Happy Monday to all of you! It sounds crazy because I have only been away from my blog for two weeks but OMG I have missed it. I decided to give myself a proper break but truth is I LOVE what I do and its hard to peel myself a way. Today I want to dedicate a post to my pregnancy and give you all an update. When I found out I was pregnant for the second time I thought to myself I would write much more about it than I did the first time around but with a baby to look after its kind of the opposite and I am already over half way and haven’t focused on it much at all.
I never thought two pregnancies could be as different as mine have been. I know you should treat each one as an individual pregnancy but I somehow always thought if I had a straightforward pregnancy the first time around then it would be a total breeze the second time around especially as I am having another girl but that definitely hasn’t been the case. I would be lying if I said it has been easy. But strange as it may sound I am enjoying this one even more. I genuinely love being pregnant. I love the way it makes me feel both physically and emotionally. I feel so content, full of love and calm and I have never felt more proud of my body. To feel my baby moving and growing inside me is something that I cherish and I know I will always look back on with fondness. It is pure magic.
My morning sickness has almost gone now – I am still throwing up occasionally but most of the time I feel fine. However my good old friend acid reflux is back with a vengeance – with my first pregnancy I didn’t have it until around 30 weeks and I had to have a bottle of Gaviscon with me at all times but this time I got it at 20 weeks already. Luckily I have yet to have any water retention and my Kim Kardashian kankles have not made a comeback. The main reason it has been so different though is because I had a bit of a pregnancy scare a few weeks ago the day before my 20 week scan. Its hard sometimes to share everything on the blog – I try and be open and honest about most things in my life but sometimes you need time to digest things by yourself. Everything is fine but I had some bleeding and having not been through anything like that with my first pregnancy I was a bit shaken by it at the time. It has also made me be a bit more wary of what I do which in a way is a bit sad. With my first pregnancy I was exercising all the time but now I am a bit cautious about what I do just in case. Obviously when the bleeding happened I went straight to hospital and saw my consultant and she checked the heartbeat as well as the opening of my cervix and made sure everything was ok. Luckily I could feel my little girl moving all the time which was reassuring for me. My consultant said to me that even though its not normal for me because I have never experienced it, it does happen. No one really knows why. And she cant tell me if it was a one off or if it will happen again but what she can tell me is that my baby is fine right now and I should try to not worry too much. The more I opened up about it to people I know the more I realised that many women had been or knew someone who had been through something similar. I think you learn through your experiences and if in the next pregnancy I ever hvae a bit of bleeding then perhaps I wont be as freaked out by it although obviously I would still always get it checked out asap. I think you are so excited when you find out you are pregnant and once you get past the 12 week mark you feel this wave of relief thinking everything will be ok. This was just a bit of a wake up call. Not that I don’t think everything will be ok but just that its not always easy and also I need to try and do a bit less. I am SO bad at resting – I go to bed late, I get up early and in between I never really stop but I think this was a sign that I need to listen to my body a little bit more. Its not always easy though especially when you have a baby to look after.
Thinking back to my pregnancy with Mila I was very naive. I didn’t really have many friends with babies and I didn’t know a lot about pregnancy and sometimes I think how lovely that was because ignorance really is bliss. I don’t like to dwell on the negatives because what happens during pregnancy really is out of your control so worrying is pointless. But what happened has made me appreciate each day of being pregnant just that tiny bit more and treasure every single kick. Initially I found myself wishing that the pregnancy would pass by quickly but that was mainly because the first trimester was genuinely awful! But I don’t want to wish even a second of my pregnancy to go more quickly because I know I will miss it when I am no longer pregnant and look back with fondness. (I always tell myself during my first trimester that I am NEVER doing this again but now I am definitely back on track for the 4 or 5 kids haha.) So thats really my update for now – hopefully things will be a bit smoother from here on.
I don’t really have a birth plan – I think the best thing you can do is to not have one and to be totally open to anything because it is rare that a birth goes exactly to plan! You just need to trust your body and the doctors/nurses who take care of you. With my first pregnancy I didn’t have a plan – the only thing I didn’t particularly want was a C section and luckily that all worked out. However I am going to explore the idea of hypnobirthing this time around – just because I have heard such incredibly positive stories about it and it would be wonderful to be able to incorporate that into the birth. But again I am not going to set myself any goals because I think the worst thing that can happen is for you to be disappointed with yourself or feel like a failure after birth – no matter how your baby is born it is incredible and we should be so proud of what our bodies are capable of! But for those who are interested, I am going to have a few sessions with a hypnobirthing coach (@stilettostostrollers) with my husband at our home in the next month so I will keep you updated on how that goes.
I am absolutely loving dressing the bump now. Its much easier the second time around when you sort of know what works and what doesn’t and I am definitely wearing lots more body con styles that show off the bump. Summer is an easy time to style the bump and as I wasn’t yet showing during the winter months when I was pregnant with Mila styling my huge bump this autumn/winter will be a challenge but a fun one. I am still not wearing a lot of maternity clothes but there are a few brands I have come across this time that I love which are Legoe Heritage, Fillyboo Maternity and Bae The Label so any pregnant followers should check them out. Also my dungaree pic from yesterday did so well so I will be adding lots of denim to my maternity shop this week xx