In my last post, I mentioned it was okay to eat while reading. This one...not so much. From about 5 and a half weeks into this pregnancy I've ranged from "green around the gills" to "Linda Blair on The Exorcist looks tame by comparison". I sometimes hesitate to use the term Hyperemesis Gravidarum but since that's what's the GP called it when he referred me for my second hospital stay of this pregnancy, I'll go with it.

From what I can work out from my extensive research (*ahem* Google addiction), 50% of pregnant women get some form of morning sickness, 25% get landed with nausea and 3% make it into the HG camp. This leads me to believe that women who don't get anything are practicing witchcraft...just kidding...sort of. I'm a little bitter about being in the minority, and mine is usually quite manageable with medication and IV fluids. I try not to be melodramatic as I'm painfully aware of how lucky I am to have access to top level health care free at the point of delivery.

Although I try to be pragmatic and tell myself that I'm fortunate to know that the baby is thriving, when I've been throwing up for 18 hours I tend to get a little downhearted. I knew that having had HG before, it was likely to occur again. I had a lot of grand plans about a perfectly planned diet of super healthy, frequent small meals, slow energy release foods and lots of ginger that would help me cruise through the first trimester with just a hint of nausea. I also had an emergency supply of Irn Bru and salt & vinegar crisps because that's what helped when I was pregnant with Sam. However, this baby had other plans. When I was six weeks along, I got up at the usual time with Sam, had some porridge and a banana and went for a brisk walk round the local loch so Sam could feed the ducks. Halfway round the (thankfully deserted) loch, I had my first public vomit of this pregnancy. On the plus side, I was able to add to my list of foods that aren't that bad to regurgitate. On the negative side, Sam now thinks it's perfectly reasonable to jump into bushes because he's seen his mummy do it.  Also, this baby does not care for Irn Bru or salt & vinegar crisps, although he or she can occasionally be appeased by peanut butter on toast!

It was all downhill from there to week 8 when I had my first trip to the maternity ward for anti-emetic injections (by the way, when they say 'intramuscular' they mean 'a jab in the backside') and re-hydration fluids. That first trip made us aware of the new dynamic of finding someone to look after Sam while poor Euan drove Pukey McPukerson to the hospital. Thankfully, despite giving me the aforementioned renaming, my sister also stepped up for babysitting duties. I'm totally blessed with a first class family of Sam-carers but I'm finding the feeling of not being able to care for him myself sometimes to be one of the harder aspects of the bad days.

I'm also not enjoying the fact that when the medication is stopping me throw up, it's also making me drowsy to the point that I feel like I'm wading through treacle while Hurricane Sam runs rings around me. I've learned the value of picking my battles, rather than panicking about rotting his brain, I've learned to be thankful for the half hour sitting quietly sitting on the couch while Sam indulges his Octonaut or Thomas the Tank obsession. I've also used this as an opportunity to encourage a bit more of his independence, I don't follow his every footstep when he's playing indoors and at the park, as a result he seems to be getting more and more confident in his own abilities.

I think he's going to make a brilliant big brother, while I've been laid low I've been able to appreciate just how good he is at helping out with little tasks and just how gentle he can be to the people around him. Now, if I could just stop gagging when I have to change his nappy during a queasy spell, I would be totally cool about the prospect of being a mummy of two...

Wee Green Mummy of Two

I've been trying to write this blog entry for over a week now, it's not that it's been unimportant, just that there was a combination of Christmas, a failed attempt at moving Sam to a big boy bed and many many rounds of morning sickness (the vomit will feature in the next entry so it's safe to read this one whilst eating!).

In the slideshow above, you can see the reason for the title, we are going to be a family of four around about the start of July. I'm not giving my due date because I did that last time and had five days of helpful comments along the lines of, “is that baby ever coming out?” and “you look like you're going to explode”!

That's my favourite benefit of a second pregnancy, you have a much better idea of what's going on and can make a few changes. For us, it's a first time planned pregnancy, Sam was a delightful surprise, we knew we wanted to have babies together, we just didn't realise how quickly we'd be doing it.

This time, we were able to stop contraception at a convenient time, we'd finished settling in to our new house and our big family trip for a wedding in the USA was only a couple of weeks away. I thought that it may take a while and had invested in a Basal Body Temperature Thermometer and some ovulation strips, I'd even made up a spread sheet (being married to an economist rubs off on you sometimes!). My GP had mentioned an average of three months all being well and Euan and I had agreed we would give it six months before we worried. The ovulation strips were cheap and easy to use...and apparently also very effective, as Carmichael Jnr #2 was conceived in a month! I was obviously elated but also felt a little silly, maybe I should have held off on the technical support until we'd been trying a while!

Finding out this time was an experience (well, it was an experience last time too, but this time no-one uttered the phrase WTF). We were at the end of a beautiful family holiday, we'd explored and been delighted by Boston, we'd attended the wedding of two of our dearest friends, and we were staying in the most heart-achingly beautiful hotel, The Old Custom House, in the centre of downtown Boston. Sam was soaking in all the sights and new experiences and had weathered the time change like a pro-jetsetter and I had been so happy the whole week getting to share one of my favourite places with Euan. So we were all in very relaxed and happy state of mind when I realised I was a wee bit late. I swithered about waiting until we got home to do a test, but I'm the kind of person who has to have her birthday and Christmas presents hidden to prevent early opening and I'd also felt downright weird with dizziness, tiredness and hunger all day so I couldn't resist taking the test I'd packed just in case. Euan came back from collecting ice to find me stretching up to the only bright light in the apartment to see the very faint but unmistakeable second line on the test.

We decided to wait a little while to start telling people, which was an easy decision to make when we had an ocean separating us from our nearest and dearest. As soon as we were back though, it quickly became apparent that the new offspring was just as efficient as Sam had been at turning mummy into an extra for the Walking Dead. I'm not one of those fortunate souls who glows through pregnancy, even before the nausea kicked in, I was pale and ex.haus.ted. One of the midwifes who works at the clinic where I do my real nappy info sessions was quick to tell me that I was looking “peaky”, my midwife mother later translated for me, “peaky” means “knocked-up” in midwife speak.

I also realised that should anything go wrong, I would feel better if the people we're close to knew what was up. So our immediate family found out, closely followed by other family and my lovely support network of fellow mummies and my university buddies. The joy of sharing our special news was a definite comfort when the nausea did kick in and looking forward to our first glimpse of the new family member was one of the only things that got me through the really hard days of toddler wrangling combined with hyperemesis. The transition from mum of one to mum of two will definitely be fuel for thought for the upcoming blog posts.