Earlier this week I over heard a friend thanking her daughter for a lovely day. It’s something I do actually do often myself. I genuinely am thankful to my children for lovely days spent with them but I realised I hadn’t said it for a couple of weeks so I made a point of doing so.

In a week which has seen a young celebrity Mother pass away and leave two babies behind her, I found it even more important to tell my children how much I love them and wrap them up knowing they mean the world to me and always will.

I was so very sad to hear of Peaches Geldof. She was 25. She practiced attachment parenting with her two boys under two and with that, extended breast feeding. I couldn’t help but feel tearful as I fed my own baby boy that evening. Tearful for her baby boys who would have been looking for their Mummy and for that comfort she will never again be able to provide them.

I didn’t know her of course but I did admire and respect her. I did meet her twice as it happens. Once when she was a little girl and I had been invited to chaperone my two younger cousins, who were at school with the Geldoff children, to a party at their house. It was Halloween and my claim to fame has always been that I went trick or treating round Chelsea with Sir Bob! That was way before her family broke up and while as a teenager looking in, I found the scene a little bizarre to that of my own family home, (they had silver stars on the wall paper in the hall way) they seemed rather normal and domestic, just like the rest of us but perhaps with a little zsoosh.

The young Peaches had annoyed me at the party. I was 14 so she must have been about five and I found her a little precocious and irritating. I’d had a mask bought for me to wear especially to the party and it was beautiful with feathers. I was rather fond of it and Peaches got hold of it and pulled the feathers out. I remember people smiling at her and no one telling her off and it really wound the teenage me up!

For years when ever anybody mentioned the Geldofs it was her pulling the feathers out of my mask that I thought of. I grew up thinking she was this incredibly precocious, spoiled and annoying little girl. And she probably was but she grew into an incredibly competent and intelligent woman who sometimes made mistakes, like the rest of us of course, but for her it was all very public. I’m not sure I’d want my antics from my latter teenage years known to all and sundry and I’m not sure I’d have recovered well if they had been but Peaches did.

What looked like an ill thought out quickie marriage, reports of drug taking shame and lots of other things could have well been the result of losing her own Mother or could have just happened, who knows? But recover from those stories she did and she later became a Mummy and wife. An excellent Mummy as far as I could see.

The pictures we saw and stories she told portrayed a very happy and loving family and when she went head to head with Katie Hopkins on ITV’s This Morning I was cheering her from my living room as she took on and won with measured, experienced arguments as to why attachment parenting is really just parenting. Katie Hopkins came away looking extremely foolish as I’m sure she usually does but she certainly has a brain on her and does not seem a force easy to be reckoned with. Peaches gently and calmly talked her down into the floor and proved what an inspirational parent she was in many ways.

The second time I met Peaches was at a launch party for Bugaboo. I was just trying to work out the date of the party and realised, coincidentally, that it was one year ago today, 12^th April 2013. This time last year I attended a party where a heavily pregnant and beautiful Peaches Geldof told my sister in law that she loved my nephew’s hair and wanted her own son’s to grow long in a similar way. This time last year that pretty girl was preparing for a second birth of a second son. She had everything to live for and of course no one could have guessed she had less than a year to love those babies as she would pass away suddenly on April 7^th 2014.

I found the news so very shocking. I found it shocking when Amy Winehouse died but not in the same way. In that instance it was kind of always on the cards that she would just abuse herself that little bit too much and wouldn’t come out the other side; for Peaches I don’t think we as a public thought about her like that. Perhaps a few years ago we might have, when there was talk of wild nights and drugs but now she was just a Mother. A rather glamorous one, but just a normal Mummy all the same. One who updated her social media with pictures of her children and dogs and one who wanted to breast feed, co sleep and do all the things I like to do with my children. So I was very shocked and sad to hear the news that, like for any young 25 year old, shouldn’t be likely or on anyone’s radar to have suspected.

She was so young and the tribute paid by her Father tugged at me as a Mother as well as the words from her husband. Thinking of her as a little girl to her Daddy and as a woman with babies both make me feel very sad indeed. No one knows why she died and I think it’s important that we don’t speculate because it could be absolutely anything and we have no reason to suspect it has anything to do with her past.

It really is such very, very sad news. I don’t think there can be anything worse than losing a child or losing a Mother. Peaches at 25 was both and there is now a Daddy without a little girl, a husband without a wife, sisters without a sister and most importantly, little boys without their Mummy.

It’s important to remember how precious life is so I want to thank my children every day, thank them for being mine and tell them I love them every minute of every day. I spoke to one person this week who did know Peaches and on hearing the tragic news signed off her email to me, ‘cherish your loved ones’. It’s a sentiment to never be forgotten for there isn’t anything more important than that.

MY LIFE WITH TWO!

The children and I really have had a happy week together. Sunshine, friends, no school and lots of laughter. Here are some of my favourite pictures from the week.

Different trips to Mudchute farm, theatre trips and ‘driving’ the DLR tain with the actual driver letting us speak over the tannoy and beep the horn have been highlights in a gorgeous week of being together! I’ll have more of the same please!

I’ll  be back next week but in the mean time please do follow me on Twitter @rocknrollerbaby

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