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From Colic & Reflux Hell, Love Amber Anklets Bracelets & Necklaces Was Born! 2011 - 2023

By Marie Clarke
From Colic & Reflux Hell, Love Amber Anklets Bracelets & Necklaces Was Born! 2011 - 2023

I often get asked where all of this began and why I started my company idea in 2011. Eddie my son was born in 2011 with severe colic and reflux. He was low birth weight and had a pretty traumatic birth resulting in a weeks stay in NICU. Little did we know another baby in the form of Love Amber x would come from such a dark time...

Keep Calm Love Amber First images amber teething anklet colic reflux blog

As I covered before, it was a pretty scary time for us as we had never experienced colic or reflux before. We felt helpless and often cried when he cried as he was in so much pain. He hated being held when in agony but at the same time wanted to be held and not put down. It was constant. His feeding schedule was a blur and neither of us was getting a lot of sleep. Each feed we prayed he would keep down his milk and each time he got sick again. Every evening he had what we called 'witching hour'. He screamed and screamed and screamed. Both of us walked miles around our sitting room as he just wanted to be rocked and sang to. In all honesty, it nearly broke us and put me to the biggest test of my life.

I went to the doctor in desperation looking for any avenue to help. He patronisingly said, "All babies cry"...  I felt the anger rage in me and wanted to cry as I knew that what we were going through was not right. It was not normal. It was robbing us of the best days of our child's life. We never got that 'newbie' stage. I was jealous of my friends who had those lovely calm babies that slept and hardly cried. Coffee shop meet-ups with my NCT group (who I still keep in touch with) was a source of stress and anxiety for me. Stupidly I felt judged by all the other parents, felt I was doing something wrong. I wondered what was wrong with me? What was wrong with him? Why couldn't he be a good baby like them?...

I needed to be with my mum and sister who were living in Ireland. We felt the break at home would help us both and to get through the sleep deprivation hell that was a baby with reflux and colic. I went home for 6 weeks with Eddie. In that time we tried everything to help him. He had colic drops, baby chamomile tea in a bottle, baby gaviscon, Colief, baby massage among lots of other things. His feeding time was like a military operation! Nothing worked. I was facing a decision to go down the Cranial Osteopathy route. My mum and sister knew of a lovely client of theirs called Helen. Helen told me all about homoeopathy and natural products and how I didn't have to go down the medical route. Her insights were fascinating! I must admit I was pretty sceptical at first!

While on maternity leave I had time to think about where my career was going and questioned whether I could face 4 hours a day commuting to London and back. I wondered how I would cope leaving Eddie with a nanny or leaving poor Simon to cope on his own while I was out of the house 12 hours a day. I decided to give handmade jewellery design a go and to see where it would take me. I always had an interest in jewellery design, crystals and gemstones. If it didn't work out then at least I had my career to go back to. You never know unless you try. I took that step into the unknown. In the months that followed, I was pretty much 'winging' running a work at home mum (WAHM) business. My background was in analysis and not running a business from scratch. Yes, we made some errors and corrected them but my goodness, I wish I had known then what I know now! We have come a long way through trial and error. We have learned to be the best we can be. Looking back, colic was most certainly hell but without that and Eddie I would not have had the time to reflect and take a whole different career path.

To be continued...

 

Images show our very first merchandise in purple (My favourite colour!) and my very first Ebay listing with the first few bits of stock we had to test the market. This company developed by reinvesting our sales earnings into more and more stock to take it to where we are today. 

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