Photo credit: Tender Nest Portraits
This is the story of my pregnancy with my second child, Julep. I’ll share details of my pregnancy with my oldest son MaiTai in a future post.
After this post, check out Julep’s birth story here.
Category: Second Trimester
Preparing Big Sibling For a Baby
Not too many weeks after the positive pregnancy test, we told MaiTai he was going to be a big brother.
We wondered if he even knew what it meant to be a brother… to have a brother or sister… or even the differences between himself at not quite three years old and a newborn baby, much less one in a womb. He knows what a womb is, right?
We had a lot of work to do! Or so I thought.
PUPPP in Pregnancy
What do you do when you can’t scratch the itch?
I’d heard of itchy skin during pregnancy before. Caused by the stretching and growth of new skin to accommodate expansion of new life within and coupled with pregnancy hormones that can dry out the tissues, itchiness is as common as stretch marks.
What I hadn’t heard of until a few weeks ago is a condition called Pruritic urticarial papules and plaques of pregnancy (PUPPP or PUPPS) or polymorphic eruption of pregnancy (PEP) as it’s known in the UK.
I noticed an odd rash appear on my abdomen a few times during the start of my second trimester. Strange, I never had this during my first pregnancy, I thought… But it would disappear within a few hours each time and didn’t feel painful.
Until it really did.
**Advance Notice – This post contains several photos of my PUPPP rash (only abdomen is visible)**
Why We’re “Still” Breastfeeding…
To the people who ask…
“Why do you *still* breastfeed?”
“Why do you breastfeed a toddler?”
…I could tell you a few things.
I could tell you that the World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding for a minimum of two years and beyond as desired by the mother and child.
I could tell you that the biologically natural age of weaning for humans is between 2.5 – 7 years.
I could tell you that breast milk is just as nutritious (and actually packed with more antibodies) for young children as it is for young babies.
I could tell you that my child likes to have the option of nursing for comfort, just as much as he likes hugs, kisses, and self-soothing techniques.
I could tell you that breastfeeding is more than just food.
Many of these answers worked for a while. A good two years, really.
But now that I’m growing a second child in my womb and MaiTai is three years old, the questions have changed.
“Why do you *still* breastfeed during pregnancy?”
“Will you tandem nurse and why would you do that?”
This time the answer is simply… I don’t know.
Are You an Expert at Guessing An Unborn Baby’s Sex? (Plus 28 Old Wives’ Tales)
There are quite a few ways to guess a baby’s sex. As far as concluding whether to expect a boy or girl, you could try the Nub Theory, Ramzi Method, over-the-counter gender test kits, Harmony test or chorionic villus sampling or amniocentesis done at a medical facility, and probably some other things I’ve yet to discover.
Old wives’ tales aren’t rooted in any kind of fancy science, but they can be fun to test out. Who wants to get all technical with fun anyways?!
Think you can accurately predict an unborn baby’s sex? Here’s a rundown of many common old wives’ tales that claim to know the secret behind your baby’s sex. You can use these clues along with the comparisons between my first pregnancy with a boy and my second/current pregnancy with a… well, you make the guess and let me know what you think 🙂
I’ll reveal the answer in an upcoming post!
(FYI, it’s the sex not the gender we find out by noting what type of gonads a baby has… though I get how the term “Gender Reveal Party” caught on whereas the potentially confusing “Sex Reveal Party” never will. And another side wondering: why don’t any of these tests account for potential intersex babies?).
Mama's Milk, No Chaser 