Another little someone Elce...

I cant believe that last time i blogged i was 24 weeks pregnant. That 'bump' is now approaching five weeks old! How time flies! Its going to be impossible to sit and write a full update on the 16 weeks of pregnancy that followed the last post, as well as the birth story, and everything that's happened since, so I'll just have to be pretty brief up until the birth story...

This pregnancy was pretty straight forward really, compared to Izzy's. I did, however, develop SPD, which was incredibly painful, but there wasn't really any other complications. I found it to be a really emotional experience, being pregnant for the second time, as there were so many things i was unsure about.
As awful as it sounds, the main thought that went through my head was 'will i be able to love the new baby like i do Izzy'?
I just love her so so much, i couldn't ever begin to imagine being able to feel like that towards another child. Also, how would Izzy react? Would she be jealous? Will i manage to spread my time between them? So many questions were whizzing round my head for the whole 9 months. I had many a tearful evening with Adam, worrying about all of the above, especially one night, Izzy watched a video of her as a baby, with Adam. She obviously didn't realise the baby in the video was her, and she got so upset watching it, which absolutely broke my heart and made me panic more than ever!

We tried to involve her the whole way through. She came with me to the majority of my appointments, so she listened to baby's heartbeat, and saw her on the screen etc. She eventually learnt the baby's name (well, her own special version) and would choose to come and lift my top, shout her name, read stories, sing songs, give kisses and tickle my bump, which really helped to reassure me. We were never quite sure how much she understood though. Did she just think we had suddenly given my tummy a name? We made sure we always used words such as 'baby' and 'sister' to try and help her to understand.
One day, she was walking up the stairs in our house, and she looked up and saw a big photo we have of me, Adam and her when she was 11 weeks old. While she looked at the photo, she said 'Mummy, Daddy and the baby's name, whilst pointing. This was when we realised out 'baby girl' understands a tremendous amount more than we'd realised.

We also got her involved with helping with jobs too, she'd fetch nappies and wipes etc, and she practiced bathing and feeding her dolly. We read her books about babies too She seemed to be pretty excited about the idea of having a baby sister.

I was surprisingly calm about the idea of going through labour again. Even up to the very end of pregnancy, i didn't feel fear, just excitement. This may have been helped by the fact that many midwives had told me that second labours are normally easier, and normally about half the time the first ones take. So i was thinking i was maybe in for a nice easy 7-8 hour labour. How very wrong i was....