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.
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.
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