Here We Go Again!

I've been on the fence about expanding the family for quite awhile. Rachael is incredibly smart, very strong-willed, and has the energy of a gerbil on crack, so the idea of adding another child was an exhaustion I didn't want to experience.

I went back to work when Rachael was 18 months. The job was low-key and in my field. I wasn't in love with it, but I was content. We moved to California a year and a half later, and that is when I started with a company that consumed my life. I diluted myself into thinking that if I worked hard enough I could reach a point where I could put my family first again, but that never happened. The result was my near absence for 16 months, my daughter's increasing neediness, and my husband's extreme frustration at a schedule that didn't adequately reward me for all of the hours that I took away from them.

The good news is that I woke up and got my priorities straight before I lost everything that ever meant anything to me. In no time I was able to repair the damage done to my marriage, and guarantee Rachael that she would never take a backseat again. The only thing remaining from a year and a half of hell is the guilt I feel for having made a real dumbass decision, but life goes on.

I started a new job instantaneously that resembles the job I had in Seattle, less the dysfunction. I wanted to wait a bit more before we decided to have another child, once again, out of loyalty for my job, but this time Jeff was adamant. He had waited long enough, so here I am expecting our last child, because I agreed to two and only two.

There are vast differences between #1 and #2. I freaked out at six weeks along, because I was as large in my second month with Baby Two as I was in my fourth month with Rachael. I was convinced that my sudden girth meant I had more than one little sprout swimming around in there. Thankfully, my sister-in-law who has been a midwife for 20 years assured me it was just a second baby, and that your body basically has something called "muscle memory". This means that the moment you get pregnant with your second child your body says, "hey I remember this" and inflates like a damn blimp.

The nice thing about my sudden expansion is that it is basically all in my stomach and boobs. I can get into my jeans and pull them up my thighs and over my butt, I just can't zip or button them.

I'm tired as hell, and usually ready to pass out by 7:00pm, which puts the kibosh on exercise. Aside from that I've had very little morning sickness just like the first time. The only other difference is my cravings. With Rachael I hungered for spicy Thai food, large amounts of chocolate, root beer and KFC original recipe chicken. I gained 70 lbs. during my Rachael pregnancy, but that's not going to happen this time.

So far, chocolate gives me heartburn, and all I want is tart. No, not the yummy, cream filled fruit tarts, caper, olives, berries, and an assload of Craisins! Root beer is too sugary, so my drink of choice is ice water-lakes and rivers of ice water-which means between the kid sitting on my bladder and the insane amount of water I'm up peeing at least five times a night. I just see it as nature's way of getting me ready for the every two hours feedings, and also very annoying.

I am excited about having a new little one to cuddle. Rachael has no trace of baby left in her, in fact she has already informed me that she will be changing all of the pee pee diapers and I can change the poopy ones (her dad made the same deal with me when she was the baby). So I guess I welcome 2009 with enthusiasm for a new president, a new place of employment, and a new little punk to unleash on the world. Here we go again!