Juice fasting and its health benefits come at a price of course. Organic fruit and vegetables are not cheap. Fruit and vegetables are not cheap. A four-pack of ripe non-organic peaches currently costs £3.20 in Sainsbury’s, but we are mid-winter in the UK, so I guess that isn’t surprising.

I worked out that I’m spending around £65 for a five day fast, which is approximately £91 a week and £780 for the full 60 days. Shopping at the local market and Aldi is a lot cheaper, but the market doesn’t sell organic veg and Aldi is the furthest supermarket from us with no online shopping option, so I only shop there if it coincides with our weekly shop. However, it does now sell an array of organic fresh produce.

I have fallen in love with Aldi over the past few years. The fact that the goods are high quality, so there is no need for choice, is a blessing for me, and shopping is now far quicker as a result. Interestingly, many Aldi goods, do not contain soya or milk (e.g Aldi bread), so instead of having no choice but to visit the ‘free-from life’ isle, as I call it, in other supermarkets, I have been able to buy ‘normal’ goods in Aldi without the huge free-from price tag and the vast amount of added sugar that often comes with free-from food.

Despite having 28 days yet to juice, I have begun thinking about food I’d like to eat after the fast and picked up a copy of Fast Vegan by the founders of the healthy fast food chain Leon. The book is beautiful, and the recipes are mostly quick to prepare and quick to cook. French toast with poached rhubarb had my mouth watering! I absolutely love rhubarb. Come to think of it surely that’s something I could try juicing, although its a bit stringy so might clog up my machine?

I took my daughter to lunch at Leon in Hammersmith on the way back from a cancelled hospital appointment. She was very feisty with the paediatric reception staff telling them she was missing the World Book Day parade to make the wasted two and a half hour round trip. The staff at Leon seemed to care more and once they had extracted from me that my daughter had an allergy to peanuts, the manager was called over and I was assured that my daughter’s food would be cooked fresh and away from any allergens to make absolutely sure of no contamination.

While my daughter tucked into her chicken nuggets, I bought a carrot, apple, turmeric and ginger juice. Coincidentally, I had brought with me the exact same juice which I had prepared for my lunch the night before. The comparison was interesting. Mine was a much smoother juice with superior taste, but I recognise that the quantity of ingredients may have differed.

During the first three weeks of the juice fast, I omitted citrus, pineapple and spinach from my juices as they either contain high levels of histamine or are histamine liberators. I did the try some of these ingredients separately in juices, hoping my stomach may have recovered the enzyme I’m lacking to break down histamine, but my skin deteriorated quickly and I regained some abdominal swelling. Removing these ingredients from Joe’s juice recipes does considerably affect the taste – some become unpalatable – so I am having to be creative with adding alternative fruits and greens.

I’m hardly losing any weight this week, just 1lb so far. I’m not hungry, and still find it amazing that I’m not, but I’m longing for hot food. I’m leaving my chilled juices to warm to room temperature before drinking them now so they don’t chill me even more!

Stress almost made me eat today. A biscuit, a packet of crisps, a chocolate bar, a hot cross bun, a piece of hot toast with marmite, even one of my vegan choc bars – anything would have done. I realised I was experiencing a fight or flight response after a morning with the boys. We only planned two activities: Clarks to buy some shoes they both desperately needed, and to the doctors, as one of the boys is complaining almost daily of stomach pain.

I couldn’t believe it took nearly two hours to buy four pairs of shoes in Clarks, and we were the only people in the shop when we arrived. Strangely, most of the shoes the assistant brought out from the store room were not on display in the shop and several shoe boxes contained only one shoe, so she spent an extraordinary amount of time in the store room.

Entertaining the boys in a shoe shop is hard with two adults, but this time with just me on my own it was completely ridiculous. I was outnumbered. The boys managed all of five minutes of good behaviour, then set to a continuous fight, rolling around on top of each other on the floor, kicking and biffing each other, licking the mirrors and drawing funny faces, eating snacks they had dropped off the floor, refusing to try on the new shoes, and running out of the shop while I was distracted talking to the shop assistant. Kind customers shouted and tried to grab them. I started having heart palpitations from the stress.

Thankfully, doctors appointments are generally less than 10 minutes so I didn’t have long to endure the two of them hiding behind the venetian blinds and slamming them against the window. Would they listen to me asking them to stop? No. The doctor thought that my son’s tummy aches were likely to be a continued cow’s milk allergy, so we are to remove all milk again from his diet.

I feel guilty that the best bit of my day was dropping the boys off at nursery. I sat on the sofa for half an hour afterwards with a beet juice and could feel my heart thumping. Pilates breathing amazingly helped bring my heart rate down and allowed my body to recover from the fight and flight response initiated by my naughty boys.

