Hi, I’m Cally — first-time mum, teacher, dog lover and apartment dweller who quickly realised just how much noise exists in the world of parenting.

As a teacher, I’ve always been fascinated by how children learn and develop but when I became a mum, I started noticing a gap. During pregnancy, there were endless apps telling you how your baby is growing, comparing them to fruit sizes, explaining when their fingernails appear and tracking every tiny change week by week. But once the baby arrives, that guidance seems to disappear and suddenly, parents are expected to figure everything out themselves. Every time I searched for something for my baby, I seemed to land in the same place surrounded by long lists of products, conflicting advice and pressure to buy more things. I also found that there was plenty of information about developmental milestones and lots of product recommendations, but very little that connected the two in a clear and practical way.

My late night doomscrolling was a constant spiral of the same questions every couple of months:

What toys should I buy?
What activities help development?
What does my child really need right now?

When what I should have really been asking was:

What does my baby actually need at each stage?
What toys genuinely support development?
What activities are really useful?

The information was everywhere — but it was scattered, overwhelming and often inconsistent.

This is where the idea for Growlist came from.