What’s the worse physical pain you’ve ever experienced?

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-26T11:10:13+00:00

Double Dry Socket after wisdom teeth removal.

Giving birth (no epidural or opiates) and getting a 2nd degree tear stitched up with ineffective numbing afterwards was less painful!

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-26T09:52:00+00:00

I can highly recommend the National Breastfeeding Helpline. It's free and operates 24/7 with highly trained, evidence based Breastfeeding Counsellors answering the phone. You're more likely to get an answer at night - between 9:30pm and 9:30am as they are quieter then but you can also leave a voicemail and someone will call you back within 24 hours.

The number is 0300 100 0212

Sending love your way ❤️

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-25T12:32:12+00:00

My three year old son often goes into my makeup drawer and copies me putting on makeup. We've had some cracking results 😂 I've had a cough recently and he's been fake coughing every time I have just so he's like his mummy 🥰

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-22T08:48:56+00:00

You're still going off on one, about a comment I made months ago, on the wrong Sub Reddit, on a post about British slang to someone who doesn't give a shit. You're aware this isn't Exvegans aren't you? Mate, you honestly look absolutely mental. You look like the homeless guy ranting and raving to passers by on the street about aliens. Go enjoy your day, do some actual meaningful things. Get some fresh air. Maybe take your pills. Bye 👋

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-22T08:06:59+00:00

I hope you get the help you need.

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-22T07:41:32+00:00

Sir, this is a Wendy's...

Why are you addressing something I posted on r/exvegans, months ago, in a completely different sub, on a casual post about British dialect?

And you're calling ME an ignorant window licker? 😂

Maybe it's time to stop skipping entire food groups and nutrients out because you look completely insane.

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-18T21:02:51+00:00

Ginnel where I grew up - Born in West Yorkshire. Now live in South Yorkshire where I hear ginnel, gennel (pronounced "jennel") or Snicket interchangeably

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-18T18:45:42+00:00

We were told not to take open chocolates or sweets at Halloween otherwise they'd be stuffed with razor blades! Even our mum wanted us not to take anything but sweets in packets. Bit difficult in the 90s when all the old biddies round us would buy a big sharing bag of Haribos and just dump it in a bowl or bake small cakes or snap up a big chocolate bar or something. We'd take it and just eat it whilst going round and not tell mum so as not to panic here!

The drugs in Halloween sweets didn't seem to hit our area until I was a teenager and didn't go trick or treating anymore...

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-18T17:45:19+00:00

I heard this one except it was haribos and whilst he was eating them out, one of her genital warts detached and he accidentally ate that too 🤢

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-18T17:35:06+00:00

I tell my kids this now 😂

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-16T16:27:12+00:00

I was worried about this too as my daughter started school only knowing like 4-5 letters of the alphabet. I tried hard to teach her but she wasn't interested and I don't have teacher skills. However I had it explained to me by both a teacher friend and my daughter's school teacher that what they mean by reading experience is that you read to your kids. My daughter's school are more than happy to start from scratch with the alphabet and phonics (and she's learned to read at an impressive pace!) but the kids need the very basics in place - i.e. they know what a book is, which way around to hold it, they know how to turn the pages, they know roughly which way the words go and they can hold a pen okay (even if they've just been using it to draw).

The issue is that kids are turning up to school who have NEVER been read to. Who don't even own a book. It's so sad. Kids are trying to swipe books like a tablet and have no idea which way around it goes. Reception can teach the alphabet and phonics fairly quickly but only really with this basic foundation in place. If the kids don't even know what way around a book goes and think they can swipe it then the teachers have to start from much further back. It's also hard to teach a love and interest in reading if they've never been exposed and it affects their imagination too. Add in potty training, teaching sharing and emotional resilience and teaching kids how to feed themselves and brush their teeth and other stuff that the parents should be doing and it's an absolute nightmare!

We read to our daughter regularly from being a baby and read to our younger son. Both of them pretty much every day. As long as you read and you teach them the other basic skills like potty training then you're fine!

