It’s always hard to know when to start, isn’t it!

I’m Nigel, one half of the editorial team at www.thebabywebsite.com . Although we’re cutting in well into the site development, there are still plenty of new things going on. Kathryn, my better half, is probably the better known of the two of us, but we’re still a team.

After receiving one of the latest Kia family cars to review this week, the phone rang and our friends at Red Dragon Radio were looking for comment on the latest Baby-related research story, which is the age-old debate about smoking and pregnancy.

Should they or shouldn’t they? …. was the inevitable question. A study commissioned by a school of economics rings my alarm bells every time – call me a cynic – so I had a very brief “think”. Never having been pregnant myself, how can I answer a question like that? Stupid statement! Of course I can answer it. I’m a staunch anti-smoker, strongly supported by K as a result of her enforced passively smoking developing years. The amount of evidence is mind-boggling. The aforementioned report focused purely on the birth-weight issue and seemed to skirt around all the serious stuff like premature birth, stillbirth, cot-death and such.

I managed to temper my tongue sufficiently to get through the interview uninjured and then went to Coffee Mania for a quick Latte (skinny nowadays I hasten to add).

The morning now out of the way, it’s time for some work. Reviews take up a fair bit of our time these days. We communicate to the child-bearing and child-rearing world the merits of this and that, be it a family car, a short break with or without the kids, a gizmo or gadget that a PR company wants us to praise. The up-side is the wealth of discounted or even free offers we get in return for such preachings. Call it what you will, I reckon it’s a weird form of extortion. Just try to imagine the stress of having to live these luxury hotel and posh car experiences every few weeks, to have to write about it, fit it in and around your working week. Could you do it?

I personally reckon we should be campaigning for a 25th hour, to allow the last things that we miss at the end of each day not to be missed and therefore not passed onto the following day.

The trouble is… I’m now going to be using up another chunk of editorial time from my day to describe my editorial day. What a waste! Should be preparing for something new and exciting.

Before I go, a little bit about my (our) site.

Launched Summer 2006 as a full-time enterprise by Kathryn and I, it has experienced a steady and in many ways reassuring growth. Growth, when you’re in business is never fast enough, I know, but as long as it’s in the right direction, there’s some justification. We currently entertain almost 10,000 registered members who hit our site around two and a half million times a month. Sounds impressive, but it could be far better. Shall I set a target of 5 million hits a month and see how long it takes to get there? Yeah, why not!

Back Soon….