A flutter, a feeling, a wave of excitement, promptly followed by waves of exhaustion and nausea. This, for me, is the early stages of pregnancy. At this point, just five weeks in, I cannot share with most people my exciting news (this post will stay in draft mode until I reach 12 weeks). So I will write here, and brain dump about what I'm going through.
My feelings about having a second child, even though I said I definitely wanted a second child, are somewhat conflicted. On one hand, I want Ahsoka to experience having a sibling. I also think that as a family, we have so much love to give, and I think I'm ready to share that with another being. But I worry about Ahsoka getting enough attention when I'm 8 and 9 months pregnant and huge... or more so, when I'm 1 week postpartum, and still healing, unable to pick her up for cuddles. While I'm doing all the reading about introducing a toddler to a new baby, I know there will be conflict. I know that Ahsoka will struggle to understand the abrupt change in circumstances; the division of attention from her parents. I worry we'll be less close, or that she will feel emotionally abandoned by me during that difficult newborn stage. I worry I'll lose my patience at times. I love her so much, it's hard to imagine what another child in our mix will even look like. But I also think it's going to be amazing. I think she'll be curious, and that eventually as her younger sibling grows older, she'll have a playmate, a friend; I hope.
One thing I want to do for Ahsoka is create a special space for her. She loves to read, so I want to set up a reading nook in her room. I had high aspirations of setting up an Ewok/Endor themed nursery before she was born, that ended up being simplified into a simple overall Star Wars themed room instead; however, I think I can make the Endor room work for her toddler/ childhood bedroom. Setting up bookshelves that look like trees? Painting the room to look like a forest, as I had intended for her nursery but simply ran out of time to pull it off... I want to do all of the things. We still have plenty of Ewok plushies to make this work.
My brain keeps thinking about all the planning that needs to happen. We'll be so much better prepared for what's to come than we were for Ahsoka. Being a brand new parent is such an amazing, yet trial-and-error, experience. At the same time, logically I know that every child is different so things will be inevitably different with the new baby (I started calling them "Babs" since we still refer to Ahsoka as "Baby" often, and want to avoid confusion).
At the same time, I'm afraid to plan too much, and I definitely don't want to execute any major plans. There's so much to do, but I feel painfully "on hold" until we reach at least the 12 week mark. And that is my least favorite thing about early pregnancy. Hoping for the best, but painfully on hold in case it doesn't work out. At age 38, my chances of miscarriage are somewhere in the range of 20 - 25%. Having never experienced one (at least nothing more than what is considered a "chemical pregnancy" as far as I know), I'm hopeful. But most of the time it happens due to a chromosomal anomaly, and there's literally nothing the mother can do about it. I am, doing all the healthy things of course. But that lack of control... let's just say for an anxious person like me, that's not something I can easily accept.
Something kind of neat though? The baby's heart has just recently started beating (assuming all is going well). It's undetectable at this stage, but they have a two chamber heart by the end of week 5 (or 21 days after conception). I saw a model of it on my pregnancy app, and it made me so happy.
One source of disappointment is that there really isn't a geeky themed pregnancy app. There is a (very advertisement laden) website called babysizer.com that will tell you the size of your baby week by week in geeky terms, but I like having an app on my phone. So I guess I will settle for weekly updates with various animals (I did fruit last time, but that was always a little creepy to me). Right now, they're the side of a lady bug. Okay, let's face it, I was curious about the "geeky" size, so Baby Sizer says that baby is also the size of a piece of Nerd candy. FINE! In case you're curious, they'll be the size of a Lego mini-figure by week 10.
Oh my gosh, do not google "model of five week old baby" if you are five weeks pregnant. Just smile at your pregnancy app of choice, and let it be.