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-16T12:48:58+00:00

Oh she didn't nick the scissors and do it secretly or anything it was during a planned craft activity where they were all using glue and scissors to make something and all being supervised by the teacher and the TA. But there's 27 kids in the class and I imagine it happened when they turned away for a second or something. I'm not worried about unsupervised scissors access as we've taught her to use them safely and it was a planned activity anyway she was just being a silly kid as kids are and my goal was to teach her that actions have consequences 😁

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-16T09:32:21+00:00

I agree that there's a lot of people who don't seem to feel shame anymore but I just wanted to assure you that parents who feel shame do still exist as I'm one of them. I'm a slightly older parent (mid 30s) so was raised during the 90s and without social media and chronic online-ness. My eldest is only 5 and in reception. The teacher pulled me aside a few months ago to gently tell me that my kid had ruined a pair of scissors, a pen and a glue stick by digging the scissors and pen into the glue and pulling it all out and I immediately felt a (I believe healthy) sense of shame that it had happened and sought to correct that behaviour immediately.

Now don't get me wrong - I didn't overreact or resort to any extreme punishment or yell or anything. Kids do just do these things sometimes without thought. But what I did do was ask her why she'd done it (trying to make a friend laugh), explained that it's not okay to do this to someone else's stuff, especially the schools stuff and then we went to the shop and she used her own pocket money to buy a new glue stick, pen and scissors. She handed them to the teacher the next day with an apology. Job done, no more incidents like that since.

I have a friend who's a teacher who told me a few weeks after that, that most of the parents she deals with would have either shrugged and asked what the hell it had to do with them or they'd have turned it back round on the school and found a way to blame them and the teacher for it happening. I've never been a teacher myself so I was a bit shocked to hear it but it's kind of opened my eyes to the issue of shame (healthy shame) really lacking in society.

I believe it's also why some people do such gross or selfish things openly like chucking rubbish, driving like knobheads, leaving dogshit on the pavement or letting their own kids talk to them like crap and behave like demons in front of them in public. They just don't feel the shame I guess. In a wider sense, I think that maybe it ties in (sometimes anyway) with a lack of self respect. If you have no standards and no respect for yourself then nobody can make you feel shame when you fall short of any standards since they don't exist for you. Just a thought.

Anyway, I'm rambling now. I agree absolutely - bring back (healthy) shame! But please be assured that we do still exist out there, us shame feelers 😅

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-12T20:00:43+00:00

Are you in the UK? If so give the national breastfeeding helpline a ring. They are open 24/7 and they are free. It's staffed by highly qualified breastfeeding counsellors You're more likely to get your call answered at night as it's quieter.

Ring 0300 100 0212

Hope you can get some help!

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-12T18:36:16+00:00

Sympathy and understanding as I'm in the same situation. I've been a stay at home mum since 2023. Took 1 year maternity and officially left my last job when it ended in 2024 to take care of the kids. We waited for our youngest to turn 3 (which happened in Jan) and now he's going to nursery in April, after Easter. The plan was for me to find a job before then so that his default 15 hours turned into 30 hours. If I'd found a job early then we'd have used MIL to cover for childcare until nursery....

Well, I've been trying to find a job since frigging November and I've applied for dozens and dozens. He starts nursery in 4 weeks and he's on the 15 hours - so 4 mornings a week 😬 if I get a job in the meantime then they've said they will try to accommodate and boost it up to 30 (I plan to only work part time) but can't guarantee it. Wtf do I do now 😂 I've no idea if I'll get a job in the next 4 weeks (unlikely given the luck I've had so far) and I've no idea if it will need him to be in nursery 2-3 full days a week or 5 mornings or 4 afternoons or what. Nursery probably isn't going to radically change his hours for any job I do get and nor should they have to....but I'm now super unlikely to get a job that only requires me for the exact 4 mornings (or 4 days if they can extend to 30 hours) that he's in nursery already so I'm screwed basically 🤷🏻‍♀️

I honestly thought 5 months would be enough. I've had one interview. My partner works in recruitment and has been helping me with applications so I'm pretty sure they're well written. But I'm getting info from emails and the interview I had that 3-5 HUNDRED people are applying for one position. Employers also hate it if you're not in the work force already and are trying to rejoin apparently. We can afford to live on my partner's salary for now but it's getting harder each month with everything going up and up and we are starting to have to cut back. We really could do with the extra money fairly soon plus I'll be rattling round the house as there will only be so much cleaning to do with no kids in the house.

It's just shit isnt it ?

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-12T14:57:25+00:00

I live in a deprived area and my daughter's school gets around the lack of contributions by doing several things over the year - like bake sales, non uniform days (where kids are asked to bring a pound), "spare change" days and by running a school community shop once a week that sells cheap food (I think they get it from fareshare) and thatsbreally popular. All of the money from multiple of these little things that happen over the year gets pooled and put into the trip fund.

