Pregnancy, round two

Big news, everyone: I am expecting a second baby!

… This is not exactly breaking news, since I’ve been pregnant since March. But I haven’t seen fit to write about the impending bundle of joy here because I just haven’t had time. There have been too many other things demanding my attention: working on my manuscript, freelancing, taking care of my toddler, LIFE. Anyway, this failure to write one word about my pregnancy until six months in kind of sums up the vibe of a second pregnancy, at least for me. It’s not that it’s not important or special. It’s just less of an all-consuming fact of my life, because having another child means I have less time to sit around and contemplatively stroke my belly, or whatever the hell I did for nine-ish months with the first one.

I’ve been doing some thinking about what a different experience a second pregnancy is from a first, and I think the basic distinction is that the child who already lives on the outside of your body demands so much of your time and attention that you can’t really focus as much on the one inside your body. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. When I was pregnant with Lucia, I was so attuned to every little twinge (and you get a lot of twinges, among other weird happenings, while pregnant), that I worried more, about everything. The second time around, as long as I’m not going into labor, I’m not worried. Sure, I’ve Googled a few symptoms here and there, but there have been no panic moments (so far).

The thing is, you can’t sit around obsessively counting fetal kicks when you have a toddler who’s about to hurl herself face-first into a baby pool. If something were actually wrong with the new baby, I would take time out and focus on it, of course, but what I’ve quickly realized as a second-time preggo is that most of the time, everything’s fine, so I should just get on with life. In fact, there are days when I forget, for huge swaths of time, that I am pregnant. Then the baby will kick me in the ribs or someone will look at me funny while I’m running on the treadmill, and I’m like, “Oh, right. That.”

This pregnancy has also put more pressure on me, time-wise, than the last one did. When I was pregnant with Lucia, it seems that I had all the time in the world to work, loll around, nap, do prenatal yoga, visit with friends, etc. Now, as a work-at-home mother of a young child, the time I have to myself each day is tightly limited, and the extra demands of pregnancy suck up every last drop of that time and energy. I have a babysitter for four hours a day, five days a week. Maybe this sounds like a lot, in theory — four hours a day to myself, wow! — but in practice, it means I have twenty hours a week to do all of my writing work, go to the gym, run errands, take care of the house, cook, and, now that I’m expecting again, practice Hypnobabies techniques (I am a huge Hypnobabies believer and practiced it diligently before Lucia’s birth, but the practice and study schedule they recommend feels pretty demanding this time around). So I find myself scrambling, constantly, to get as much work as I can done while still doing basic things to keep both my body and my household running semi-smoothly. This leaves very little time for reflecting on the beautiful mystery of pregnancy. Which is sad, I guess, but is also just a fact of second-time pregnancy.

With this pregnancy, for better or for worse, there is very little journaling happening, very little lovingly cradling my belly while listening to positive affirmations. But you know what? That’s okay. This child (a boy, by the way) is going to be born into a different Green family than Lucia was. When L showed up on the scene, it was just me and Al, terrified and overwhelmed and tiptoeing around our house like it was rigged with land-mines. When New Baby Green shows up, it’s going to be me and Al, old parenting hands (ha), and a rambunctious twenty-two month-old sister who does not know that you can’t scream when a baby is trying to sleep, among other things. This child is going to have to be adaptable, and flexible, and easygoing. And we’re starting that training early, in the womb.

Even though I haven’t had time to focus on the wondrousness of pregnancy quite as much this time around, I am still thrilled to be having another baby and can’t wait to meet him in November. Until then, I’ll just be chugging along, growing a human and doing a million other things, too.