I’m pregnant again. It’s been so easy, getting pregnant. The first time around, I imagined all sorts of complications. Too many medical dramas left me feeling like some drama of my own was sure to occur. I read books and articles about fertility, various foods, various diets, various things to dose oneself with, or avoid. Meanwhile, a month-and-a-half after coming off the pill I was pregnant.
Second time round, and it was exactly the same story.
So we’re the lucky ones. A friend of mine started trying at the same time as me. She has polycystic ovarian syndrome. I’m still waiting to hear of a success…
I’m six months along now, due on the 24th of February. The pregnancy itself has been very straightforward. No nausea whatsoever. Which has at times left me feeling like maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m not pregnant at all. It was very reassuring to have the 12 week scan and see a real, live little baby shape.
I’m far more relaxed this time around, certain that I will end up with a normal, healthy baby, and not one of the aforementioned dramas. With Alex, right up to when he was put on my tummy, I kept expecting to hear ‘so sorry, but your baby’s dead,’ due to some accident or medical mishap. But I’m not the star of some TV show or movie, and my baby will be fine. So good to know!
I’ve been very, very tired at times, and often too busy to take the afternoon naps my body is telling me quite clearly it wants. Sometimes I stop just where I am and have a little lie down on the floor. In fact as the heat of summer comes on (I know it’s still officially spring, but it was 28 degrees yesterday!) I have discovered the lino on the kitchen floor is soothingly cool.
Luckily Alex is still having afternoon sleeps of at least an hour-and-a-half, so if I’ve done all my housework and chores I can count on that time for a lie down and snooze. And if I’m lying on the floor while he’s awake, he’s happy to play a game that involves sitting on me or putting his bear to sleep using the edge of my shirt as a blanket. Or just hiding and revealing, hiding and revealing the bump that is my tummy. “Tummy. Tummy gone! Tummy. Tummy gone!”
He’s just woken up and is in my lap now, still half asleep and clutching one of his bears. We dressed it up just before his nap, and apparently this has made it temporarily more popular than his ‘Baby’, a babydoll his grandma got him for his second birthday a couple of weeks ago.
The plan is to get him used to interacting with the doll in a way that doesn’t have him poking it in the eye or giving it a gentle slap so he can then make things better by cuddling it (a current preoccupation). Also to give him something to take care of while mummy is taking care of the new baby in a few months.
I’ll be interested to see how he responds to me breastfeeding the new baby. He only stopped breastfeeding a couple of months ago. I wasn’t enjoying it with painful, tender breasts, and I doubt he was getting anything out of me since there didn’t seem to be much swallowing going on. Then we skipped a few days and after that there was nothing.
He still talks about it occasionally though. I wouldn’t be surprised if he asks for feeds too, once he sees the baby having them. And I’m fine with giving them to him – at home that is, not in public! – as I’d rather that than him be envious of the baby receiving something he can’t.
I might set up the computer now to play him some home movies. He likes to watch films of family members. I think it’s much more wholesome than TV, and I’ll get some peaceful time in the kitchen to put away the last of the groceries without my little ‘helper’. Who has now learnt the drawer handles make a convenient ladder to the top of the bench. Greeeeat.