I’m not alone. The other two twin mums of boys I know say they are in a similar boat. Both are pulling their hair out, have developed eyeballs that can now look both ways at the same time and Mr Tickle arms to grab both from the danger they are headed for in opposite directions.

Sadly, the skin on my hands has gone back to being terrible again. I wonder why!

The day was just perfect after a pilates session with my favourite instructor Yasmin Say. She started to say hello to her class, then spotted me and ran over to give me a huge hug then told me how happy she had been to see my name on her class list for the morning. Yasmin’s classes are never easy. She’s kind, but a stickler for pilates breathing and doing the exercises at your own pace, not comparing yourself to your neighbour, but working your body to its own limits. I couldn’t do some of the core activities as the instability of the ball highlighted my weakened core, so I took to the floor without any shame. I got my strength back last time, so I know I can do it again. It’s just time and practise.

Seeing Yasmin again brought back a lot of memories. It was a combination of pilates, yoga, aqua-aerobics and barre classes, plus osteopathy, acupuncture and physio, over a period of 7 months which reduced my pain to intermittent levels after my first mesh removal op. I often went to 6 classes per week at Virgin Active West London, sometimes twice a day. This was because my surgeon had given me strict instructions to get fit ahead of operation number two, as it meant I would recover quicker. As Miss Sohier Elneil is the UK’s leading expert in mesh removal and the only English surgeon to campaign alongside mesh-injured women at the House of Commons, I was not going to argue with her.

When I woke in recovery from my second surgery on October 30th 2018, I found that I was unable to move my left leg from the thigh to my foot. I had sensation on the bottom of my foot, but did not have any feeling from the ankle up to the thigh and no matter how hard I told my leg to move, it just wouldn’t. I was petrified and started calling for my surgeon, Mr David Nott, who had worked alongside Miss Elneil in theatre. I’d been warned by previous hernia surgeons that there was a high risk of nerve damage if they attempted to remove my mesh as it was now set like concrete, and as a result it was likely that I would lose the mobility in my left leg. For obvious reasons, I decided not to go any further with these surgeons. However, David had been different. He had been bemused by what I had been told previously and said very simply that he could remove my hernia mesh and he wouldn’t do any harm to my nerves. In the recovery room, I had no choice but to hang on to the sound of his voice, and the confidence he had instilled in me, as the recovery staff told me he had already left the hospital.

If it weren’t for Yasmin and and a few of her colleagues at my gym who helped me to build up my upper body strength, I wouldn’t have been able to move position or turn myself in bed for the first few days after the surgery.

Despite being so fit, I still fell foul of a pressure sore on my right ankle, and this is still healing four months on. A wonderful friend has suffered from bed sores for many months in hospital due to his quadriplegia. He advised me to use manuka honey on the wound. Happily, it worked and the skin healed quickly, but the wound underneath is still tender despite daily treatment.

Miss Elneil paid me a visit during the evening of the date of my surgery and put my mind at rest. She told me there had been no damage to my nerves, but the extensiveness of the surgery on my left side with removal of the hernia mesh and removal of stacks of scar tissue in the abdominal space where the Trans-obturator Tape had been meant that there was a considerable amount of swelling. Once this came down, she would expect the feeling to come back into my leg. Thankfully, she wasn’t wrong.

It was with immense relief that two days later I felt my left leg being to tingle and slowly feeling came back. A physio and OT had me out of bed and standing immediately while dosed up on three shots of fentanyl. All I did was sway from one foot to the other and found that the most exhausting exercise I’d ever done. At that time, I didn’t know that fentanyl is 50-100 times stronger than morphine and is a large part of America’s opioid crisis. I was on it for days! No wonder it was under lock and key next to me and only the Matron could refill the machine when it ran out.

The physio continued. Two gruelling sessions per day. That’s when Yasmin’s breathing came into its own! The goal was to get me out of hospital walking again and climbing three flights of stairs with resting aids. In just 9 days, I managed all of that much to the surprise of the OT and physio, both of whom expected me to be in hospital for much longer. They discharged me with only a shower stool and resting chair for support.

I’m so so happy to reach 30 days of juicing. I never thought I’d do it, but it just goes to show that by taking bite size chunks, we can all achieve our own mini miracles.

“Juice on”, as Joe Cross likes to say.

