on the 10th of October. I have a lot of admin to work out, mostly as during my maternity leave the price of gold and silver has sky rocketed so unfortunately I have to put up some prices. I hate to do it, and completely blame the pandemic but also it has been at least 3 years since I put up my silver prices in fairness. My Etsy and Not on the Highstreet shops will follow at some stage, but the admin job there is huge so I’m going to have to see how we go.
September‘s opening will also be a chance for myself and my husband Conan to navigate babycare while I’m back to work. Since I’m still breastfeeding and hoping to continue for the foreseeable the logistics will take a while to figure out, and I imagine going forward my lead times will increase, especially since my suppliers and the assay office are still working with extended lead times (because of the pesky pandemic), so for now I am increasing lead time for silver to a week and gold to four weeks, and we’ll have to see how that works out.
Aside from all of this if you are desperate to order something right away I have been taking some orders and will continue so please email me directly at sarahjane@fragmentdesigns.com
Right, that’s business out of the way so on to the cute baby photos I know you really want to see! If you didn’t see my earlier posts I had a wonderful little girl – Maebh – in February, she is an absolute joy, she smiles with her whole face and just because I’ve walked into a room which I hope never gets old! Currently she is able to pull herself up to stand supported and to take a couple of shaky supported steps and she is ridiculously proud of herself, I think she’ll be walking early and I’m a bit flustered trying to get the rest of the baby proofing done!
My maternity leave has been nothing like I expected, I got a day before labour started then 9 days of early labour before a c section. We were home about 3 weeks and lockdown hit in. We then had feeding problems due to tongue-tie and couldn’t access any help, support just stopped with lockdown, and I know I am not the only new mother that experienced that! We eventually paid to see someone privately and get her tongue checked and snipped, she started putting on weight straight away and is a happy little chubby baby now. Add to that months of no one other then mammy and daddy holding her and only being able to leave the house for a walk once a day and I think its safe to say the start of her life has been nothing like I imagined! So while I had intended to open my shop more often over the last few months, in the end I needed to focus on Maebh. Its been hard for us, but in some ways I’m thankful she was so young she didn’t need the socialisation or expect it, the numbers are currently quite low here in South Wales, everything is quite relaxed and I hope that schools starting back this week doesn’t put us back in lockdown, I want her to know people! And in winter socialising in my garden isn’t really an option!
But look at her chubby cheeks now! She’s so happy and watching her learn stuff is fascinating! Watching her take to food has been so much fun, she loves it,….. except banana and rice they were just frustrating to try eat! She’s already eaten more types of vegetable than I had by the time I was 20! And I 1000% love being her mammy! She’s even being slightly more generous with sleep, although please don’t ask me if she’s sleeping through the night!
Right I better get back to the baby proofing!
Stay safe and wash your hands everyone!