Happy Monday to all of you! It feels SO good to be able to finally share my happy news with all of you and to be open about it. I became pretty good at hiding my bump but it wasn’t always easy and there were so many times I just wanted to shout my news from the rooftops! But now I can and I am so excited to be able to share this next step of my journey with you.
Anyone who knows me or has followed my blog for a while knows that my husband and I would love to have a big family. I feel so incredibly blessed to have a child and having Mila changed our life and filled it with more love than we ever could have imagined. Our experience of parenthood was a pretty smooth one (don’t get me wrong of course there are difficult moments!) and so we soon felt ready to have another baby. Everyone is different and I think some people think we are bonkers for having another one so soon but whenever we talked about our future thats how we always envisaged it. I wanted my children to be close in age and I am hoping that Mila becomes super close with her sister (yes its another girl but more on that in a second!) as they grow up together.
So yes, the gender! Before getting pregnant again I thought that second time around I would love to keep it a secret. That I would only find out the moment I saw my baby for the first time when he or she is born. But as soon as I found out that I was expecting another baby I knew that there was no way that I could go through 40 weeks of not knowing. I have a lot of admiration for the women that choose to not know the gender. But I am such a planner. And a little OCD. Well actually very OCD. And I probably would have crumbled at some point anyways so I thought ok why not just find out as soon as we can. We did the harmony test at the Fetal Medicine Centre where I did all my scans with Mila (and if you live in London I highly recommend it) and basically they do a blood test at 10 weeks which tests for many things but it can also tell you the gender. You get the results at 12 weeks at the same time as going for your dating scan. We decided before going in for the 12 week appointment that we would ask the doctor to put the gender in an envelope, then we would go out for dinner that night and open it together whilst on our date night. And thats what we did.
I was CONVINCED for many weeks that I was having a boy, mainly because the start of my pregnancy has been SO different to how it was with Mila. And I am going to be very honest here: the start was REALLY tough. I was a little nauseous with Mila but nothing major and I definitely remember feeling tired but its also very different being pregnant the first time around when you only have yourself to look after. When you are pregnant with number 2 and you have another baby or child to look after it is definitely more tiring. When I found out I was pregnant I remember eagerly awaiting for some kind of symptom which would make it feel more real. And then at around 6 weeks all of the symptoms came at once and it has been an absolute rollercoaster. It literally felt as though I had been shot with a tranquilliser gun. Very early on I began feeling incredibly unwell and I was sick between 7-10 times a day and that combined with extreme tiredness is hard. I am a very stubborn person and I did not want to take anything for the sickness. My obstetrician (I am going with the same one I had for Mila as she is amazing) prescribed me some medicine that can potentially stop the sickness but I thought as long as I am able to keep some food down and I stay hydrated and as long as my baby is getting enough nutrients then I would rather avoid taking the medicine. I would happily go through the pains of childbirth every single day over this I am not even kidding (but thats because I had a very positive experience of labour I am sure I wouldn’t be saying that if I had had the opposite experience!)
I think the toughest part for me was that I just didn’t feel like myself. I can easily function on a couple of hours of sleep and I have lots of energy as a person. But weeks 6-12 I felt zapped all of my energy and that made being sick very difficult to deal with. Im also not a negative person by nature. But I felt like such a moaning grumpy person all of the time – all I could talk about was how bad I felt and that made me feel even worse! I was so looking forward to our easter break in Ibiza and wanted to relax and spend time with my family but when we got there all I wanted to do was sleep and have my husband look after Mila. I felt extreme guilt at all times thinking that I wasn’t giving all that I could give to Mila but my husband always reassured me that it was just a couple of weeks and I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. I also felt extremely guilty when I did try to continue as normal because I felt like I wasn’t doing what’s best for baby number 2. I guess it gave me a taste of what is to come – trying to do what is right for both my babies. I am still occasionally sick now and I definitely still feel a little nauseous but I have my energy back now so I feel like its totally manageable. And the thing with pregnancy is that even if you have the most awful pregnancy in the world, you know that it will have been worth every second of pain because you get to meet your baby at the end of the journey. Our bodies are made for this and I know that soon this will all be a distant memory and I will convince myself that it really wasn’t that bad!
Concealing the bump was a challenge for sure! If you ever see me in the future suddenly wearing lots of baggy clothes then thats a hint that I might be pregnant haha. This time around my bump was like HELLO at around week 8 already it was crazy! Everyone says your body is so used to it second time around so everything happens much more quickly. But it definitely made it hard to conceal it and kept thinking it must be so obvious. I always find that beginning stage a bit awkward because you kind of just look like you have put on weight rather than looking pregnant and many of my jeans didn’t fit me very early on. But you know what? Getting dressed and making an effort with how I looked actually made me feel slightly better. I felt more like myself. Its almost as though if you give in to the tiredness and nausea and spend all day in sweatpants you feel worse.
SO yes its a girl. And we are so thrilled that she is healthy and all is going well. I have SO many questions already – how will I manage to split my time between the two and give them equal amounts of attention and love? What do I do about the stroller (a double buggy literally terrifies me!) What should we name her? How will Mila react when I come home from the hospital with a second baby? Will they get along? Will they be similar in terms of their personality? Will they look similar? How can I possibly love the second baby as much as I love Mila? How will we travel with two children? Will Mila’s routine be thrown off once the second baby comes home? How will I have time to do anything!??!! And a million gazillion other questions but I am so excited for it all and for the new experiences and for the love to grow even more. And on Saturday night when we were at dinner with friends I felt her move for the first time and grabbed my husbands hand and he felt it too and that is no less magical second time around. Now that I have announced it, it somehow feels more real and I cant wait for all that is to come. Pregnancy and motherhood truly is the most magical journey I have ever been on.
I will definitely start a maternity section on the blog but I will continue to wear lots of non maternity clothes throughout my pregnancy just as I did with Mila. I cant wait to share all of my experiences with you as I go along. Wishing you all a lovely week xx