8 Things To Expect When You're Pregnant With Your Second Baby

Going through your second pregnancy and having your second baby is a whole new pain in the ass.

A part of me desperately misses being a first-time mom. Not the permanent state of tiredness or near death experiences due to utter exhaustion. Nah.

You can read all about my struggles and hopeless moments as a first time mum here.

I simply miss the first-time hype of being a mom.

You know what I mean?

Because to be perfectly honest, no one really gives a rat’s ass about any of your subsequent spawn — and I don’t really blame them.

On the real, though, you probably won’t even remember you’re pregnant yourself until you’ve eaten three rolls of sushi and then curse yourself for forgetting, all the while thinking, Totally fucking worth it. That raw tuna though.

Welcome to the second child syndrome — if you thought your life was already going downhill, well, it’s about to crumble like a Kardashian marriage.

You won’t need a pregnancy test to know you’re pregnant.

No, really. You won’t.

Chances are, you’re going to start looking pregnant the morning after conception.

Save yourself 10 bucks on a pregnancy test and listen to your body attempting to tell you that it’s not the half-dozen Nutella donuts you devoured all on your own last night — it’s a freakin’ human growing inside of you.

Your now highly attuned mom bod seems to think it’s completely acceptable to make you look like the ’90s video game, Kirby, at 5 weeks pregnant.

Friends and family will forget you’re pregnant.

The most likely reaction you’ll receive from friends after breaking your exciting news will be “You’re pregnant? No way. I thought you were still shedding weight from your last pregnancy.”

Thinking of making an announcement post on Facebook? Don’t bother. Unless you’re emotionally prepared for half the amount of likes and engagement. If any.

Even your own mother’s excitement will be pale in comparison to your first. After all, she’s trying to enjoy her retirement, and it’s a little hard to c’est la vie when you keep adding to the squad and seem to be in the process of converting her home into a daycare centre.

Visitors? What visitors?

Friends and family will come up with excuses of all sorts after you have your second baby. After all, there are more pressing matters to attend to, like, binge watching the second season of Stranger Things.

I heard my maternity ward roomie, who was a first-time mom at the time, breathe a sigh of relief after visiting hours finished because her entire day was scheduled with visits from family and friends from the moment she popped open her eyes.

I could barely even find her in the sea of gifts, flowers, and cards that she was buried beneath.

I looked at her wistfully, grabbed her shoulders, and told her to embrace the fuck out of it because the next time she gives birth again, she will wind up like me — nostalgic and lonely AF.

Look at me, woman. My only company is that daddy long-legs spider hanging off the ceiling.

You’ll either become an alcoholic or have a heart attack.

Overdose on caffeine or drown your sorrows with red wine — which do you choose?

Yeah, I’d go both too.

I can honestly say that I spend a large portion of my waking hours brainstorming creative ways of getting more caffeine inside of me.

Vape?

Ground coffee beans sprinkled over my toast like 100s and 1000s?

Realistically, you’re either going to be on your 12th shot of espresso and on the brink of cardiac arrest, or you’re going to YOLO it on a Monday night and raid the wine cabinet after you’ve put the kids to bed.

You might get confused for being an anti-vaxxer.

At any given moment with your first baby, you’ll know their exact head circumference, precise weight, and how many nanometers he’s grown in the past week.

That’s how insanely obsessed I was with charting the growth of my first baby.

Not a single appointment with your maternal child and health nurse or doctor was missed, in fact, you were probably adding more appointments on top of appointments.

When it comes to your second baby, you can hardly even remember what you named them, let alone how much they’ve grown.

Look, they’re alive, all right? They appear to be eating, shitting, and batting their eyelids. I’m going to assume they’re growing somewhere in between those things.

You will have lost count of all the appointments you have missed and the vaccines they were due to have. Your doctor will probably start to think that you’ve joined the anti-vax movement, despite being completely pro-vax. It’s just that on top of caring for two kids and trying to keep yourself alive in the process, shit gets overlooked.

Baby? Wait. What baby?

The truth of the matter is that most waking times of the day, you’ll be so preoccupied with your toddler and trying to remember what you were doing in the first place, that you’ll 100% forget the fact that you gave birth to a second child.

Was it all a lucid dream? Were you even pregnant? Is this life even real?

Who knows.

All I know is that having kids is comparable to coming down from a massive trip or suffering a hangover that lasts for a decade, except you don’t get to sleep it off.

You’re constantly dehydrated, your ears are always ringing from the yelling and screaming, and you have a pounding headache the second you wake up.

Then out of nowhere, you hear a baby’s cry emanate from somewhere within your house, and it dawns on you that you are now responsible for the livelihood of two miniature human beings.

Yes. Right. I had a baby. Where did I put him again?

Let the hunger games begin.

Having your second child with a toddler in the mix may have seemed like a good idea at the time — your brain construes this heartwarming image of your two children playing happily together, sharing toys and exchanging adorable smiles at one another.

Truth is, you have just welcomed the Hunger Games into your home.

Most daylight hours are spent ensuring that they don’t somehow kill one another, because the moment you turn your head, your toddler will most likely come up with the brilliant idea to leap off the couch and use the baby as a landing pad.

Get used to that muffin top of yours.

It sure ain’t going nowhere.

The retention of unwanted weight after your second pregnancy is a bizarre phenomenon, considering that your postpartum diet consists of 12 cups of coffee, your toddler’s leftovers, and a mushed blueberry you found on the floor.

So, the question lingers: Why the flipping hell do I still look 6 months pregnant?

Here’s my theory:

The female body is a clever thing, for it’s well aware that the probability of starving to death from looking after two children is so dangerously high, we have now evolved into bears with the ability to put our bodies into hibernation.

Hence, why we have such hard time losing weight. I mean, your body’s probably stocked up on a few winter seasons’ worth of fats for survival purposes to make up for all the times coffee and wine become your meal replacements.

Leave the house, you say?

As a mom desperately trying to remain sane, you’re constantly on the lookout for activities for toddlers to undertake so you can take a breather, or a micronap.

Yes, some of these activities will require you to leave the house.

I know. Fuck me, right?

Other than taking the entire morning trying to convince your 2-year-old to put on their shoes, you’re also going to spend most of your time packing the diaper bag. It’s easier to prepare for an apocalypse than it is to leave the house with kids.

Of course, your now “independent” toddler will insist on climbing into the car seat all on their own. Brilliant.

Two Christmases later, they finally manage to wriggle their way into the seat. You can literally feel yourself aging in the process.

Oh, snap. You left the baby in the house. When you return home to retrieve bubba, you peek at the time and realize that it’s probably time to start cooking dinner.

After taking an entire day to pack and ready your kids for a trip outdoors, you realize it was the worst idea that you’ve ever come up with and resign yourself to spending the rest of your life within the four walls of your home.