35 Weeks Pregnant: Revising motherhood

This is the post I wrote at 35 weeks pregnant…

I’m 35 weeks pregnant and my bump is like one of those TV soap bumps. You know… when you’re watching EastEnders or something and say “Well that bump is so fake, you can tell it’s a beach ball shoved up her dress”… my bump actually genuinely looks like that. Customers at work have been asking if I’m absolutely sure it’s just one baby. Believe me when I say… I’ve had that little detail checked several times!

I’m still amazed though at how good I feel during this pregnancy. At this point with the twins I was very seriously ill and going into organ failure from undiagnosed HELLP Syndrome and I couldn’t walk due to SPD. This time I am feeling amazing.

I’ve been revising the parts of motherhood which I’ve forgotten. The stuff I’ve forgotten because it seems like SUCH a long time ago that the twins were newborns and a lifetime ago that Bunny was born. I really want to breastfeed, so I’ve been Googling the “perfect latch” to jog my memory. I tandem breastfed the twins exclusively for 3 months and mix fed them for 5 months, so I’d really like to give Baby Bear a good 6 months of breastmilk if I can. I’ve also been searching how to swaddle a baby, which is again, one of the things that have slipped my baby brain. My girls all loved being swaddled, so I wonder if Baby Bear will love it too. Although being a summer baby, I’ll have to be careful he doesn’t get too hot.

Really I should probably be revising other practical elements too – like fitting the car seat, folding and unfolding the pram, operating the breastpump… but… I’ve not actually bought any of those things yet! I changed jobs in March and due to babybrain making me repeatedly forget to prove to my employer that I am British, I am still waiting for my first payday! For someone who is 35 weeks pregnant, I am not the slightest bit prepared! I am still working 16-25 hours per week and I absolutely love my job, but it does mean I don’t have any child-free time where I’m not at work, so my time for getting things done around the house are strictly limited to the evenings.

The rest of caring for a newborn, I’m sure will come back to me. I’m a very maternal person so I find that motherhood mostly comes quite naturally to me. Well when they are small at least. The minefield for me comes when they reach school age and the “attitude” kicks in!