My favourite bakes were the marvellous ice-cream cone cakes, complete with either chocolate or white frosting and a Cadbury’s chocolate flake. Every child’s dream combination. So of course there was a mad rush of kids wanting those! But strangely it was the gluten-free chocolate cupcakes which sold out first. Perhaps the chocolate butter icing had more to do with the attraction than the purchasers having a medical need to avoid gluten. I was tempted by the Bailey’s cupcakes, and so were many of the kids, but they will have to wait another day for me.

My boys helped out initially at the beginning of the sale. But soon they became overly excited at seeing so many goodies and began attempting to touch every beautiful creation with their stubby little fingers. Twin 2 likes to eat most things, so when I told him not to touch the cakes, he began nibbling the table instead! He’s been known to eat far worse, so I didn’t mind so much. It was the day that I found him eating a snail that I’ll never forget. He was crunching on it and bits of shell were coming out of his mouth. Horrified, I grabbed him and tried to extract the snail from his mouth. Upon seeing the horror on my face, and obviously thinking it was really funny, his brother promptly strode off and found himself a similar snail, came up to me with it and put it in his mouth too. Boys, boys, boys, what about cooking them in olive oil and garlic first?

At that point I shooed them both off to play in the playground. Bad idea. Ten minutes later I went to check on them and found them ankle deep in the playground puddle. It was a freezing cold day today. Their shoes and socks and bottoms of their joggers were soaked.

Only half an hour to go before the hungry after-school-club children would appear, including the boys’ big sister.

Such sad news about Keith Flint today. The first time I played the kids some Prodigy, I was amazed by the boys response to Firestarter. They were under 2 years old at the time and starting head-banging sideway in their high chairs. After that Firestarter became an Alexa favourite in our household.

Have you ever made chocolate fudge icing and avoided licking your fingers when the gooey mess squeezes out of the wrong end of the icing bag? What about not tasting your own rejects, so you have no idea whether your creations taste okay before selling them to others? I can honestly say that I didn’t eat a crumb over the past two days, and yet weirdly tonight I feel like I’ve eaten at least 10 cakes and actually feel quite sick. Thankfully, there are no more bake sales on the horizon for a long while, so I can avoid the torture.

Mini mornings at Vue are popular in our household. Today, we thought we would go and see Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. But, I somehow management to mess things up and got the wrong weekend so, with a disappointed brood in tow, we went bowling instead. It turned out that the boys are pretty good bowlers and had a lot of fun beating their Dad, Mum and sister by a considerable margin. Sadly, I found out that I could hardly lift the lightest bowl because of the weakness in my fingers and wrists, which hasn’t improved any further. I had to use the bowling ramp in the end as it hurt too much to throw the bowl. Happily, my kids joyous faces as they succeeded in knocking over the pins and my youngest’s enthusiastic high-fiving after everyone of his turns brought a smile to my face.

It’s been a good week for green juices. Gradually, the juices have become just part of my day and not as big a focal point. Habit, I guess? Now I know the recipes and feel more confident about experimenting, I’m hoping to avoid any future distasteful concoctions.

I’ve loved baking since Mum first showed me how to make coconut macaroons and, my sister, rock buns as young girls. At university, I used to bake after studying, late on in the evening to relax. The smells used to circulate around the Georgian, student house I lived in on Gower Street, and in Pied Piper fashion, many hungry students would migrate down to the basement where the kitchen was for a late night treat. They did me a great service really, as I’d have become large than life if I’d eaten all I produced.

Today, I baked for the school bake sale taking place on Monday. I spent much of the afternoon attempting flapjacks and various fairy cakes, but by 6pm I still had nothing to show for it and was very fed up. First, it was the flapjacks, they didn’t stick together. While cutting them into squares, I realised they were too crumbly and, by the time I had etched up the first to get a spatular underneath it, I realised I had two tray bakes of granola, and not the syrupy, chewy, flapjack that I had been expecting. I’ve been baking these since uni and it’s usually a staple. I couldn’t understand it. Disappointed, I put it down to my mind being on other things and not concentrating on the recipe.

Next, I tried my failsafe dairy free chocolate cake, a really indulgent cake made with soya cream. But instead of making the 10 inch cake, I made fairy cakes, which were normal equally as successful. The mixture looked good, so I began putting the cake cases in the tins ready. When I turned back to the mixture, I was surprised to find it had risen. Very odd, cake mixture doesn’t do that, does it? It was teetering on the edge of the bowl, so I hurriedly began labelling the mixture into a jug and then began filling the cake cases, still a bit confused.