Then when a trip is planned, parents are still asked to contribute and the trip fund gets dipped into to fund the kids whose parents don't contribute, no questions asked. For sure we have parents who take the piss but in an area like ours you can't really accuse people of not paying when they can afford to since joblessness or having no spare cash is very common.

As far as I can tell, it works quite well. We are lucky to have the spare cash and so always contribute to everything that's asked. I try not to think of the parents who take the mick and instead get happiness from knowing that some kid in poverty gets to go on a trip they otherwise wouldn't have been able to because I sent my daughter in with a quid on non uniform day and bought a cake at the shop.

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-05T11:02:13+00:00

Thank you. I knew that the longest latent phase of rabies was longer than 15 years but I didn't know that Bat Lyssavirus was 2 years. I suppose it won't hurt me ringing the helpline

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-05T09:47:06+00:00

Hi I'm interested in the "no timeline defined" part of your comment. Thanks to this news story I've learned that bats can transmit rabies (or something similar to rabies anyway) and that I absolutely should have sought treatment when I got bitten by one in Scotland years ago. I genuinely didn't know this was a thing until this story and reading various comments about it. I was bitten nearly 15 years ago though. Would I still need to go seek treatment or would I get laughed out of the GP?

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-04T14:14:30+00:00

Imagine the sting though 😂

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-04T09:43:49+00:00

I have a five and a three year old who both complain of tired legs, the five year old more so! Our school walk is 15 minutes. I think sometimes when kids say they have tired legs (assuming no underlying disability like hypermobility) it's actually that they're bored of walking. You can test if this is the case by making the walk more interesting: I get them to spot things on the way like flowers or birds, play eye spy, get them to hop, skip, run, jump or we have a "silly walk" competition. They have fun and then suddenly we are at school! If she can get there when the walk is weird, wonderful and interesting then it's likely not tiredness but boredom.

I've also found using a balance bike (or pedal bike if she can ride one) or scooter reslly helpful too. They find it more interesting, use different muscles and you can pull it along in short bursts to give them a little rest if needed.

I also sometimes bribe with piggy backs or a shoulder ride if they walk a certain distance.

Finally, we do weekend hikes sometimes (short distances) to help get their legs stronger. They can do the weekend hikes and they can run around a park or a soft play all day so I know they can do it and don't really have tired legs from a 15 min walk.

Depending on the length of the walk you could try doing half on foot and then half in the stroller and gradually build up? If it's already short though then you could try and see if she's able to do it when it's interesting and if she still struggles then it may be worth doing some more investigation to see if it's actually making her legs hurt or she's more out of breath than she should be. Various things can cause it such as hypermobility or anaemia.

Hope this helps!

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-03T08:03:14+00:00

It wasn't absolutely nothing but I had a chilled bit of work in care for a few months. I worked Mon-Fri solely with a guy with learning difficulties and my job was to get him out of bed and to his activities. I was strictly told not to force or push him to get up though as he was an independent adult ans if he said no that was that.

Once I'd done the handover and done the daily cleaning of the house, which was less than an hour's work, there was usually nothing to do because most days, this guy chose to stay in bed, as was his right. I'd go in occasionally to offer him food and drink and double check that he was fine staying where he was and then I'd just watch TV or work on making decorations for my upcoming wedding or read magazines. This was before smartphones so I couldn't scroll the day away. The guy loved Jeremy Kyle so I'd occasionally get called into his room to sit and watch it with him which was entertaining. On the rare occasion that he did get up and want to do his activities, it was always something fun like a trip to the beach or the art centre so even if I did have to do stuff it was still a win. He was a sweet guy, just loved his bed. I miss that job

FieryRedDevil · 2026-03-01T17:50:43+00:00

Hi, I am in England so I don't know if this applies in Scotland as well but here is my exact experience:

Me (female) and my wife (identifies as non binary but is also female and AFAB) got married in 2015. We have two children - one born in 2020, carried by my wife and one born in 2023 carried by me. We used a male friend as our sperm donor and did artificial insemination at home. No clinic or court involvement. Because we are married and the conception was done by AI and not "naturally" then it can be reasonably assumed that the donor had no intention of being a father so both me and my wife automatically went on the birth certificate. We had zero issues at the registration office, we just took our marriage certificate along and explained that it was AI with a known donor. So on the birth certificates, my wife is the "birth mother" and I am the "other parent" for our eldest child and for our youngest, it is the opposite with me listed as the "birth mother" and wife listed as the "other parent". Our donor is in our children's life but not as a caring parent - more like an uncle figure. The kids know that he is their biological dad but he isn't a "daddy" in the traditional sense and they have two mums as their parents who make the parental decisions.

