As a new mum, Jasmine McInnes feared family and friends were tiring of her constant baby posts on social media.
So she started an Instagram page to share news, photos and thoughts with others in the sleep-deprived but ecstatic throes of early parenthood.
That was six years ago.
Today family and travel blogger Jasmine – better known as @winging_mamahood – has more than 40,000 followers.
She shares the ups and downs of family life with son Finn, 6, and partner Jake Reid and recommends family outings, trips, activities and products.
Blogging is teacher’s second job
Winging Mamahood has become a second job for the principal English teacher who lives in Scone, Perthshire.
She gives her verdict on family holidays and outings around Scotland and Europe and tests all kinds of products sent to her by online marketers.
And in March Jasmine was named top family influencer in the Scottish Influencer Awards.
But being an influencer was never the plan for Jasmine, 32.
She says: “I just set out to share my experience of being a parent.
“This time six years ago I was totally clueless and when somebody messaged and asked to send me some bubble bath I thought it was a scam!”
Jasmine and Jake moved to Perthshire from Kilmarnock only two weeks before Finn was born in April 2018.
A gregarious person, Jasmine was eager to make friends with other new parents.
She says: “I’ve always loved to talk; I’m someone who has an opinion. I felt a couple of months after having Finn that a lot of my family and friends were a bit bored of the constant photographs and ‘this is what we’ve been up to today’ posts.
“We’d only just moved to Scone and I knew nobody. I’d seen people sharing parenting stories on social media and I thought this will give me somewhere to start sharing my stories of being a mum and what Finn and I were doing.”
Monday Mumday and Walk Wednesday
Jasmine posted about the baby products she used. She spoke about her difficult birth and labour and she lamented Finn’s frequent night waking.
“I really connected with parents in very similar situations,” she says. “I had this group who like me were part of the wide awake club at 3am with this crying baby! It became a really strong support network.”
Jasmine started regular features like Monday Mumday and Walk Wednesday, where she would post about the different places she would take Finn in his pram.
By the time Covid struck she had amassed around 2,000 followers. Then lockdown saw her social media platform “skyrocket”.
“With my teaching background,” she explains, “we were sharing a lot of activities people could do at home to keep children entertained.
“There were also things that people could do themselves. For example, Jake and I would have a date night every week. It was just a case of ordering a takeaway because that’s all you could do. But it was encouraging families and relationships.”
Winging Mamahood’s growing following attracted the attention of marketing people. Offers of products to test and outings and trips to review began arriving in her inbox. And the page began to earn money.
Jasmine picks and chooses which offers to accept and only posts about those her family genuinely like.
This honesty and integrity, she believes, is what people relate to amid the photographs of so-called perfection which flood social media.
“I’m not telling people everything is perfect when in reality it isn’t,” she says. “There is such pressure on people to say my pregnancy was wonderful, my birth was wonderful, my child is wonderful.
“My son IS wonderful but he’s certainly not perfect. I’m a great mum but I’m anything but perfect. We need to try to eliminate this whole idea of an Instagram-worthy life. That’s not real and it’s not healthy.”
‘There is a limit to what we share’
Jasmine spends between an hour and two hours daily working on her page, or more if she is working on a special project. When we spoke she and Finn had just spent a day filming a campaign for ScotRail.
But she says: “What we share on social media is only about 5% of our real lives.
“We do talk about some of the difficult things we go through but there is a limit to what we share for our own family privacy.”
So how does she juggle being an influencer, teacher, partner and mum?
“I am like a golden retriever puppy,” she laughs. “I’m one of those people who are the go non-stop.”
‘Social media is like a beast that constantly needs fed’
But she admits: “I could do with an extra five hours a day!
“Social media is like a beast that constantly needs to be fed. You need to be on it, engaging with it, interacting with it for it to be successful.”
One of only two days she took off over the last six years was when she was in hospital with meningitis.
Admin work she does when Finn is in bed. Filming and photographs on outings she tries to do in the first half hour so they can enjoy the rest of the experience.
“I want to be present with Finn and my family. I don’t want him having memories of us doing this or that and Mum was on her phone.”
And how does Finn feel about his social media stardom?
“He wants to be a YouTuber himself when he grows up!” says Jasmine.
“He absolutely loves the adventures, meeting new people, discovering new things.
“He’s at the age now where he likes to talk to the camera and tell people where we are going.”
But he may be less eager to be in the spotlight as he grows older, and that’s something Jasmine has considered.
What happens if Finn says ‘no’?
“People ask me a lot what will happen if Finn says ‘no’,” she says.
“If Finn says ‘no’ that’s the final say. Sometimes now he will say ‘I don’t want a picture just now, Mum’ and I say ‘ok, that’s fine’. He is able to say ‘no’ and we have to respect that.”
She also ensures that blogging doesn’t become too much for Finn, limiting the amount of events they attend.
“We don’t take him out of school for anything,” she adds, “and we don’t do things in the evening on a school night because that would disrupt his routine.”
Location details are only posted after they have left, for her family’s security.
But she feels that the travel element of their work in particular has been hugely beneficial for Finn.
“We’ve travelled a lot around Scotland and it’s really helped him have a lot of appreciation for our own country and also how to protect it.
“We did a boat trip on Loch Ness and they spoke about plastic pollution and the damage it does. Finn took a lot of interest and was actually really offended that people were doing this to the lochs.”
‘There’s no rule book – I’m winging mamahood!’
A close-knit group has followed Jasmine since day one.
Among the parenting issues they have discussed are limiting screen time, fussy eating, co-parenting, Christmas on a budget.
“We ask our followers for advice as well as sharing our own experiences,” Jasmine says. “Very often followers will say ‘I’ve gone through this, do you have any advice?’
“While I can give my advice I always say I’m not an expert and can only share my personal experiences.
“As my name says, I really do feel that I am winging parenthood and life like so many other people.
“There isn’t a rule book. You can read the books, go to the classes but the reality is we are all winging it together!”
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