The two trays went into the oven and I happily watched them rise for a few minutes, then set to making marshmallow cakes, which were sure to be a hit with the kids, if they all have the same happy reaction my son did while making the mixture with me. It was then that I looked up to see how the chocolate cakes were doing. My heart sank, they had literally exploded all over the tins. A few minutes later the cakes were ready to come out of the oven, and I examined the damage. The cake tops were oddly crusty and came away from the cake underneath. I asked my daughter to try one as of course I can’t taste anything. Very annoying at times. The cake did not hold its shape and fell apart while my daughter was removing it from the case, making a mess all over the floor. Totally hopeless. How were kids supposed to eat these in their hands?

I began to wonder if it was because I was doubling the recipe, but I’ve done this before and haven’t had such cake disasters.

As the marshmallow cakes were read to go in the oven, I put in both trays in and hoped for the best. They began rising nicely but then they stopped and the cake mixture began creeping sideways until the trays looked just like their chocolate counterparts. I was ready to call it a day then, I was so cross. What a waste of time and ingredients. I’d made two trays of granola, 55 chocolate cakes and 48 marshmallow cakes, none of which were saleable.

The ingredients were all familiar I realised until I came to the flour. I’d been using Aldi’s self-raising flour. Had I used this before, once before, and had a similar disaster? My brain is very fuzzy during the period when the twins were babies as for the first 9 months I was only getting 1.5-3 hours of sleep per night. Suspicions aroused, I headed to the late night Sainsburys and bought some own brand self-raising flour.

The delicious smell of fairy cakes hit me as I opened the front door and for a second I wished that I wasn’t on a juice diet. I set about remaking the mixtures and crossed my fingers as I put the trays into the oven. Surprise, surprise, the cakes came out just as they should. So it was the Aldi flour after all! I’ve not experienced many poor products at Aldi, but flour is one repeat purchase I won’t be making.

More juicy stories tomorrow, when I’ll be celebrating four weeks of juicing!

The smells wafting around our kitchen tonight are wonderful, so delightful in fact that I can feel happy hormones beginning to circulate around my body. And, no, it isn’t my husband’s dinner! I’ve made a potassium broth. It’s made from onions, garlic, celery, carrot peelings, beetroot, chilli peppers and potato peelings, which are bubbling away in my largest cooking pot. I’ve stuck true to my Dad’s recipe, apart from adding a few herbs, a double dose of garlic, Himalayan sea salt and some pepper. I can’t wait to try it!

What I didn’t know about potassium broth is that it is a superfood for postpartum women as it helps them recover much quicker from the birth, particular if they have had a C-section. The broth promotes healthy digestion which in turn means the body can focus on healing. Other articles I’ve read also suggest it can boost metabolism and blast belly fat. Wish I’d known that after the boys!

A while back, I had a disaster with Joe’s Mean Green juice. Foul is how I would describe it. My heart sank when I saw it back on the menu for tomorrow. I was no doubt too tired to read the ingredients list properly last time and, being more awake, I realised that I should have used Granny Smith apples and not Pink Lady (green not red!). What a surprising difference. Tomorrow’s juice is now more than palatable! Another success has been a melon juice, which contains a whole, small water melon, a large box of blueberries and 16 leaves of chard. It is surprisingly delicious. Last time I made it, I think I may have misread chard for kale. Big, big, BIG mistake.

The stove has gone ding. The broth is done. Time to taste.

Disappointingly, it’s not as good as my Dad’s, but it’s warming and tasty enough.

The juicing part of my day passed without event. The green juice was palatable, the orange absolutely yummy and the yellow dessert, my old favourite – pear and peach delight.

The only worry I have on a daily basis is where is my next toilet stop. I’m drinking a lot of fluid, much, much more than I’d normally feel comfortable drinking. I make five juices of around 500ml per day, drink 500ml of coconut water, a couple of glasses of water, if I can face more fluid, and a herbal tea before bed. That’s at least four litres of fluid a day. I don’t think I’ve ever drunk that much before even when I was breastfeeding the twins and permanently eating and drinking. So I’m always grateful for public loos, particularly ones that smell ok and are clean.

After waving at my merry darling daughter, throwing kisses at me from each floor as she climbed her way to her classroom, I set off for the HCA Diagnostic Centre on Chiswick High Road to have my blood tests for Raynaud’s and Scleroderma. What a lovely calm building with kind, attentive staff and nurses you could be buddies with within seconds. My phlebotomist had a transvaginal tape (TVT) it turned out, so I happily shared the name of my removal consultant, should she have problems in the future.

I have a lot to thank Vitality Health Insurance for. As a family, we have cost them a small fortune in the past two years, with four operations in total! And my last removal was around £40k for a 9 day stay. Although that was mostly hotel costs, it was still a saving for the NHS. So, once again, I rang the helpful Vitality team to ask if they would grant permission for me to have further blood tests and a consultation with yet another consultant. Without a do, this was granted.

