Natasha Hamilton has been a busy bee since taking a break from Atomic Kitten. With her wedding just weeks away, a solo career to launch and 2 kids to look after it's no wonder she's joined a new campaign to help stressed out mums relax.Natasha joined Atomic Kitten aged just 16, the band signed their first record deal just two months later, and soon rose to fame hits such as Right Now, Whole Again and Tide is High. Since stepping out on her own Natasha has already been making a name for herself- Lionel Richie personally requested she supported him on his tour after hearing her new material.Natasha talks to Female First about balancing motherhood with her busy career, her wedding jitters and plans for a new family business.What's the campaign all about?
Basically Popcap.com and the stress management society got together to commission a study to find out more about mum's stress levels and they found out that 95% of UK mums at this moment in time are stressed out. In a whole day they get 23 minutes of me time and that's that not a continuous 23 minutes. It's like 5 minutes here fore a break, 5 minutes there for a cup of tea or a cup of coffee. And dads get 4 and a half hours me time everyday. There's a big massive comparison there and I think modern day mums have a lot of stress on their shoulders because we are kind of given this image of this Supermum role where you see this women on like adverts on the TV where they go out and they do their job and they come back and everything's been great. But the reality is we've got jobs to juggle and managing the household- there's a lot for us to do. Also there's money worries, not having enough time and just been tired that stresses you out more.
So what Popcap have done is found out what you can do to de-stress yourself. So you can either get physical- take up yoga or pilates or just go down the gym. Or if you've literally just got 5 minutes you can do some deep breathing exercises or have a cyber break. You can log onto Popcap and download these casual games like wordsearches and things like that. They found out that playing these games reduces your heart rate and your blood pressure and just helps you forget about what you've got to do in the next hour or so. It gives you a bit of time to re-balance yourself and re-focus. You have 2 kids yourself- do you get any me time?
Yeah sometimes I'll be away for like a week or 2 weeks with a really full on gruelling promotion schedule and sometimes I'll have time where I'm just being mum at home and just going about the daily chores and things like that. But what I like to do if I get the chance is have a nice aromatherapy massage or a nice hot bath before bed- that's my favourite because it just makes me zonk out before my head hits the pillow How do you find juggling 2 kids with a music career?
Some days it's quite difficult but I wouldn't be able to do the job that I do if it wasn't for people like my mum and my finance because they are just so supportive. My mum will have the kids whenever I need her to. She picks them up from school if she has to and they'll stay at her house. That works really well with my busy schedule. How does your finance get along with the kids?
We spend a lot of time with the boys. Me and Riad take them out a lot. Play football with them and things whenever we can. We get on really well. We are a close family. The boys call Riad dad and that so yeah it's all good.You're getting married this year. How are the plans going?
It's 8 weeks away now. The plans have all gone well so far. I'm touching wood because I'm probably jinxing myself now. But yeah everything seems to be in place now. It's just enjoying the run up to it now really.
What's this we hear about you planning to open a café in Liverpool?
Yeah me and Riad have gone into business. He's got his own coffee businesses in the Midlands and he wanted to progress it a bit more. We both just sat down and thought what would we like to do and thought we'd like to open a restaurant. It's going to be a family business- my mum's a cook so she'll be working in the kitchen. Riad's sister will be overseeing the floor. We just can't wait. It opens on 12th November in the Met Quarter in Liverpool. It's called Hamilton's. There's going to be nice healthy, light meals and it's child friendly.
Caz Moss- Female First
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