Blog : Little Lilypad Co

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I genuinely can't recall learning to ride a bike, it has just been something I have always known how to do isn't it? So why at the grand old age of "almost" 8 years old, can my eldest daughter not ride a bike? I was having this conversation with another mum in the playground last week and we were both talking about how our children have never learnt to ride. My daughter has had a bike of course but never quite confident enough to take the stabilisers off.

It has made me wonder why she has never learnt, like I did as a child? Riding a bike should be as much part of your childhood as building a den or playing tig, so where in the last 8 years did I go wrong? Should I have persevered more or should she have tried a little harder? On reflection I think I have spent so much time filling our weekends with play dates and day's out, that somewhere along the line, we have forgotten the simple stuff.

My youngest daughter is definately an adventurer and will, at the grand old age of 19 months, happily hide in a den made of blankets. She is a boistrous little character (which her angelic look belies) and I want to encourage her to enjoy the simple pleasure of riding down a hill with the wind in your face, without a care in the world (but a safety helmet on her head!!). So when is the right time to learn?

After some deliberation, I then made a conscious decision to get them both Strider Balance Bikes from Learning Early. Having looked at what bikes are best, I love the philosophy behind the Strider bikes, in that children learn balance safely. Using a balance bike is now regarded to be the safest way to learn how to ride a bicycle, as stabilisers just teach the child to rock from one side to the other AND the child still needs parents assistance up curbs etc. This totally echos our experience. After the delivery of the little ones bike (suitable from 1 years old!!), I soon ordered the Super Strider for my eldest (designed for children aged 6+)

The Learning Early experience has been a pleasure before the girls have even sat on their bicycles, as they offer a very personal service and an amazing one hour delivery slot! In this present economic climate, it is genuinely refreshing to find a Company who care about the customer, and not just about the sale.

The Lilypad blog has always been about our journey as a family, so I have my fingers crossed that the next journey will be the one where we can all ride with the wind in our face, adrenalin in our veins ....... and not a stabiliser in sight!

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If you could choose to influence the gender of your unborn baby, would you?

I read a blog post this week about gender swaying on The Busy Mummy Diaries and I am delighted that she is pregnant with her much wanted baby daughter. I know that there has been a lot of press about gender selection and to my knowledge, PGD (preimplantation genetic diagnosis) is the only high tech method which can guarantee the gender of your choice with almost 100% accuracy, this is because embryos are tested for gender before being implanted in the mother's womb but what if you could influence it yourself?

Carly from The Busy Mummy Diaries used a "baby girl diet" and The Shettles Theory. Shettles theorised that the two different types of sperm, X-chromosome-bearing sperm and Y-chromosome-bearing sperm, had different properties. 

Y-Bearing Sperm (Male-Producing) Smaller, round-headed Faster More fragile, shorter-lived

X-Bearing Sperm (Female-Producing) Larger, oval-headed Slower More resilient, longer-lived

Shettles hoped that these properties could be used to choose a baby's sex.

• Under ideal conditions, the Y-sperm's faster speed should prevail, winning the race to the egg and conceiving a boy.
• Under less than ideal conditions, fewer of the fragile Y-sperm will survive. The X-sperm's resiliance and staying power should win the day, conceiving a girl.

I am totally conflicted about my thoughts on this whole subject. I can understand that some families would like to choose the sex of their baby for practical reasons, for personal reasons, even for health reasons but are we not defying nature by doing so?

I have two beautiful daughters and I haven't ruled out having a third but would I really want to choose? What if after doing everything you were advised to do, it didn't work, would you be disappointed? Would that child forever be the "wrong one"?

I am an old fashioned kind of girl, I never wanted to find out the sex of our baby at the hospital scan, as I genuinely believe conception and child birth is one of life's remaining miracles. Who am I to intervene. Would you?

Note: Shettles Method reference taken from In Gender, where you can find more methods and information on this subject.