pregnancy & baby festival

O'Reilly Hall, UCD, Dublin
22-23 February 2014, 10am - 5pm

Nurture – It really is okay to talk about it!

One of our goals at babytalk is to raise awareness of the fantastic supports and organisations that we have here in Ireland for families and parents-to-be. One of these orgnaisations is Nurture, who took part in our information station.

Nurture is an Irish charity who offer timely and affordable professional counselling and supports surrounding pregnancy and childbirth mental health illnesses & emotional wellbeing to women, their partners and families in Ireland.

Some of the areas in which Nurture offers support and/or counselling include:

  • Infertility
  • IVF Disappointment
  • Depression during Pregnancy
  • Baby Blues
  • Postnatal Depression
  • Pregnancy Loss
  • Newborn Loss
  • Premature Births
  • Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
  • Postpartum Psychosis
  • Men and Postnatal Depression

If you or someone you know is going through a difficult time in pregnancy, as a new parent or in any of the other other instances listed above Nurture are there to help. You can contact Nurture on 01 8430930 or email info@nurturepnd.org.

Nurtures counsellors offer compassion and respect to every woman, man and family who contacts them and attends their support services. Their counsellors are kind, friendly and extremely understanding women and men. They are more than respectful to every personal situation and offer each individual a confidential, judgement-free, independent counselling service.

Nurture are organising an Emotional Wellbeing Education Conference on Saturday 10th May 2014 in the Gresham Hotel which has some fantastic speakers and topics – for more information visit their website.

festival photos

The dust has finally settled after Babytalk and we have picked our favourite photos from the weekend to give you a glimpse into all of the fun and games that went on!

Babytalk 1
Our happy visitors shopping to their hearts content!

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Babytalk 3
A few of our fab exhibitors…

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The Early Learning Centre play area was a huge hit with our littlest visitors!

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We had lots of bookworms visit our reading area where our brilliant readers entertained and excited all weekend!

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The very talented Jo Jo painting lots of happy little (and bigger) faces!

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One of our brilliant demos, here Gail from Harmony Yoga is teaching Mums, Dads and babies how to do yoga together

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RTEjr’s Reuben entertains the crowds, young and old were rolling around with laughter!

Babytalk 11
Tickled Pink had everyone joining in and singing along!

Babytalk 12
Some of the Babytalk Team celebrating the end to a brilliant weekend!

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Babytalk 14

Thanks again to everyone who came along, took part, exhibited or helped us to spread the word about Babytalk 2014! Keep an eye on our blog, Facebook and Twitter for news and updates, looking forward to seeing you all again soon!

baby bookworms

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Reuben from RTEjr reading to lots of lovely little people in our reading area over the festival weekend.

Well I think it’s pretty obvious that we love books here in Babytalk. We created a series of graphics last year using our favourite quotes from Children’s books and we had a dedicated reading area at the festival to promote the habit of snuggling up to read a bedtime story from a very early age.

Reading with my little girl is truly my favourite part of the day, it’s something we have been doing since day one, we even read to my bump! It’s a simple an inexpensive activity that has huge benefits for both little folk and big folk alike.

Today is world book day and to celebrate we have three fab prizes up for grabs. We are very lucky here in Ireland to have lots of very talented Illustrators and Authors. Three of our favourites are…

A bit lost

Chris Haughton who has illustrated and written, A Bit Lost, Oh No George and his new book that is being released today – Shh! we have a plan. We are delighted to have a signed copy of Oh No George and a copy of A Bit Lost and Shh! we have a plan to give away as our first prize in today’s competition!

hugglewug

We also love Niamh Sharkey, she has written and illustrated lots of fab children’s picture books, we are very lucky to haveĀ  copy of I’m a Happy Hugglewug to give away with two gorgeous soft toys from the Disney version of her book – Henry Hugglemonster, with huge thanks to Golden Bear Toys!

Lonely beast

You may have admired our gorgeous illustrated backdrop in the reading area over the festival, this was done by another of our favourite Illustrators – Chris Judge. Chris has very kindly given us a copy of The Lonely Beast and The Great Explorer as our final prize in celebration of World Book Day.

To enter our amazing competition simply like and comment on this post here or on our Facebook post with the name of your favourite children’s book. Winners will be announced next Friday.

Happy Reading!

UPDATE – Competition closed!

We are delighted to announce the three very lucky winners of our fab book prizes in celebration of World Book Day! The winners are…

1st prize – Elizabeth Burke
2nd prize – Noeleen Russell
3rd prize – Amy Marcella Mullen

Congratulations ladies, please email us at register@babytalkfestival.ie with your phone number and postal address to claim your prizes!

Happy long weekend everyone!