Pregnancy Number Two! And Other Ramblings

     Those of you who know me well, have already heard the news that Nic and I are expecting again. We found out when Vera was only eight months old, that next spring well will be the proud parents of two. They will be sixteen months apart. Part of me is terrified and the other part is thrilled. I am only eighteen months apart from my sister, and she is my best friend, so I can only hope the same is true for these two.

The pregnancy itself has been a bit of a roller coaster. It started out pretty typical; first the fear and excitement of having two under the age of two. Then the smell sensitivity and nausea set in. I could barely get out of bed, being more exhausted than ever in my life. Also, note at this time, not only am I pregnant, but I am full time nursing an eight month old who still wakes several times a night to eat.  Strangely though, around eight weeks, everything stopped. In a matter of 3 days, my nose went back to normal, I could eat again, and I was no longer exhausted. I did not feel pregnant anymore. I was also having some signs of miscarriage. I was totally convinced that I was no longer pregnant. I was waiting to loose this baby. I morned the loss of a child who I already welcomed into my family, and never got to meet. Then depression set in for about 2 weeks, I just moped around and accomplished nothing, barely keeping up with the normal everyday stuff. Crazily enough around 10 weeks, I started acting/feeling pregnant again. So, I just resigned myself to not know.... I did not know if I was pregnant or not. Nic knew though... the whole time he kept saying “you are so pregnant”.

Some of you might be thinking, well, why the heck didn’t you just get an ultrasound to know for sure?! I try to avoid unnecessary medical interventions as much as possible, so I just decided to wait. Eventually I would start getting fat, if I was pregnant, right? Also, I only had to wait a few more weeks until I could hear the baby’s heartbeat at home with a doppler.

This whole time, of about 2 months, Vera was progressively getting fussier. She started waking more and more at night. She got to the point of nursing (I am not exaggerating) every hour at night. And during the days she was usually cranky. This on top of me being physically and emotional exhausted from pregnancy, was beginning to make me loose my mind. I used to put her to bed and she would nurse to sleep in 10-15 minutes, now every night it was an hour and half long struggle of nursing and screaming, until she finally wore herself out. Because of her change in attitude we decided to put her on the scale and discovered that she had lost a pound. Poor little thing! She was crying because she was hungry! Boy, I felt like a real shame of a parent, when I figured that out.

Since I became pregnant, my milk has progressively slowed down. I tried many things to boost my milk supply, (herbs, pumping, eating special foods, hydrating) but nothing worked. So after about 8 weeks of beating myself up and stressing out about not making enough food to feed Vera, I gave up. We are now supplementing her diet with formula and donated breast milk. Since I made that choice, life is better, she is a different baby. She is happy most of the time. She goes to sleep without a struggle and sleeps better, and I sleep better. Even though much of the natural parenting world, has so much against formula and I personally do not like it; I know it is not the best food for my child, but now I have a new appreciation for it. Formula is not the devil, like so many out there think! I am actually quite fond of it at this moment, because when you have a hungry child, food, any food, is better than nothing.

     I felt sad about this choice for a little while, but she needs to eat. She is 10 months now, and starting to experiment with solids and I continue nursing her. At least she is getting some breast milk. I quit beating myself up over it, because this next little one must need the energy that was going into making that milk.

Now I am almost 13 weeks and feeling mostly great! I still hope to get more than 4 hours of sleep before the next kiddo arrives, but I am not sure that will happen. If any parents out there have tips on helping their kids to sleep for long periods of time, I’ll take them! However, If it involves the “cry it out” method, you can just keep it to yourself, something about that just goes against my soul, and I will not do it. I guess I’m not that desperate yet. 

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, with Vera I was so sick I could not eat at all for the first 3 months. I survived on rootbeer and crackers. I lost about 7-8 lbs with her, in the beginning and I feel like that had a lot to do with why she was so small. So when I found out I was pregnant again, I made it my goal not to loose any weight, and so far I have only lost a pound. I seem to be showing much earlier too, so that’s cool.

Thats about all, I know it was a long rambling post, but it has been a long rambling 3 months, so that’s all I’ve got.