Motherhood Blogs
Read blogs authored by me. They are my personal accounts of pregnancy, breastfeeding, babies and motherhood, designed to offer helpful insights. Perfect for reading on days when you need to hear this:
You are not alone.
I’m pregnant again but I still have a baby!
A close age gap. Getting our head around the logistics and the emotions.
I must have known what I was doing? Right?... well no, not really
How and why we decided to have a second baby with an 18 month age gap
I seemed to be the victim of some kind of insane hormonal drive to have another baby. And this was at just 3 months postpartum. I had a baby! I was struggling with breastfeeding, sleepless nights, knowing basically NOTHING and getting to know this new version of myself. But, I really wanted another baby.
I was on the ‘mini-pill’ at this time and also not very often ‘sharing time’ with my husband anyway! But, I decided to stop taking the pill. I wanted to see what my cycles were like (I told myself). I kind of vaguely told my husband this too, when he probably wasn’t really listening.
8 months postpartum came and I knew there was one, ONE, outside chance that we might have ‘caught’ in that window.
I waited for my period, and I wondered, quietly. Three days before my period, I took a pregnancy test. Yes, I happened to buy one from the shop… all very accidental. It honestly was! Nothing was planned, nothing was intentional, but that’s exactly how these things happen I think. Hormones. Luck. Timing. And love.
So when I saw that blue line, I stopped for a moment, breathed and decided to keep it as my own little secret. This secret lasted for the time it took me to walk from the bathroom, to the bedroom. About 3 minutes! My husband was reading bedtime stories to our 8 month old.
“How did we do that?” he said
We both didn’t know how to feel. Every single difficult moment, juggling act, moment of stress with ONE baby came to mind. Every financial decision clouded our reaction. But we pulled ourselves together and thought; two babies! How special! They will be so close.
I started imagining them sharing baths, running together, getting up to mischief, belly laughing together… holding hands for the first time.
The gender
I hope this makes sense:
The gender was not important to us. But it obviously was.
I want a boy. A brother for our little one. I want a girl. A baby girl for me.
When we found out we were having a boy I felt so happy to have TWO boys! I was also, simultaneously, sad for the little girl that wasn’t meant to be. And strangely, my husband kind of summed it up…
“We will try for another, if you want?” he said.
Let’s just leave that there - for a while.
Telling people you're pregnant, again
Here’s some bullet points of the reactions we got telling people that we were pregnant for the second time whilst we still had a baby:
- Some people really didn’t care
- Some people were just worried for us
- Some people had better social training and said exactly the right thing
- Some people were very genuinely thrilled
Let’s just say it’s a little bit different to telling people the first time.
But the baby we already have is our whole entire universe!
This was another very strange, and very normal mix of feelings, thoughts and reactions. I am mom to ONE baby - I am all his and he is all mine. His needs occupy my every thought and every my every affection is spent on him. My heart broke a little bit one night: my husband and I were doing our bath time, the three of us, and story time, a special and sacred time shared, and my heart broke for the version of our little family we were about to lose. This special trio and the time and devotion we pour into our first born was about to be over. But I remembered a quote I read somewhere, and it stuck with me. I found it difficult to imagine what this would look like, but I know and trust this to be true:
“Love is not divided, it multiplies.”
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