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Do you see a psychiatrist ?

Yes I do, I see a private psychiatrist but not very often- once every few months or so at the moment.

K has now attended 3 days of pre-kindy at the school she will be attending. Before starting I was worried about how she would go considering how difficult the transition to daycare was. Other than daycare which she has been attending for 2 years now and her grandparent’s house, we have not left her anywhere without my husband or me. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised- even on the first day she didn’t cry and was quite happy to say goodbye to us when we left. Shows how far she has come and I’m proud of both her and also feel like maybe I’m doing something right? As a child I struggled hugely with school anxiety and would cry and feel so anxious about going to school so I’m relieved that K so far seems to have a different experience. I hear some parents say “Oh, it makes me feel sad when my child happily says goodbye to me when going to school and isn’t sad about leaving me.” That is not me. I couldn’t be happier that K is happy and adjusted to going to school, because having a child who is hysterical and crying for you not to leave them is 100% harder and more heartbreaking.

Baby had his 6 week doctor check yesterday. Everything was good and he’s gained 1.6kg from birth which means he is now 4.6kg. The doctor asked about the experience with baby #2 vs baby #1 and baby #2 has definitely been easier. He’s feeding well, gaining weight and the past couple of nights he’s been sleeping longer stretches, with me waking him to feed when he last fed at 8pm was still asleep at about 1am. I don’t want to jinx it, but I am amazed at how different this experience has been the second time round. I feel like surely because he is easier now, life is going to throw at me him becoming a really difficult toddler or something.

Because my first child was so small, I’m not used to having an average sized baby. Like, what do you mean at 4 weeks old he’s out of newborn clothes and is now in size 000?! Which yes, is very ordinary, but at 4 weeks old my girl was still fitting comfortably in 00000 clothing. She didn’t hit 4kg until she was 12 weeks old, whereas my boy has just hit the 4kg mark at 4 weeks old. Which I guess goes to show how tiny she was- and still is. At 3 years old she is just over 10kg and still on the 1st percentile. I just can’t get over the difference in size of my 2 children.

So my girl turned 3 on the weekend. I went to my dad’s house to drop off some birthday cake from her birthday. I have a key to their house so I let myself in and called out to my dad who was in his bedroom. His response was “is anything the matter? I’m sleeping,” and did not open his bedroom door and come out. Like, it’s 2pm in the afternoon, I didn’t turn up at some ridiculous hour of the day. I had my 4 week old boy with me, the last time he saw both of us was the day I gave birth. You would think he may want to see his grandson for the second time 4 weeks after his appearance, or wish his granddaughter a happy 3rd birthday. But nope. It hurts that it makes me feel all the more alone and sad I don’t have that family support and makes me miss my mum a whole lot more because I am sure that if she were here she would take some sort of interest in her grandchildren and want to actually see them.

It has made such a big difference that baby boy is a good feeder unlike my first. He latches well and just feeds whereas with my first I was triple feeding at this point. When I look back now, I don’t know how on earth I did the triple feeding thing for that long. No wonder my mental health suffered so much when every 3 hours I would try to latch and feed her, give her a top up bottle of EBM, pump for 15 mins then have to wash all the pump parts and bottles. By the time that whole process was completed it would be almost time to do it all over again. So relieved that I’m not having to do that with baby boy, especially because unlike baby #1 where 100% of the focus and time can be on the baby, with baby #2 it’s having to juggle both a baby and a toddler at the same time. Also I think I would have a breakdown if I had to do it again.

So I ended up starting to have contractions on Sunday 2 Nov. I wasn’t sure if what I was having was contractions- it felt like strong period pain so I pushed through with the day, took toddler to her swimming lesson, did the grocery shopping etc. By night time the cramps were coming on more regularly so I phoned the maternity ward and they told me to come in to be checked out. At this point I still wasn’t sure whether it was contractions or not. They did a CTG and confirmed yep, I was having contractions and when the midwife examined me I was already 6cm dilated. Waited another hour until I asked for an epidural, then because it was the middle of the night it was another hour by the time the on call anaesthetist arrived. Would’ve asked for it earlier had I known she would take an hour to arrive.

Baby came at 5:10am on the Monday 3 Nov. He weighed 3.05kg, a full kilo more than his big sister.

