About this blog

Why is it called Lins In Production?

I live in Australia but I'm from the UK. All my family are still in the UK. Back in 2007 I got married and only my parents could make it over for the wedding. Grandpa wasn't well enough to travel and Gran was looking after him. Nana and Granda had already booked a cruise for the same time. And my sister was 7 months pregnant.

A couple of months later we had been evicted from our rental home and were staying in temporary accommodation whilst we looked for a house to buy. Most of our stuff, including all of our just-opened wedding gifts, was in storage. For some reason I had taken it upon myself to handcraft a journal for my Gran's 80th birthday present. This took a while. The day after her birthday my new baby niece was born. To say Gran was chuffed (stoked if you're Aussie) when I called to wish her happy birthday was an understatement.

I apologised for not having a present on its way to her and told her it was "in production".

"What is it?" she asked. "Another great grandchild?"

A few months later when we had finally moved into our own home and were considering the concept of producing a great grandchild I thought it would be an interesting experience to write a diary about the journey. It started as a private online blog, "Lins In Production".

Little did I know I was already pregnant when I started writing the blog but sadly, I lost the pregnancy very early on. But I was right; writing about it did turn out to be an interesting, explorative and therapeutic experience. The blog followed by next pregnancy through to its happy conclusion: the birth of Miss Chief (although I never did get around to writing that particular post) and then became a blog about parenting and family life.

Over the months and years since inception I have slowly released more and more of the blog into the public domain. In doing so I have tried to protect the identities of my children, creating online pseudonyms for them. But when Miss Chief was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in October 2012 I realised there is a bigger picture here. It is now becoming more important for me to educate, inform and share our experiences of this much misunderstood disease than it is to solely protect our identities. So from time to time you may see a photograph, or reference to The Chief (or even Happy) by name, particularly if linked to from another site.

The blog isn't intended to be solely about diabetes but it is currently such a big part of our lives as we learn how to adapt to it that it is turning out that way. Please keep reading, if only to understand us better. Someday soon I promise I will find other things to write about.