My feelings towards the whole thing have varied alarmingly from last time. At times I am very excited about the whole new born thing and even the whole labour and birth thing. I mentioned in a previous blog post how amazing I found birth last time and I want to feel that kick again, especially as number two is the final one so this will be the last time I'll experience all this. At other times the idea of being woken up in the night fills me with dread, although I know that new born love feeling which means the baby can do pretty much anything and get away with it. While I still love Jess more than anything else in the world, I live in dread of that padding of tiny feet in the night time, shortly followed by cold feet in the bed kicking you in the kidneys for the rest of the night.
The negative feelings that have plagued me this pregnancy have mostly revolved around Jess. Like pretty much every parent under the sun I can't imagine loving a second child as much as I love her. I'll burst surely? My overwhelming love for her was like being hit by a train and despite having felt that I can't imagine it happening again. My life now revolves around keeping this little person safe, happy and hopefully well adjusted. It'll be knackering doing that with two won't it?
I'm also so scared that Jess will reject me and the new baby and then I'll have problems bonding with the new one and it'll all go to shit. To prevent this I have tried to include Jess in things as much as possible. She's been to every midwife appt and scan with me, she has one of the scan photos blu tacked next to her bed and she knows that the new baby is a girl and what she'll be called. I encourage her to talk to the bump and we discuss what things will be like with the new baby around as much as possible. At the moment she wants it to sleep in her bed so I have been gently trying to put her off that idea!
Child's sling courtesty of the very talented katiecelf
Jess is very verbal and I suspect I often think her understanding of things is better than it is, so my attempts to explain that the new baby will take up a lot of my time and energy generally generate a blank look and a change of subject to why Mummy is a silly bum bum. Not to be deterred I have spoken to her lots about where the baby gets its food from and how it'll be born. One of my proudest Mummy moments was when we were walking through the hospital to the first scan and I told Jess to tell her Daddy how the baby would be born. She shouted out "from your vagina" and my sexual heath nurse's heart swelled with pride! She's also developed a sweet habit of sticking her soft toys up her top to be pregnant and then pulling them out either to push around in the toy buggy or to carry in her toy ring sling. She calls herself a little mummy a lot and has developed a bit of an obsession with family relationships and having us pretend to be someone different.
There is a part of me that would love to have her at the birth but I know she'd get bored during labour and obviously as I can't guarantee everything will go smoothly I wouldn't attempt to have her involved. If I was having a home birth I'd probably think differently on this.
On the plus side one of the things I am most looking forward to is seeing her becoming a big sister, I obviously hope that she enjoys it and everything will go swimmingly... But one thing I do know is that she can be a bossy little so and so. I suspect she'll love having an even littler girl to shepard about.
At the end of the day you can never really predict how things are going to be and like most parenting issues it'll be a case of taking each day as it comes and seeing how we get on. I'd like to know preparations others made and how they found the second (or subsequent) babies arrival. Any tips gratefully received!!!