It’s felt like a lot. The first day was fine, he slept and was latching well, unlike my first. Second day is when the worry and doubts crept in and the tears were coming- wasn’t able to express much when I tried, worried about him getting enough from me, about whether he’s okay, how toddler is going to go, how I’m going to cope and know what to do etc.

The experience with baby 2 has been different so far, they’ve reassured me he is fine, he hasn’t needed to stay in the special care nursery and we came home yesterday. But I still can’t help worrying, especially with the experience I had with my first baby.

It has just felt like a lot, wasn’t expecting baby to come at 38+2 weeks and to go into labour just 3 days after just being discharged from hospital after having gastro so I didn’t feel fully ready and prepared. I should be grateful that he has been healthy and hasn’t had any of the issues that baby 1 had, and I am grateful, and so the experience in hospital this time has been better, but I also feel quite overwhelmed still.

Home from hospital now. One of the first things my husband said to me was “I have full empathy and respect for looking after daughter full time.” Ha. I must say that I am rather smug and amused. Like no, it’s not exactly easy and keep in mind that the 2 days he had to look after her she was in daycare during the day. Whereas I look after her all myself 2 full days during the week besides weekends.

Have been in hospital since yesterday afternoon. My toddler caught gastro from daycare who then passed it onto me. It has been horrendous. Thankfully she seems better now. But for me, I spent Monday and Tuesday vomiting not being able to keep anything down. Tuesday afternoon went into hospital after phoning the midwives on the maternity ward for advice. They did CTG monitoring - it showed I was having contractions and at one point baby’s heart rate dropped and he was becoming distressed so they thought they may have to do an emergency cesarean. Thankfully he seems to have picked up, I’ve had four bags of fluid so far with a fifth ordered for overnight. This has been awful but at least if I’m going to get gastro better now than after baby comes, and also glad that baby did not come out after all because I was not ready. This is not how I wanted to spend my maternity leave before baby comes though 😩

37+1 weeks pregnant today. It was at this point in my first pregnancy that I was induced. Which feels weird because at the moment I don’t feel like I’m ready for or the baby is ready to come out just yet. In my mind I still have a couple of weeks to go, and also I’m hoping baby does not come before my 34th birthday in 6 days time.

Officially on maternity leave as of the end of work today. 35+4 weeks today, hoping to have at least 2-3 weeks of a bit of a break before baby comes.

Had an obstetrician appt yesterday, baby is apparently measuring approx 2.6kg and growth wise is tracking along. Was given the option of being induced from 39 weeks onwards if I want, and I’ve opted at this point to be induced with the date booked for 11 Nov. That is, if I don’t go into labour spontaneously beforehand. According to the charts, at this rate baby boy will be ~3.2kg when born which will be a big difference to my first baby. Which I’m really hoping that not having an IUGR baby will make it easier this time round because I struggled so much the first time.

Out of interest, why did they induce you instead of keeping her in longer so she could grow more? I’m so interested!

I think it’s so that if baby isn’t growing as expected in the womb it’s thought that it can be safer to induce. From Google I got:

Wow your first was tiny!!

Yep she was! Which is why I was induced at 37+1 weeks.

Any update on the hospital situation?

My bloods have improved, phosphate has returned to normal levels, albumin is only slightly low so all is okay atm.

33 weeks today. Had a growth scan yesterday and the estimated foetal weight is 2kg. My first was born at 37+1 weeks at 2.06kg so it’s hard to believe that at 33 weeks this little boy is pretty much the same weight as my girl was 4 weeks further along. He’s currently measuring on the 32nd percentile.

My GP has been talking about potentially going into hospital as my blood results are showing low albumin and low phosphate. My response was “Yeah no…I don’t want to go into hospital.” Like I genuinely don’t think things are bad, my eating has been stable, I’ve gained 10kg so far over this pregnancy and so far my scans have shown that baby boy is growing along the percentile line. After my appt I looked up low phosphate and apparently it can be an effect of having an iron infusion which I had recently so that could explain the low phosphate. And also low albumin is apparently common in pregnancy due to increased blood volume. My GP said she was going to talk to my obstetrician and I have another appt with her next week.

You settle for way less than you deserve

Hmm not sure how to respond to that, that’s not something I’ve ever thought about.

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