I feel like I've hardly mentioned my current pregnancy over the past few months. It's been all very straight forward until this week, when I had a second vomiting bug in three weeks and ended up in hospital.
I just couldn't keep a thing down for 12 hours - not even water - and so I was understandably concerned about how it would be affecting Twiglet. A quick trip to my GP and she rang the ante-natal clinic who saw me immediately. Everything was fine with Twiglet - we got to hear his/her heartbeat, and he/she was constantly on the move for what seemed like 24 hours (a bit of a worry in itself, but it's settled down now).
They kept me in for about 8 hours until I could keep down a few bottles of fluid - and thankfully I avoided the anti-sickness pills and a drip. But it meant that my OH had to take an important day off work (again) and we had to rely on grandparents to look after Charlotte. All which made me feel really guilty.
And that guilt got worse later in the week when Charlotte's nasty cough got worse and worse. After two pretty much sleepless nights (on the part of OH as he insists I sleep because I'm 7 months pregnant) her Dad took her to the doctors. They couldn't find anything really wrong, but gave her an inhaler to help just in case. He then took her to nursery, but they called a few hours later for her to be picked up as her cough was causing her so much distress. And through all of this, where was I? At work. Feeling increasingly guilty.
Because I'm self-employed if I don't go to work I don't get paid. If my OH takes (yet another) day off to help with the childcare he at least does still get paid. So on top of feeling guilty that it should be me looking after Charlotte when she's poorly, distressed and can't sleep, there's also the guilt that he seems to be doing it all (including battling to get her to eat anything once again) while I swan off leaving them to it when he's also had the bare minimum (if any) sleep.
Only working for one more month (and then it's only one or two days a week) - and then we'll have a whole world of new worries with Number Two. To be honest, the only thing that's really concerning me at the moment is breastfeeding the tiny one with a toddler demanding my attention at the same time.
In the early months it would take Charlotte at least an hour each time to feed - every couple of hours. I have no idea how I'll be able to do that AND look after Charlotte. But people manage somehow - hopefully she'll start playing a bit more by herself when she realises Mummy is busy. And hopefully the next one will sleep better in the day than she did so I can give her plenty of attention when her brother or sister is napping. That's a lot of "hopefully"s!
