Surprise pregnancy ... two under 12months.

Finding out you are pregnant with within a year of having your first baby can certainly feel a bit daunting. Planned or not, it’s only natural for concerns and fears to crop up.

I will never forget the day I found out I was pregnant with Ailey, so soon after having Ava.

I had been at a routine ultrasound appointment for suspected gallstones when the radiologist said “I didn’t see it on your referral from the GP but you know your pregnant don’t you?”. I was shocked, I had zero idea, I had no symptoms and I was still adjusting to life as a first time mum (Ava was only 7 months). The radiologist had no gynae experience so apart from being able to tell me there was definitely a heartbeat there she couldn’t tell me how far along my pregnancy was and suggested I visited my GP on the Monday.

I couldn’t figure out how this had happened, we had literally just had a baby and I was on the pill . Like ever I knew it wasn’t 100% effective but I NEVER thought that I would be in the 2% of women who do get pregnant whilst on contraception. Despite having seeing the heartbeat for myself I still took a pregnancy test. Clear as day ... PREGNANT 3 WEEKS + showed up on the screen - I was still is disbelief.

The next few days were a bit of a blur - I couldn’t figure out dates as I had been having regular periods. We visited our GP on the Monday morning and with a lot of persuasion she agreed to refer us to the early pregnancy clinic for a dating scan the next morning. I never in a million years could have predicted what a was about to happened next.

During the scan the radiologist was checking all the measurements - I could clearly see that the baby was bigger than I anticipated. “You are roughly 21 WEEKS AND 4 DAYS” is what came out her mouth, “with a due date of 22nd October 2018” (just 4 days before Ava’s first birthday!). Over 5 months pregnant, no bump, no symptoms and no feelings of movement. I couldn’t believe it, my pregnancy was already over half way - the panic stated it set in. How was my body going to cope with another pregnancy so soon after the first, and how was I going to cope with two babies under the age of 1.

The next couple of months flew by - we went on a big family holiday, announced our new baby news, I returned to work after my first maternity leave, my bump eventually popped and I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes for the second time.

But the end of my pregnancy was VERY hard ... this last 2/3 months of being heavily pregnant whilst trying to keep up with a 10month old who was crawling everywhere was difficult. I was physically and emotionally drained - at my 36 week check up we discovered that the baby was very sleepy, my insulin requirement had reduced and it was decided by our team that the safest option was to get her out. I was instantly filled with mummy guilt - Ava’s life was just about to be completely turned upside down, quicker than we expected.

At 36 weeks & 4 days exactly 15 weeks after I first seen her on the screen, 337 days since I had given birth for the first time our beautiful little Ailey was born.

And just like that Ava became a big sister at 11 months old.

Once Ailey arrived she spent 4 days in NICU - the consultants decided that she was a little younger than the first anticipated as her lungs weren’t quite fully developed. She required a lot of help with her breathing, and she was fed through a tube for a few days.

Ailey suffered from reflux from the time she came home. Til this day I have never seen a baby so small throw up so much milk in one sitting - every time I fed her we had to be surrounded by towels and muslin cloths to catch the best of it.

At the same time as struggling with a newborn baby who constantly wanted fed and didn’t like to be put down, we had an 11 month old who was learning to walk and teething.

I spent most days feeling like I was failing one of them, it was so easy to feel overwhelmed - even two years down the line I can still often feel like this.

Looking back my life was a constant haze of nappy changes, feeding different babies, organising different sized baby clothes and remembering what drawer they went into, trying to remember who drank out what bottle, what size nappy went one what little bottom, figuring out in the middle of the night which baby was crying.

Now life is challenging in different ways - we juggle nursery runs, playgroup runs, potty training and dance classes. Somedays it runs like clock work, other days it goes to sh*t... somedays I can make a homemade dinner, others it’s a frozen pizza for dinner. Some days we do messy play, others they have screen time - it’s all swings and roundabouts.

As cliche as this sounds ... double the babies is double the work, but it’s also double the love, double the fun and double the cuteness and what’s not to love about that?