Ah! Relaxing into maternity leave

Well here I am, day 1 of week 2 of maternity leave. Or day 4 of maternity leave. Baby 2 is due in about 11 days, which means that in 24 days I will have a baby, as my doctor likes to induce at 12 days over.

Thursdays tend to be full days for me as I have yoga and ante-natal appointments, plus tomorrow I'm getting my hair cut too. So I kept today free so I could relax and get a few jobs done around the house, such as packing my hospital bag.

Wait! Did I say relax? Ha! It seems that far from suddenly having a load of free leisure time to languish in pre-baby, I have simply replaced my work duties for my employer with more domestic duties. Here is how my day has panned out thus far:

Miss Chief and I both woke slightly late after a late night. She woke around 11pm with a poo in her nappy and excruciating nappy rash, poor darling. Took us a while to figure what was wrong. I knew she was in pain and presumed a tummy ache, couldn't get any sense out of her. Eventually I lay her down and started to undress her so I could check her nappy and that was when she eventually cried "my bum". We changed her, bathed her, lay her in front of a DVD to air-dry and then gently applied the cream, letting her do it herself. Eventually we all got back to bed.

So anyway, we woke late and Toby had already gone to work. I pottered around getting Phoebe's breakfast ready. I delivered her cereal to the table which for some bizarre reason prompted an emotional meltdown. She returned the dish to the kitchen bench, saying she didn't want it and spilling milk on the way. She then sat back down and demanded a gummy bear (vitamin chew). I put some paper towel down and told her to wipe the mess she made first. She refused and screamed louder. Then she announced that she wanted her cereal back. So began a stand-off where I refused to let her have anything until she cleaned up her mess.

Eventually, I got her to help me clean up the mess, she got her gummy bear and we sat down to breakfast. Then I made her lunch and morning and afternoon tea, realising on opening the fridge that hubbie had made off to work with the leftovers I'd planned to turn into lasagna or similar for dinner tonight. There's enough there for a family of four so I hope he's not expecting to take more lunch with him again tomorrow. Did a quick internet search to find a recipe for dinner, wrote my shopping list, packed Phoebe's daycare bag, took her to the loo, helped her brush her teeth, dressed her, dressed me, brushed my teeth, realised I didn't have time for a shower so scraped hair into a pony tail, dealt with another couple of emotional meltdowns about who knows what, and finally got us both into the car.

Dropped her off, which thankfully was easy. No tears or protests - she's pretty good these days, headed to shops and did shopping. Somehow spent a fortune but then did get things like batteries, more vitamins, a couple of change table items and some toiletries for hospital. Couldn't get Lansinoh, which is what you put on your nipples when you're breastfeeding, and I also use it to lanolise woollen nappy covers. Went next door to pharmacy to get that and it cost me $20!!! Couldn't believe it. I swear it was 30% cheaper than that when I had Phoebe. Anyway, just wanted to get everything and not have to worry about it.

Got home, rushed to loo, changed out of nice soft belly band into tight supportive belly band to relieve belly ache. Changed out of normal maternity bra into huge oversized (14D if you must know!) Bonds maternity singlet to relieve aching ribs. Changed out of nice t-shirt and jeans into daggy tracksuit bottoms and t-shirt. Don't know why I didn't just put them on in the first place. No one expects a woman at this stage of pregnancy to look good, least of all the ladies at daycare and the people in the supermarket.

Collected yesterday's mail from the mailbox, which I forgot to do yesterday. Put it all straight into the recycling bin - can't believe how much junk mail we get. Got shopping out of car, put it all away, rushed back to loo again. Realised that I had forgotten to put stock cubes on my list and that we only have 2 dishwasher tablets left. Unpacked dishwasher and stacked it with last night's dinner dishes, washed dishes that didn't fit in, tidied recycling stuff off bench. Followed sultana trail around the house, sweeping it up as I went. Hope Hansel and Gretel can still find their way home. Cleaned up Phoebe's breakfast mess, which by now was caked onto the table and chair like cement. Swept the fallen bits of cereal up from the floor. Marvelled at how dirty the floor was where hubbie and Miss Chief sit at the dinner table less than 24 hours after the cleaner had been and gave up all hope of ever living in a clean and tidy house.

Finally, at 11.06 sat down with a cup of de-caf coffee and the chocolate toffee biscuits I've been craving for 3 days (well, a poor Aussie alternative really but they're nice enough) and my recipe books to plan a nice pudding for dessert tonight. Still haven't had a shower, still need to change the kitchen bin bag and take the rubbish and recycling out. And I haven't even started on the to-do list.

Oh, gotta go, the plumber's here. Wonder if I'll get round to packing that hospital bag today or if I'll collapse in a heap and nap until it's time to pick Phoebe up again.

