And Rest Your Heavy Head My Love

Well, there's no sleep for the wicked...or those with sicky one year olds. Baby O was leaking at both ends this weekend and constantly crying and grizzling and so Mummy didn't get much rest. Period is now 9 days overdue and symptoms are starting. I start to remember just how much I hated being pregnant the first time :)

Will You Sleep at Night

This isn't going to be as easy (!?!) as it was the first time. Last time I was pregnant I could roll in from work and collapse on the sofa. Now I have an active 13 month old who DOES NOT want to sleep in her own bed. Between my starfish hubbie and my starfish baby (like father like daughter) I get about a square inch of bed to sleep in. It still hasn't really sunk in that I am pregnant again but as I think about it abstractly I realise that this is going to be a lot more demanding, given the hectic family and work life we have now. There are plus points though; this time there will be no 80 mile round trips to work, standing up on public transport because the larger I got the more invisible I became to business men.

We were chatting about it earlier and one reason I think it all feels different is that last time we were soooooo ridiculously over-excited that from day 1 we were reading books and looking things up on the Internet to find out everything about the pregnancy. This time we are kind of at a loss of what to do at this point as I am fairly sure things haven't changed THAT much in the 13 months since we had O_. I think this time I will have to wait till I physically start feeling pregnant until it really sinks in. I only just remembered this evening to look up when the due date will be - 30th October as it happens. Maybe I should hang on that extra day and then take B2 'trick or treating' :)

So Here I Am Once More....

I was slightly late home from work this evening, but it didn't really matter.

It was an ordinary Monday with nothing planned. I would have liked to have been back in time to put baby O_____ to bed, but I'm often not home in time for that, and I accept it, even if I don't like it. No, it was a pretty normal Monday evening and I wasn't expecting any surprises.

'I've got you a present,' said M2B2 (who is not an R2 droid, but my wife and fellow blog contributor). She handed me a small item wrapped in tissue paper. It was about the size of a toothbrush.
'A present? Why have you got me a present?'
'I just have,' she said, mysteriously. It wasn't my birthday. Valentines was just a few days ago... I had no idea why I might be getting a present. I think I cocked an eyebrow, but regardless, I unwrapped the paper to reveal a white plastic pen-shaped item with a blue pastic cap and some words at one end, and a little window at the other.
'Oh,' I said, not sure why I was supposed to be particularly happy about this item.
'Oh,' said my wife, somewhat flattly. I looked again, saw the words 'ClearBlue', and then looked at the little window.

You, of course, are ahead of me on this one, right?
This is not only because you're reading a blog that clearly says what it's about at the top but also because it would be quite difficult to be as slow as I was being at that moment. There was a little word in the window. I looked at it properly for the first time.
'Oh,' I said, then, 'OH!' as it finally sunk in that the word in the window was 'pregnant'. 'Oh my god!'
We hugged and both said we couldn't believe it.

I have to tell the truth, I really can't say what I thought I was looking at when I first unwrapped the predictor. I think I thought it was an ovulation test, because M2B2 has had irregular periods of late. I absolutely didn't think that it was a pregnancy test because my mindset wasn't in baby mode.

We were both agreed that we wanted to try for a second baby, but we weren't putting in any particular effort about it. My memories of last time were of ovulation charts and sex-to-order, something that is a lot less enjoyable than one might imagine, and the stress of each month as we waited to find out whether anything had happened this time... This time round, we'd not really got round to working out M2B2's menstrual cycle, things had just happened of their own accord. Obviously, contraception had gone out of the window, but we hadn't been paying attention to whether the time was right, just whether the moment was right, if you know what I mean, eh, eh, eh, nudge nudge, wink wink...

I'm not a particularly laddish person. It's just not me. I'd say something that someone else would say and have accepted as a cheeky, good-natured and slightly risque laugh and it would sound salacious and slightly creepy, so I don't tend to do it, but I have to say that after I got over the initial shock, I did feel obliged to pat my bollocks and congratulate them on a job well done. It is stupid, but I suppose understandable, how much machismo one feels upon learning that one's pork sword is fully functioning and firing on all cylinders.

Still, that's it now. They can probably retire now, job done. Haven't they done well?

I'm going to be a daddy again. It's brilliant news. It really hasn't sunk in yet. So, here we are again.

Bring it on.