I can finally announce it – it’s a second pregnancy for the Rosens!
I know I go through periods where this blog is kind of quiet, and the most recent period of quiet was due to me being in the middle of my first trimester and trying to stay healthy while caring for a toddler. Harder than I thought it would be, that’s for sure.
But now I’m 13 weeks (well, I will be on Friday actually) and am feeling better overall, though still sick at night. Around 14 weeks was when things let up with Ezra so I’m looking forward to getting to that point, and just to the second trimester in general.
We had the lovely Anna Kennedy take some family/announcement photos and she did a great job, as usual. Those were some of my favorites, but this one is my absolute favorite –
Such a sweet little moment she captured!
We found out we were pregnant back at the end of August. This wasn’t an unplanned pregnancy, but I still had this feeling that I couldn’t push down – kind of like a sadness. Weird, I know. I wasn’t sad about having a second baby; I was sad to close this chapter of our lives where we are a family of three. Mostly I was sad to lose this one-on-one time with my little buddy, which is unbelievably special.
But as time has gone on, and as I’ve talked Alex’s (and friends and family) ear off about all of this, I realized it isn’t really an end. It’s more like a next step. This new baby is going to grow our family in ways we couldn’t have imagined and my feeling of sadness is now being tempered with anticipation and excitement. And that picture will always be so special to me, as a permanent reminder of this time in our lives, as a family of three.
Baby number two is due around May 15th, which is one month after Ezra’s original due date. If this baby is anything like Ezra, he/she will come early. There are a lot of birthdays and anniversaries and special days in May for both sides of our family, so it’s possible this baby will end up sharing a birthday with someone else in the family!
This second pregnancy is happening at roughly the same time as the first one. I’m really lucky to be able to reuse my maternity clothes. And, if this baby is a boy, I’ll be able to reuse Ezra’s clothes. We won’t find out the sex until December, though, so we still have some time on that.
I plan on doing like I did with Ezra and posting weekly updates with a bump photo. I started that around 16 or 17 weeks with him, but this time around I will start next week at 14 weeks. “They” say you show sooner with a second pregnancy and I feel like that’s true with me – not that I necessarily look pregnant, but I do think it’s obvious something is going on in the belly region! The photos from this session were taken at 10 weeks, by the way, so I really didn’t look very much like anything at all. Now, 3 weeks later, there is a noticeable difference –
From now until May, I have a few projects I want to work on –
- Hopefully getting Ezra potty trained and transitioned from his crib to a bed
- Moving him to the empty bedroom so his room can stay the nursery
- Putting together a fun “big boy” room for Ezra, and tweaking the nursery a bit to personalize it more for this new little one
- Some house projects that I’ll talk about in a separate post, but they mostly involve painting, hanging ceiling fans and getting window treatments
- Get some newborn clothes since I gave all of Ezra’s away
- Get a new swing since I sold our old one
- Get a new video monitor since ours is on its last leg and we need two cameras now anyway
I think that mostly covers it! We will cloth diaper this one like we have with Ezra, but probably not until he/she is 3-4 months so I’ll need to stockpile newborn and size 1 diapers (maybe size 2? I can’t remember what the different sizes mean anymore…). I plan to breastfeed again and hopefully that will go well the second time around.
I also hope to be able to have a water birth. I keep thinking about how I stood in the shower when I was still in early labor with Ezra and how the water made the contractions bearable. The hospital I will deliver at does have birthing tubs so when things get a little closer I’ll start looking into that more. I also plan on hiring a doula again; probably the backup doula who attended Ezra’s birth since the main one we had hired was out of town…but that’s assuming she is still a doula!
It’s strange being pregnant again. On the one hand, it’s all old hat. Morning sickness? Yeah it’s terrible, but I knew it was coming at 5 weeks so I majorly cleaned the house in preparation for when it hit (and boy did it hit). Maternity clothes? Got it covered. Baby essentials? I already know what I want. In some ways I do miss the excitement of research and figuring it all out – which, I guess I could do again since it has been three years since I was pregnant last and I’m sure a lot has changed.
On the other hand, being pregnant again is nerve wracking – but for different reasons than last time. Physically, emotionally and mentally I know what to expect. I know it’s hard physically as the weeks go on. I know I will have crazy hormones and emotions and will feel like I’m going insane. I know there is the mental game of mommy guilt that starts the minute you get a positive pregnancy test. But this time I can’t prepare for juggling a toddler with a newborn. I can’t prepare for how adding a second kid into the mix will effect my work that I’ve seen grow so exponentially in the last few months. I can’t plan for so many things like that and I just have to let it go and be okay with the fact that, just like with Ezra, things will settle into a new normal that will work for our family.
But, if you’re reading this and are the mama (or dad!) of 2+ kids, I appreciate any and all tips you may have!
And, until May, whenever this new baby decides to make his or her appearance, I’ll be wondering and waiting, planning and laughing at myself for planning. Only 27 weeks to go 🙂
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