So you may have caught my announcement a couple of days ago that we are expecting baby number 3 in February!
Judging by the comments I received on social media, a lot of people were pretty surprised by the news...let me just assure you there was NOBODY more surprised than me by this news! ;)
Those of you who have had children before might be aware that they often warn you when you're leaving hospital with your baby that you'll be super-fertile for a while after giving birth...well I'll tell you something....they're not joking!!!
This baby was conceived very much by accident when Noah was just 6 weeks old! I was already back on the pill at the time and had been put on a course of antiobiotics to treat an infection, nobody warned me that these would interfere with the pill and I never even thought about it...
5 weeks later, I was sitting in our living room one evening when I was suddenly hit with a very familiar scent....it's a phantom smell that I find hard to describe and all I know is that I smell this every time I am pregnant ...as soon as I breathed that scent in that evening, I KNEW.
But I tried to tell myself it was just one of those things, probably my body re-adjusting after having Noah...but that I'd take a test to be sure because after all, my menstrual cycle hadn't returned to normal yet after Noah's arrival so it was hard to be sure of anything!
So...I took a test, fully expecting a negative result...I almost collapsed when I saw the positive line come up.
I told Jon, and he insisted it must be a faulty test - so he went out to the shops for more while I sat and panicked about the result - when he came back and we took another test, sure enough it was positive.
We were both in shock - there we were with a brand new baby, suddenly expecting again!!! What on earth...?!!
Complications
The shock soon turned into panic when I started experiencing sharp shooting pains in my left side, and ended up in A & E - early scans showed the little heartbeat in the right place and everything looking normal, but the Drs were concerned about how quickly the pregnancy had occurred after Noah's birth - I have an autoimmune disease called Graves disease which can lead to complications in pregnancy and birth and thyroid levels can be difficult to control after giving birth so they were concerned about me falling pregnant again so soon - I was also still battling an infected c section scar from Noah's birth and there was more concern about this and the strain a pregnancy might put on it so quickly, as the recommended wait between c sections is 2 years to allow your body to fully heal.
It was a long few weeks of waiting for answers, but after speaking with consultants for second opinions we were eventually given the all clear and told it was deemed safe to continue with the pregnancy.
We decided that, with Noah being so young, we wanted to just keep it between ourselves for a while - it may sound a bit silly but I couldn't help feeling sort of guilty that Noah wasn't getting any time to be the baby of the family, and I wanted him to just have some time in the limelight...I didn't want anybody to know about the new baby at his Christening as I wanted the focus firmly on HIM and HIS day, and my original plan was to let his First Christmas come and go before I announced the pregnancy.
Obviously as time went on this became increasingly harder - I was already showing, and I was bursting to talk about the pregnancy! - and so I decided I couldn't possibly wait until after Christmas to announce it, when there would only be 8 weeks left before the birth!
Instead we decided to wait until after the 20 week scan - which we had last week, and everything looked healthy and normal.
So here we are! That brings us up to date.
The Symptoms So Far
The pregnancy so far has been so very different to the last two in a lot of ways - perhaps its because nobody has really known about it so I've not talked about it much, but it's been so easy this time to forget that I'm pregnant at all.
I'm amazed to not have experienced ANY movement at all so far - with Tyne and Noah I had already felt lots of movement by this point so it certainly seems odd not to be feeling anything - but everything looked normal at the scan and baby was wriggling away, so I guess the movements are just gentle ones that I can't feel yet!
Anyone who followed my last two pregnancies will know that I suffered terribly with extreme sickness both times - with Tyne it lasted until 28 weeks and with Noah until 17 weeks - this time I had some nausea and sickness in the very beginning but nowhere near as extreme and it was completely gone by 12 weeks!
I haven't really had any other symptoms either - no headaches, no sore boobs, no rashes, none of the things I usually experience in pregnancy - the only symptoms I've had so far have been very sore feet and bad hip pain, but otherwise it's been completely symptomless!
Because of my last two c-sections births and how soon after Noah this pregnancy has come about, I have to be scheduled for an early c section delivery this time to ensure that I don't go into labor as that could potentially cause my previous scar to rupture - baby's due date is February 25th so the hospital have suggested I will most likely to be scheduled in to give birth around February 19th.
So there we have it - the story of my surprise 3rd pregnancy so far!
I'm not going to lie, the prospect of having 3 kids under 3 is a very daunting one and one I am definitely nervous about - I'd love to hear from anyone out there who experienced this or a close age gap between babies (Noah will be 10 and a half months when this baby arrives!) - please tell me it's not so bad?!
So...I'll be back next week to talk about finding out the gender of the baby and begin yet another baby countdown with bump watches and all! Until then...thanks for reading!
If you enjoy my blog, please consider following me on Bloglovin'
