Ramblings: It's amazing the difference 2 weeks can make!
Two weeks ago…
I feel so brain dead! I haven’t read a book in weeks now as it hurts my tired eyes to read on my phone’s Kindle app (and I still haven’t learnt to read in the dark next to my sleeping daughter who still wakes up on average 3/6 times a night to nurse – although I am pretty sure 90% of the time it is to comfort nurse and who am I to deny her comfort?). I haven’t written anything in a while apart from a few assignments here and there. It’s not that I don’t have the time; I just don’t have the energy. While Luna’s first trimester was full of nausea and fatigue and worries, this new little one’s first trimester has been full of debilitating, constant nausea, insomnia and extreme fatigue. I’ve been falling asleep early, often into an unintended slumber around 8pm with Luna, only to wake up around midnight or 1am, wide awake, to finally get back to sleep around 4am… Only to then wake up at 7am by kisses or slaps in the face, meaning that Luna is awake and ready to party. I’ve never been a good sleeper, but I really need this extra sleep, because not only do I have a little munchkin growing inside me, I’m also still breastfeeding Luna pretty consistently through-out the day.
So bring it on second trimester awesomeness! I could really do with some of that boosting energy and glow right now! It would help if winter would take its long yearly nap and leave spring to take over. These days of negative one million degrees, of ice and snow were tedious enough when I was 9 months pregnant with Luna last year, but they are even worse when you have an infant who screams at the whisper of an icy wind on her face. So while we have been cooped up in the apartment for too many hours and too many days, Luna has developed a severe bout of separation anxiety… And there we were, thinking that we had got past that stage unscathed. Oh no… I can’t even go to the loo without her breaking out into eardrum-piercing screams, the end of the world as she knows it. It will pass, as will the sleepless nights and the constant need to nurse through-out the night. I mean, she’s not going to want her milky when she’s a teenager, is she?! Ha.
Today…
It’s amazing how things can change over just a few short weeks! Spring is coming in fast, the mounds of ice and snow have practically all melted, and I am now 16 weeks along, into my second trimester and feeling so much better! The nausea finally started to wane around 14 weeks, and now only rears its ugly head if I don’t eat often enough through-out the day. While I packed on the pounds really fast with Luna, things are a little different with this one. I was already bigger than I was before I got pregnant with Luna (not hard there), but I’m also still breastfeeding, and plan on continuing through-out the pregnancy if I can. Luna has shown no signs of giving it up yet anyway! So I don’t feel like I’ve put on TOO much weight yet (or I am refusing to admit it). I’ve read a lot on the subject of breastfeeding while pregnant, asked a few friends if they have done it, but funnily enough not too many have (I actually only know one person who was able to nurse through-out her second pregnancy!). The ladies at the WIC office were at a bit of a loss as they didn’t know how to counsel me properly (which gave me the incentive to do the training to become a breastfeeding counselor after this pregnancy). While I know that my milk supply will probably diminish substantially over this trimester, I hadn’t noticed a difference until last week. Luna started waking up with a dry diaper, she was fussy and grumpy, and started wanting to nurse through-out the night again. At the same time she had really started to eat more regular food, so I thought that that was it… I tried to give her some formula but she spat it out and continued to nurse (I tasted it, it was disgusting so I totally understand the spitting it out)… This week everything seems back to normal again, so I guess either my supply really dipped and she knew it, or it was actually a growth spurt and I was just too worried about having to stop nursing her before we both wanted to. So we shall continue as we have been and hope to make it at least another 3-8 weeks, past her first birthday.
I’ve finally been feeling a lot more motivated again, to write, read, think, imagine… With the temperatures rising slowly, the days getting longer and the knowledge that in less than half a year now we will be four and not three anymore, I feel that there is so much I want to accomplish! Write more, save money, sort out different administrative things I keep putting off, plan for what our life is going to become during the second half of 2015. I have no doubt that it is going to be hard. Yes, amazing of course, but it will be hard. When Luna was born I had nothing to compare it to, and now I know. Granted, Luna has always been a high needs baby, but at least we will be prepared for two high needs babies together! And while I am so excited about having another child, I want to make the most of these months where Luna will still be an only child, these months when my attention is focused solely on her and her needs and wants. I feel like I was a really boring mother during the first couple of months of this pregnancy, when I could barely move due to nausea, and we ended up spending many an hour in her play are reading books and making up silly stories to pass the time. Now that the sun is out we need to make the most of it and get some much needed Vitamin D!
I don’t know if it’s because things change in the space of a couple of years, or because I’m getting better prenatal care this time around, or just because I’m 36 and not 35 anymore, but I had an NT scan at 13 weeks (an ultrasound meant to check the size of the nuchal translucency behind the baby’s neck (a larger than normal accumulation of fluid can be a soft marker for a chromosome abnormality, but can also be a sign of a heart defect). I also had a blood test to check for signs of Downs Syndrome. All came back as looking fine. Not that it would have made any difference to us anyway, but I guess it’s good to be prepared. Because I refused any type of invasive screening they offered me one of those new non-invasive fetal blood screening tests which are about 95% accurate. Turns out everything looks good and we are having another girl! For some reason I was sure we were going to have a boy, but now we get to use the beautiful name that we had picked out for a girl months ago (and will only reveal when she is born).
And while this is the time to kick back, relax and enjoy the second trimester, I will still be a little antsy until we have the fetal echocardiogram and then the anatomy scan in the beginning of April. I feel a little jealous thinking back to Luna’s anatomy scan, and while we were nervous, we were more excited about finding out if she was a boy or girl. Now I just want to make sure that this little one’s heart is fully formed and functioning correctly. Funny how sometimes ignorance is bliss…
On that note, I should probably wrap this one up otherwise I will never get it finished and posted, or at least it won’t happen for a few more days. Luna is currently engrossed in a Baby Einstein video while eating prunes, so I have a few minutes to do something other than sing nursery rhymes and make up stories. Which reminds me, I must get moving on those kid’s stories that Cesar and I were going to write together!
Little baby girl at 12 weeks 4 days gestation <3