second baby

20 Things all second time Mama’s learn the second time around

Published on February 6, 2015February 6, 2015 by a.simple.mamaLeave a comment

20 Things second time Mama’s learn the second time around…

1. You will worry how you can love two kiddo’s at the same time, the same amount

2. As soon as your second (or third, or fourth) arrives, your heart will grow big enough to have enough love for each of your children.

3. No birth, no labor is the same.

4. Planning only goes so far, at some point you have to just go with the flow and trust it’ll all work out

5. Your house will become baby land, overtaken by toys, diapers, blankets, baby gear, no matter how many times you clean it. This is especially true with another kiddo in the house…

6. You will wonder how you will do it all…

7. Don’t forget to make time for your hubby…even if it’s just a kiss when you come or go

8. It’s OK if it takes you a while to feel back to “normal”

9. Breastfeeding the second time around can still be hard, painful, take adjustment before you get it right

10. No two kiddo’s are the same…you’ll *almost* have to start from scratch…ALMOST

11. Take advantage of any time you can have for just yourself. A hot, quiet shower can do wonders to rejuvenate you.

12. It’s OK to decline visitors until you are ready. There will be plenty of time for everyone to meet new baby.

13. You don’t have to be Super Mom.

14. Look to other Mama’s for advice, support, and help. Even if it’s just for encouragement or reinforcement.

15. If you’re worried about your hubby finding you attractive after watching another human come out of you…don’t worry, your new “milk boobs” will take care of that!

16. That being said…both you and your hubby will have forgotten just how ginormous your boobs will get when your milk comes in.

17. As miserable as you were during the last days of pregnancy, you’ll almost instantaneously forget what it was like to be pregnant once that baby comes.

18. You’ll also find yourself suddenly missing being pregnant…even if it kinda sucked most of the time – heartburn, morning sickness, nerve pain, sleeplessness etc. all seem so insignificant now.

19. Sleep deprivation. again. enough said.

20. Labor really is the worst pain most easily forgotten. In the middle of labor you swear you’ll never do this again…but a few days afterwards you’ll seriously consider doing it all over again.

❤ parenting love 🙂

Pregnancy the second time around

Published on June 20, 2014 by a.simple.mama4 Comments

To preface this post, I love being pregnant. There’s something so magical about the whole process. I missed being pregnant. Which is probably why we didn’t wait very long before we decided to try for baby #2… There are many many positive experiences that pregnancy brings. It is a feeling that many many women long for and only some are lucky enough to experience.

Now that I’ve cleared that up…

Some days, especially these days during the middle part of the first trimester, I wonder why I would want to do this to myself all over again. MORNING SICKNESS = the shittiest way to start off such an otherwise wonderful experience. How your body is supposed to think it’s a good thing that you feel like total crap is a mystery to me.

“You have that pregnant lady glow”

“You try throwing up all morning, you’d have that glow too”

– Friends

If you’ve had to experience morning sickness, you will wish that the first trimester moves at the speed of light…There’s nothing fun about the first trimester outside of learning you are pregnant and hearing the heartbeat for the very first time somewhere between 8 and 12 weeks…

With J I don’t remember my MS being quite this bad…but then again I was getting a full night sleep, and had a few extra pounds on me too. These days I’m being sucked dry by a voracious 1-year-old and still being waked 1-2 times a night by said little monster. I guess that’s part of why people said I was crazy for wanting another baby when the first doesn’t sleep through the night yet…

With J I did have crazy awful heartburn…bad enough I had to be on Zantac for 75% of my pregnancy. And I remember having some nausea with J until my 14th week or so, but it was never bad enough to keep me from functioning. This time around I’ve had a few days where I’ve struggled to get out of bed. On a really bad day I’m lucky to be functional before 10am. And on those days I fight strong nausea all day long. Eating helps (assuming I have enough energy to get food down) and water helps too. I make sure to keep lots of snacks at the office so that I don’t get too hungry, and I suck on Jolly Ranchers like they are going out of style. I’m just at 9 weeks now, so I’m readying myself for another 4-6 weeks of MS hell…hoping that this is the trade-off for not having heartburn this time around. I think that’s a fair trade!

I am also going to continue to breastfeed J through this pregnancy. If he self-weans in the meantime then so be it, but otherwise I don’t have any real ready to wean him otherwise. My midwife is supportive of this, which is awesome, but she did warn me that I need to really watch my nutrition (since I should basically be eating healthy for 3) and that I will be extra tired. Oy, well nothing like preparing myself for 2 babies right from the beginning huh?!

We’ll go in at 12 weeks for our first ultrasound and will get to hear the heartbeat then too. Most docs will do an ultrasound at 8 weeks, but mine waits until 12 for the first one. And sometimes you are lucky enough to hear a heartbeat at 8 weeks, but my uterus tilts back towards my spine and would make it impossible to hear a heartbeat that early on. So 3 more weeks till we get to see/hear all that fun stuff.

Baby Fever

Published on April 28, 2014 by a.simple.mamaLeave a comment

You never know when it’s going to hit you. Granted if all of your friends or really anyone else around you is either pregnant or thinking of getting pregnant, it’s bound to catch up with you sooner than later. Or if you have a little one who’s about to turn a year…you’re in for it. The fever. Baby fever. I can feel it coming…

When the Hubby and I starting seriously talking about starting a family for ourselves, I had probably had Baby Fever for almost a year. I was ready as soon as we got married. I wouldn’t be surprised if most women are. But we made the plan to wait until the following October(ish) so that we could use our first year to take vacations and take advantage of being child-less. We took full advantage and went on 3 trips that summer, all the while my Baby Fever soaring to new heights. It seemed like there were babies everywhere. Most of my friends already had one or two, plus cousins, friends-of-friends, everywhere I looked there were babies. So once the fall hit, we were both ready. Going into it I told myself it would take a few months. But as luck would have it, we didn’t have long to wait for little J to come along.

Now that J is almost a year, I can feel it coming on again. Partially because we want our kiddos to be close in age, and partly because as soon as your little one reaches that first major milestone you suddenly find yourself missing being pregnant, feeling that little one become something inside your belly, you even miss giving birth. Whoa. I’d always heard that childbirth is the worst pain most easily forgotten. Truth. I remember it hurt like hell and being in labor for 14+ hours only to have a c-section wasn’t a picnic, but I’d do it again in a minute, no doubts. And with the added bonus of more than a few of my friends also thinking of starting or expanding their families in the near future, it fuels the fire even more.

The Hubby asked me the other day how we would manage two kiddos. Yup, the money will be tight(er) and we will sleep even less than we do now, but we’ll figure it out. That’s what you do. Children give you a reason to find a way. You make it work, then one day you look back and can’t imagine how you did it. But you’d still do it all over again without hesitation. I’ve tried to think back on what we used to do in our free time or after work the days pre-baby…for the life of me I can’t really remember. Honestly it was probably pretty much the same as what we do now, only we probably watched more TV. Babies change everything and still seem to fit into your life like they always belonged there.

There are always things to figure out before you start or add to your family, but those things also just seem to fall into place sometimes. Yes it would be ideal to have a house, less balance on the credit card, money set aside for paying all the hospital bills, etc. But not having those things doesn’t mean you aren’t ready or able to handle a family. You make it work. There’s always a reason to wait, but then again the longer you wait the larger the chance someday you’ll look back and wonder why you waited so long.

And if our next one (or two) is anywhere as cute as the first…then bring it on 🙂

eesh I think my uterus just skipped a beat…BABY FEVER!!!!