Monthly Archives: May 2014

How will I cope with two?

14 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by in Family, Motherhood, Pregnancy

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Bump at 20 weeks

After settling my almost four year old back to sleep at 3am this morning I found myself lying awake staring into the darkness. I could hear my child’s soft snores and feel this new life wriggling around inside my belly. And it hit me: how the hell will I cope with two?!

Have you ever noticed how everything seems worse in the middle of the night?

My mind raced. My breathing grew shallow. I could feel myself on the verge of a full blown panic attack – I haven’t suffered one of these in the last seven years.  Continue reading »

Pregnancy: my second trimester saviours

12 Monday May 2014

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second trimester

Somehow I appear to have reached the magic halfway mark of this pregnancy without even realising it. Just goes to show how different pregnancy is when you have a young child to care for amidst the usual juggling of work and family life. This one is flying by!

While I continue to feel tired in the evenings, I’m pretty sure this is just a symptom of said juggling – when I was pregnant with Frog there was nothing stopping me from putting my feet up after a day at work, after all. This is something I need to keep reminding myself of in order to keep the temptation to be constantly doing stuff, working, doing more stuff, at bay.

As with the first trimester, there are a few things that are making pregnant life a lot easier at the moment.  Continue reading »

A week of healthy living

06 Tuesday May 2014

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Healthy living

When it comes to healthy living, I like to think we do OK as a family. We’re not complete couch potatoes, eat a fairly balanced diet and don’t tend to stockpile huge amounts of junk food. But still, we could do better.

Last week, like hundreds of other families up and down the country, we took part in the #NoJunk Challenge set by kids’ food brand Organix. The aim of the challenge was two-fold: to get us to eat healthily, cooking food from scratch and cutting out the processed rubbish, while raising awareness of the need for higher levels of regulation in the UK food industry.

So how did we do?  Continue reading »

When weekends work

05 Monday May 2014

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Weekend with family

You know when you have high hopes for a weekend and it doesn’t go according to plan? You end up bickering, drowning in piles of laundry, rushing around the supermarket and feeling intensely jealous of all the other families Getting It Right on Instagram?

Yeah. That’s often us.

This weekend, however, was different. This weekend we actually became one of those families to Get It Right. For the first time in a long time I didn’t suffer one single bout of Weekendvy, as I was far too busy enjoying myself and relaxing.  Continue reading »

Preparing for the birth. Kind of.

01 Thursday May 2014

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When I was pregnant with my nearly-four year old, I spent a lot of time avoiding thinking about the impending labour. I watched the odd One Born Every Minute and tootled along to a couple of hospital antenatal classes, but my main plan was to just “go with it”. I resisted listening to horror stories about other peoples’ labours and continued to live merrily naive and convinced that it would all be OK.

And it was all OK. I had a fairly quick labour and didn’t need any intervention. But it hurt. Lots. I don’t think I was prepared for quite how much it would hurt.

Photo credit: Caroline Gue at CP Photography

Photo credit: Caroline Gue at CP Photography

This time around I’m going into it with my eyes open. It might sound silly, as I’m not even 20 weeks yet, but I’ve already started to think about the birth and make some decisions. People tell me all labours are different and my experience last time won’t necessarily be the same again, but my midwife also tells me to be prepared for a “speedy delivery”, just in case.  Continue reading »