BC2 In Production - 26 Weeks

I thought it was about time I did another pregnancy post so I took my first belly shot the other day. It was interesting to note that depending upon the angle of the camera the bump looked different sizes, so here's a selection:

Big belly

Slightly smaller. Better hold on to it or it might disappear.

The magic disappearing belly.

Look, no waist!

And the belly's back.

I haven't blogged much about this pregnancy as it's pretty much the same as the first one and Phoebe provides much more interesting material than my ever expanding belly and constant exhaustion. But here are a few differences:

• I'm much less fit this time round.
• It's fun having an excited toddler to share this time with, although I sometimes feel a little sad that my attention is going to be taken away from her somewhat.
• I have less time for me, less time for exercise and less time to think about doing the right thing (i.e. pelvic floor exercises, not slouching, doing yoga instead of watching telly etc.) but then I did find all that rather exhausting the first time round.
• My obstetrician provides free fitness sessions. All the other girls, including the instructor, are much younger than me and enjoying the excitement of their first pregnancy. They don't seem that interested in my previous pregnancy, birth or child. I can't share their stories of decorating the nursery or buying our first playmat because I did all that 2 1/2 years ago. I feel old and boring.
• I'm much more tired this time round. Barely a week goes by when I don't have at least one nana nap during one of my non working days.
• This is quite a rubbish time of year to be pregnant. First trimester always sucks because of the high levels of hormones and tiredness. Second trimester is usually pretty good. Third trimester is when you start to feel heavy and get a bit tired and perhaps achy. Last time I had the third trimester during summer but it wasn't that hot. This time it took summer a while to get started but I was only a couple of weeks into my second trimester (and just recovering from all the hard work I'd put in before Christmas) when summer kicked in with a vengeance. It's been a long, hot and very, very humid couple of months and now that it's starting to cool down I'm starting to feel heavy and achy. Lovely. I can only hope that maybe I don't feel as heavy and achy as I did the first time around, although that's unlikely as I had a pretty smooth-sailing pregnancy.
• It's a lot harder choosing names the second time round especially when about a million of our friends have had babies since then and picked names we liked.

That's about that for now. I finally started pregnancy yoga last week (at 26 weeks of pregnancy - better late than never, I suppose). It's not as good as Sherry's classes but I didn't think it would be. However, that's probably a good thing as I haven't done it in so long. It's super relaxing and I floated out of the studio. The only bugger is that I have to be at work by 8am in order to leave on time. And last week I got called out of work to pick Phoebe up as daycare were concerned she had diarrhoea, which added to the stress of leaving work early. Thankfully Toby's parents were able to come over and watch her.

Well, I'm going to finish by sharing some fuzzy 3D images of our new baby's face. The cord was in front so it was a bit hard to get a nice clean image. Go on then, knock yourselves out wondering whether it's a boy or a girl and who it looks like.

Oh, and just because she's so damn cute and insisted on pressing the button on the camera's remote control when I was doing my belly shots, here are some photos of me and Phoebe:

No, wait! It's a girl!

This morning, eager to demonstrate to Toby Phoebe's ability to predict the gender of our baby, I said, "Tell Daddy what sort of baby we're having. Is it a boy baby or a girl baby?"

And Phoebe yelled, "Girl."

"Oh!" I said, "I thought it was a boy. Would you prefer a boy baby or a girl baby?"

And she said, "Girl."

Just to be sure I said, "Are you sure? You said you wanted a boy yesterday. Are you sure you want a girl baby and not a boy baby?"

"Yep."

Now I'm confused.

In other confusing matters, I'm looking for a baby car seat that will sit on our pram base. I didn't buy one with Phoebe because they are over $300 and it seemed a bit extravagant for something that you only use for a few months when you can hire one for $70. But it's one thing I really wished I'd had and I decided I'd buy one for our next baby, especially as this one will get shunted about a lot more than Phoebe, to and from daycare and other activities. I figure we'd spend $70 anyway and the re-sell value is pretty high on these so it's probably worth it.

I've been looking online to see how cheaply I can get one. I found one in a local shop for about $270. Not the cheapest but I figured maybe I could pick it up and avoid delivery costs, which would make it very competitive. I emailed the shop to find out if this was possible, and if not, what the delivery charge to my suburb would be. This was the reply I got:

We will price match the total of the online order including the freight in store. To pick up, simply make your order online and add in the comment box that you would like to collect from store.
To have it sent, just add your item to the cart and add your delivery details, the cart will quote you the freight.

Say, what? If I'm paying for delivery anyway why on earth would I bother going to the trouble to come to the shop to pick it up? Perhaps if I was homeless. There are two local online stores that seem unable to give me a delivery charge without first taking my credit card details. Call me cynical but this makes me nervous.