Pregnancy: Week 20

Kick, kick, kick, kick, kick! There you are baby! I guess a certain little someone sensed my impatience last week because the day I turned 20 weeks, I got a little kick. And then another. And another.

They’re soft and gentle, and not yet strong enough to distract me when I’m moving around. But in the quiet moments of the day, there they are. These insistent little reminders – a little someone saying “Hello! Here I am!”

It’s a daily reminder and a daily reassurance that I’m pregnant and everything’s okay. 🙂

With that in mind, we’ve started getting Little Man’s room ready for a new addition. (As we live in a two bedroom house, it is inevitable that this baby will eventually share Little Man’s room.) Last week, we sold the double-bed from the room and converted Little Man’s cot bed back to a cot. Actually we left one side off for now and dressed it up with cushions to make a “couch” – somewhere nice to snuggle and read. I’m assuming it will be almost a year before the new baby sleeps in the cot so it makes sense to use it for something else in the meantime.

And then we made a big purchase – a new bed for Little Man. We went with a Thuka Midsleeper, and decorated it with pirate curtains underneath. There was such excitement about it when we picked it out in the shop that I expected it to be the same once it was set up at home. But it seems that too much change at once proved a bit scary. That and an unfortunate movie clip from Tangled that Little Man saw where the witch steals the baby and cuts the baby’s hair. The idea resonated with him for some reason and he was terrified that someone would steal him or his “new baby” or come along in the middle of the night and cut his hair. Nothing we said could convince him otherwise.

Thuka Midsleeper: Little Man’s is just like this, but in a pirate theme.

I sought advice from the other Irish Parenting Bloggers and they had great suggestions. One I particularly liked was from Joanna from Musings of a Hostage Mother – she suggested filling a spray bottle with “magic water” and telling Little Man that if I sprayed it on his hair the magic would protect him. But when I suggested the magic spray to him, he looked at me (like I was an idiot!) and asked “Are you kidding?”, totally deadpan. This kid is too clever for me sometimes.

Time to try another approach. I resorted to his love of all things Ben 10 and asked if he wanted to wear his Omnitrix watch to bed so he could turn into an alien if he needed to during the night. “That’s just pretend,” he informed me. Clearly the patronising was getting me nowhere.

In the end, he fell asleep in his bed in Charlie’s arms, but before the night was out, he ended up in our bed. And the following night was much the same. We decided to run with it until he got used to his new room and new bed. Thankfully by the third or fourth night, the witch from Rapunzel was fading into a distant memory, and he was happy to spend the night by himself in his new bed. Phew! Oh except that he’s not sleeping on the top of the bed as we had imagined, but in his pirate camp underneath! To be honest, I like that better. At least I don’t have to worry about him rolling out in the middle of the night. 🙂

Find my complete pregnancy journal here.