Ten very real ways pregnancy #2 is EXTREMELY different to pregnancy #1

After having decided that I was clearly made for motherhood by the time my little girl was two, I persuaded my then boyfriend (now husband) into making another one.  Clearly, we are also made for making babies, because it was (another) tried-once-got-pregnant kind of a job, and just like that, baby #2 was on the way. The thing is, I discovered fairly quickly that being pregnant this time around was a liiiittle different than it had been the first time. For starters, there was a lot less of the "you're a magical vessel carrying a miracle." Now you're just a mum having another baby. (Like; yawn, how normal!) And it didn't end there, my friends. Here are, in fact, ten more ways being pregnant the second time was a whole lot different to when I was expecting Baby #1: 1. The Books Baby #1: When you are pregnant with your first baby you want all the information. I literally devoured books on all three trimesters, pregnancy super-foods, baby names, ancient birthing rituals, baby sleep techniques (such a waste of time and money!), how-to guides for making baby food and books on preparing your relationship for a baby. You name it, I read it, Baby #2: The only book I read when I was pregnant the second time was The Gruffalo's Child. 2. The Morning Sickness Baby #1: I would literally take to the sofa for even the tiniest hint of nausea. Baby #2: You puke, wipe and get on with life again (after all; toddlers, as it turns out, have very little compassion for how crippling morning sickness can be!) 3. The Weekly Update E-Mails Baby #1: Signed up to every newsletter known to man so I could keep a running update on what size fruit the baby correlated to (which I thought was so cute and not at all annoying the first time around). Baby #2: Had no time to even check e-mails, never mind ponder over what week baby went from kumquat to kiwi. 4. The Pregnancy Awareness Baby #1: When I was pregnant the first time, my pregnancy consumed me. I thought about being pregnant pretty much non-stop and I talked about it incessantly. Baby #2: “Oh yeah … I guess I’m still pregnant.” Seriously; when you already have a toddler, it's hard to keep track of time and the current state of things. 5. The Maternity Clothes Baby #1: Could NOT wait for my belly to pop so I could finally justify splurging on some actual maternity clothes. Baby #2: I bought ONE pair of maternity jeans at eight months when I could no longer squeeze into anything else I owned. 6. The WORRIES Baby #1: I worried about EVERYTHING. Measles, meningitis, autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other developmental and mental disorders. I worried the baby wouldn't like me or latch onto my boobs or that I wouldn't automatically feel all that baby love you are meant to feel. I worried about kidnappers and cats and crazy flesh-eating bacteria and pretty much anything else you can think to worry about. Baby #2: I worried about sleep. Or, more so maybe, the potential lack of it... 7. The Eating (Oh, The Eating!) Baby #1: I eat food that was so safe, so organic, so local, so clean I drove everyone else around me bonkers. Baby #2: I woke up in the middle of the night and ate sour worm sweets.   8. The Excitement level Baby #1: People are SO excited! With my first pregnancy, people just seemed to freak out with excitement — especially the future grandparents. I was creating the miracle of life inside of me and apparently, that is worthy of being seriously fawned over. Baby #2: “Oh … you’re knocked up again?” It’s not that people weren't happy for me when I was having my second baby… they were. Just less hysterically enthusiastically so. Like a more subdued euphoria. 9. The Parenting Expectations Baby #1: Sweet, sweet naivety. During pregnancy one, my thoughts were mostly consumed with visions of dressing up my little bundle in adorable outfits and snuggling together on the sofa. Parenthood stretched out ahead of me like one gorgeous Pinterest board of loveliness and sweet Kodak moments. Baby #2: "You can do this!" 10. The Social Media Documentation Baby #1: The first time around I took a ton of “bump-date” photos (weekly + a session with an actual photographer!) to document the beauty of pregnancy. Baby #2: In every photo from my second pregnancy I have my arms full of my little girl, meaning no-one can even see that there is a bump there.