I started blogging just after my miscarriage, and I suddenly found myself struggling to make sense of what came next in my life. I needed something - anything - to give my loss some sort of meaning.
I didn't realise then that there were so many other mummy bloggers out there. I don't think I'd ever have started if I'd known. What more could I add? But, not knowing, I pressed publish. Not immediately on a blog post, but on a book. I finally self-published the novel that had been sitting in my drawer for four years. Once I'd done that, it was time to blog; I'd been told that blogs could be a good marketing tool. I didn't write about my miscarriage; I wasn't ready. Instead, I wrote a flippant first post about not having a bathroom bin. From that point on, I was hooked.
Why do so many of us do it? While many bloggers are secretly - or not so secretly - hoping to be discovered and land a book deal or lucrative column, in reality, many of us spend hour after hour writing in return for nothing more than a free foot cream or a trip on a potty-training tour bus. Two-and-a-half years after writing that first post, I've come to see the pursuit of blogging as more than a desire for success: as my blog has grown beyond the readership of my mum, sister and my friend's nan, I've come to realise what it is that makes so many people write - and read - blogs. It's the relatability factor (think X Factor with less Simon and more Cheryl). It's the opportunity to write something of value to someone. What you write might strike a chord with 10,000 people or with two: it doesn't really matter. When I've written about being a new mum, the fourth trimester and PND, I know that sharing those thoughts has helped others - because they've told me so. Blogging has the power to connect us. It helps us feel less alone.
Despite this, as the number of mummy bloggers has grown, so has the backlash. The current trend for 'honest' parent blogs on which mums bare all has generated plenty of criticism. Some has centered around the view that mummy bloggers don't offer any original content - what they're writing has all been said a million times before. Others have implied that mummy blogging is nothing more than a narcissistic hobby. Who cares what another mum and her kids are up to? No one finds your kids as funny as you do.
Maybe there's some truth to the narcissism factor. Mummy bloggers do enjoy sharing thoughts and opinions: if we didn't want to have our voices heard (or read), we'd just keep a diary. But, actually, a lot of mums do care what others in the same position are up to, and where once we might have subscribed to a magazine, we now follow blogs. And this is where the wide variety of mum bloggers becomes a good thing: nowadays, there's something for everyone. The domestic goddess who wants to do crafts with her kids or needs inspiration to makeover her family home; the style-conscious mum who wants to stay in touch with fashion; the mum who thinks she's crap, takes comfort in knowing other mums are crap and needs a good laugh at the end of an exasperating day. Whoever you are, there's a blog for you. Yes, it might all have been said: the pregnancy tales; the lack of sleep; the 'carve a pumpkin' guides. But each of us are saying it in our own sweet - or not so sweet - way. The tale is in the telling.
My blog is like an old friend. It's seen me through the craziness of being a work-outside-the-home mum (combing my daughter's hair with a fork in a desperate attempt to get out of the house), the quandary (by which I mean insanity) of deciding to have a third child after miscarriage, the reality of three kids (spending most of your time getting small people in and out of the car), post-natal depression and the ultimate decision to give up work and embrace motherhood (and immediately enrol the children in nursery). It's also been there - like many other blogs - for that one mum, or 100, or 1000, who needed to read the words of a woman feeling the same way as she does.
Guest posts
Guest post: Mummy blogging - has it all been said?
MumsnetGuestPosts · 26/10/2015 12:42
I think it's so common now to want to be heard, to share things whether others want to hear or not! I was a teenager as websites like LiveJournal became popular and I loved that chance to overshare 
I think blogging is something I'd get into if I had time, but now I'm no longer a teenager I don't have that same ingrained self-absorbedness that made me think everyone was interested in what I had to say...
I think the problem with 'mummy blogs' is they are only read by other bloggers and it's the same stuff regurgitated over and over again. There's even a sodding conference, Britmums, where they can hear the same stuff but in person 
It never used to bother me but Twitter this year seemed to be full of people asking for brands to sponsor I.e. pay for them to attend Britmums and then the week before blogging about what they were going to wear on each day. It made me a little bit murderous.
Dickie, Mumsnet also hosts a conference about blogging called BlogFest. How have you managed to avoid the advertising and promoting about it all over the site 
?
I've just had a look at the Bloggers Chat topic on Mumsnet, which was set up for bloggers to discuss their blogs and blogging. It is as dead as a dodo in there, with threads started by people who are accidentally in the wrong topic outnumbering any actual threads about blogging by about 20 to 1.
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