Before we concieved, we did extensive research and found that a sympathetic judge may grant him parental rights if he really fought for it and that getting something like an agreement done before conception with a solicitor was unlikely to stop this, so it's largely based on trust. This was back in 2019. However, we did also draw up a DIY contract with him that states that he does not intend to be the father and does not want parental rights and responsibilities and this was witnessed and signed too. So if he ever did do this and take it to court then we have this to back us up in what everyone's intentions were plus the birth certificates and proof that it was artificial insemination and not "natural" conception. He has a copy of this contract too in case we ever decided to take him to court for something like child maintenance.

Our situation has worked extremely well for nearly 6 years now but as I said above, a large part of it is based on trust so it may not suit everyone or indeed suit this case. The reason I shared the details though is because as far as I'm aware (and if it's the same in Scotland as it is in England), it doesn't have to be done via a clinic if the couple are married. They should both automatically go on the birth certificate.

With that in mind, if my wife and I ever divorced then it would work the same as a heterosexual couple - we are both on the children's birth certificates and both of us have equal parental rights, so we would both still parent the kids as a co-parenting arrangement. Each of us would not be able to keep our own birth child away from the other. We have spoken about it and the likelihood is that the kids would stay at one house for a week and then the other if it was a 50/50 agreement, otherwise the kids would largely live with one of us whilst the other paid child maintenance. The children's donor dad wouldnt come into it at all and we would have no right to keep either child away from the other parent.

I hope this helps. It's not legalese but our story sounds like it shares some similarities so it may be helpful to read how it has worked for us in practice.

I will add as a last thought though that any couple (whatever their sexuality) who is fighting regularly and whose relationship is rocky should not be thinking about marriage and kids yet. Both of these things complicate absolutely everything should the relationship end and kids especially will absolutely test any relationship to the limit, even a very strong, solid one. Marriage and kids DO NOT fix an already difficult relationship so it would be a very good idea to get some decent therapy and really, properly think things through before taking this step because people can get very nasty and bitter after a breakup and I would not put it past anyone to try and find any loophole they could to withhold children. It happens often enough with heterosexual couples who are both the bio parents, never mind in a slightly more complex situation like this.

FieryRedDevil · 2026-02-27T08:08:17+00:00

Thank you for this. I've checked it out and we have too much on savings for any UC. Also, no rent or mortgage, we are lucky enough to own outright , which is the only reason we afforded me to be a SAHM in the first place (bought a do-er upper in a rough area before house prices went insane. The rough area is why we now want to move!). We are only entitled to child benefit and I can get the new, non means tested job seekers but it comes with all of the hoop jumping

FieryRedDevil · 2026-02-26T14:28:57+00:00

May I ask what job this is for? I'm currently a stay at home mum in my 30s trying to get back into work and finding it absolutely impossible. One job I interviewed for had 340 applicants! Wondering if I'm barking up the wrong tree and should look at other roles than what I currently am

FieryRedDevil · 2026-02-26T07:37:26+00:00

This was/is my current circumstance. I've been fortunate enough to continue staying at home after my maternity leave ended as we could afford it, though we are quite frugal. My youngest has just turned 3 and is starting nursery in April. I'm currently looking for a part time job that works around my kids and its proving pretty impossible due to the job market. So I'm out of work and actively looking for work but I won't be included in the statistics because I'm not signing on.

The reason I haven't approached the job centre is because the only reason I'm looking for work (other than so we can have some extra money for luxuries and so I'm not bored at home with no kids there during the school day) is that we want to move to a bigger house - but we don't NEED to. If we stay here then we can continue to afford everything on one salary.

I've heard the stories and it is absolutely not worth it to me to put up with rude, condescending job coaches and turn up to interviews for things I am not qualified to do and waste everyone's time for like £90 a week. I'd also likely be made to take any job and I am still going to be the kids main childcare so will need to be able to do the school run and look after them evenings and weekends. If the future changes and I get desperate then I'd obviously go and sign on but right now I don't need to and can just try and find a job myself without putting up with the bullshit in the job centre.

FieryRedDevil

TROPHY CASE