I have shed the melancholy now, but this morning was a particularly sad one as the memories of the day before came flooding back as soon as I woke. At the school gate I was reminded again that we all have our stories, they are what make us, and some life events are tougher than others. I always loved the book and film Pollyanna as a girl, and today found some of her cheerful optimism which made me thankful for the life I have, despite its challenges.

The huge emotional high of the day was a House of Lords debate on medical devices led by Lord Shaughnessy, which ended with: “It is vital to never allow the appalling distress that mesh patients have experienced to ever happen again. Many women have been ignored or treated appallingly from a patriarchal medical community. The Government must not tolerate any form of gender bias in healthcare treatment.”

This amazing debate was thanks to Kath Sansom and the brave women on Sling the Mesh, who I have campaigned alongside, waved placards with on Parliament Square, and become soulmates with. The world changed a little for the better today. If you are so inclined, you can catch up on the debate here.

The day ended perfectly when my husband unusually walked in with flowers.

No more beetroot! I really don’t like it in my juices. It’s overpowering and bitty, but apparently it is so good for you. It contains a little bit of every single mineral and vitamin that your body needs. I’m quite happy to eat it in those little beet sticks they put in salad, as it adds a nice crunch, but the juice just disagrees with my palate. I downed two of the beet juices today and have changed a juice tomorrow to avoid even more beetroot!

Midmorning, the pool was full of familiar faces and the instructor was playing her favourite 60s tunes. Everyone was smiling and humming along. This was aqua-aerobics at its best. My muscle weakness was more obvious in the pool than on a yoga mat. I managed the warm up, but when we added float-weights, I struggled with the arm, leg and abdominal exercises and was totally exhausted by the end of the 45 minutes session. But I did it and felt no pain!

The day took a nose dive in the afternoon when I had an appointment with a Consultant Rheumatologist, who set about examining my hands, feet and skin. She was extremely kind, but voiced out loud that, ‘Mesh has ruined your life, hasn’t it?’ I found this statement quite shocking, as I’ve tended to think of my life as altered rather than ruined. She seemed concerned that my immune system may now be attacking my body, particularly the collagen under my skin and around my organs and vessels. She said I definitely had a vascular problem and that she was going to refer me to another rheumatologist at the Royal Free who would undertake tests for scleroderma and Raynaud’s Syndrome. Neither are curable. At that point I burst into tears. I’ve had the mesh removed and it is still trying to kill me.

I came home and didn’t feel like juicing, but decided that if I want to stand any chance of calming down my wayward immune system then I’m going to have to fast for longer than 30 days.

My husband arrived home late from a trip to Istanbul and handed me a beautifully wrapped package of Turkish Delight, which is one of my favourites. He promised to squirrel it away somewhere safe until my juice fast is done. I suggested that if I make it to 60 days, that he takes me to Istanbul to celebrate!

Something was amiss. I woke to the alarm and not because a little boy had woken me. Wahoo! A whole night of sleep.

This morning I went to sign on at the job centre for the second time. I had made a simple mistake with the first appointment; I turned up two days late, the boys in tow and the iPad full of enough Peppa Pig to last a week. I must have booked it while looking at the wrong month in my calendar. For that mistake, I was deleted from the system, although no-one thought to tell me this at the time.

Today, I waited nearly an hour to be seen and hardly were the words hello out of the administrator’s mouth before I was being accused of missing two prior appointments, which was news to me. I was advised to complete another JSA form, but then the administrator changed her mind and decided that I wasn’t a job seeker after all. Instead, I was a Mum with three kids and so should be claiming Universal Credit, so I was told to go away and apply for that online instead. Having got to grips with the benefits criteria, I soon realised that the administrator was wrong, I did need to apply for Job Seekers Allowance and I now have a third appointment at the Job Centre in mid March.

Such an intimidating, frustrating process and such a lot of wasted time and money. The overdose of security guards just added to the intimidating atmosphere, and the fact that one had to escort me to the loo!

Undeterred by the job centre experience, I came home and signed up for a Digital Marketing Diploma which had interested me a few days earlier but which was now on 50% discount. It’s 30 hours of part time online learning, which I’m really excited about.

Another highlight was visiting Joe & The Juice bar where I had a butternut squash, apple and lemon juice. Absolutely delicious. I was over the moon to find this chain on my doorstep, but the shop assistant, although polite, was a bit of a disappointment as she obviously didn’t have a passion for juice. Just a bit of training on which juices are good for different ailments and sharing that passion with customers might have brought a stream of people through the door. Instead, it was sadly pretty quiet.