The Second Time Around

I’ve noticed a few differences between a first and second pregnancy. These differences undoubtedly are obvious to anyone with more than one kid, but like with all things kids and kid making related, they have to be learned anew by each not so new mom.

With my first pregnancy, I blogged the entire thing to my family (starting at 11 weeks), morning sickness and all. As anyone who still reads this outgrowth of my inaugural blog might have noticed, this isn’t happening so readily with number two. Baby number one is the obvious cause of this plummeting word count, combined with sporadic morning sickness that has lessened, but doesn’t seem to want to disappear for good.

Speaking of morning sickness, you wretched bane of my existence, my current experience started out extremely similar to the puking horrors of ’09, leading many to believe I was having another girl ( side note: extreme morning sickness with girls is actually an old wive’s tale with some merit in science, with a 56% versus 44% ratio of girl to boy births). But I’m not. I’m having a boy and although I suspected this a little– I had a 50/50 chance of being correct after all– for the first 17 weeks of the pregnancy I could not tell a single difference between my ’09 horror and the ’11 variation.

That is, until the morning sickness went away. Oh blissful week of thinking I was free a full five weeks earlier than with my baby girl. Oh week of eating Indian food and Chinese and anything else that tested my gastrointestinal tract. That week made me food cocky. One night I made a veggie lasagna and, congratulating myself on my rare culinary achievement, I had a second piece, then suggested we all walk to get frozen yogurt. A neighbor’s lawn bore the marks of my ill-guided fro-yo journey (and still might since we don’t get much rain here). Since then, luckily, I’ve been getting better, but many nights I still tell Dave to tell me never to eat lettuce again. Ever. Stupid lettuce.

My nesting is different this time around as well. With Amelia I organized and labeled everything, so much so that Dave has actually banned me from setting foot into The Container Store. The feminist in me recoils at a husband banning a wife from shopping, but the realist in me recognizes I may just have a problem, so I don’t go back.

Problem or not, plastic bins and labels were the least of Dave’s nesting woes. This pregnancy I’m all about projects, big I need it done now I’m going to attempt what I can’t do I will not rest, except when I have collapsed in exhaustion and need you to take over, projects. I just finished sanding and priming some old Target bookshelves I have always hated in the hopes of turning them into cheap white jewels. I’ve never primed anything or successfully painted laminate and my prime job looks pretty awful, so this project may mean more money spent in the long run. We are also getting a yard even though we rent, but I refuse to look at weedy mulch any longer. I refuse I say! Oh, and I want to redo the kitchen and add to Amelia’s room, not to mention the nursery and our bedroom and….. Somehow all the things that haven’t bothered me for two years are now like little needles in my brain. We don’t plan on having many, if any, more kids, but those women who have 8 or 10 probably have accomplished the most amazing feats whilst pregnant.

Ultimately, the biggest difference this time around is my energy level. Yes, morning sickness saps all energy and last time I had anemia, even collapsing at the mall around 15 weeks, but a toddler, a spirited toddler, changes the energy zapping ball game entirely. I’ve been making frequent and long trips up to Sacramento so my parents can take care of Amelia (and let’s be honest, me).

Having a kid outside the womb means no playing music to the belly babe via giant headphones, no reading What to Expect and other ridiculously long parenting diatribes, no fretting about my parenting philosophy. I played in the womb Amelia Irish lullabies for months and she never recognized them nor calmed down because of them. Reading all the pregnancy books were helpful, but a bit overwhelming and obviously not adequate preparation for the real thing, and my I need to do everything the Sears way approach I thought I would have with Amelia totally didn’t happen, and I don’t feel bad about it at all. Basically, I’m a project crazed, tired and moody, yet more mellow, months away but still scary close mom take two. Paradoxical? Yes. Paradoxes are lovely that way. They can make no sense and still be true.

Oh, and one last difference. I’m eating cheese. All kinds of cheese now. Apparently America pasteurizes everything. Good to know.

As for the podcast that I have let slip away. I have an episode soon to be released that was recorded months ago. I apologize to Amy, who I interviewed about adoption, for taking so darn long.