Pregnancy: Week 27

About 24 hours after I entered the final trimester, it was like someone flicked a switch and the tiredness hit. I can barely keep my eyes open. At a time when Little Man is giving up his naps (for the second time), an hour or two of sleep is all I can think about in the afternoon.

I think it’s partly because I’m feeling full and stretched and finding it hard to get comfortable at night. I’m so grateful for Gentlebirth or I wouldn’t be getting any sleep at night at all. On those nights when I am feeling particularly restless, it helps so much to stick in my earphones and listen to my birth preparation track and birth music track. Between them they usually relax me enough that I can drift off to sleep.

It’s not much to complain about really. But I’m still complaining! It’s very hard to be tired when you still have a toddler to look after. And a job to go to. And a house to keep in order…

I’m trying my best to spend good quality time with Little Man because I know that in a few months time everything will change and we’ll never get this time back again. I wonder if he senses it because, even though Daddy has been his favourite for as long as he could express a preference, that seems to have changed since Christmas, and there is no doubt that I am now the clear favourite. No one but me will suffice for stories and for cuddles and for playing castles, and going on imaginative adventures in our rocket to the moon and back.

While we sit in our rocket (a.k.a. The couch with the cushions cunningly rearranged to make a spacecraft) waiting to get to the moon so that we can have a picnic, Little Man takes the opportunity to ask me questions about the baby. Where is she? What is she doing in there? Is she having a snack? Or watching tv?

I read a very interesting article last week all about preparing your toddler for the arrival of a new sibling and it said that a trap that a lot of people fall into is that they oversell the baby, and then the reality of the crying, and constant feeding, and busy mammy is a shock to the toddler, who has been promised a playmate. So with this in mind, we have gently tailored the narrative this week to try to give Little Man some realistic expectations.

Now he knows that when his little sister arrives, she won’t be much fun. She will eat and sleep and make lots of dirty nappies. She’ll be very small and she will keep mammy very busy. Mammy will make milk for the baby, and she will sleep in Mammy and Daddy’s room until she is bigger. (Bigger is now defined as “when she has teeth” – this definition is Little Man’s, but I’m fairly sure it stems from an earlier chat we had about how babies can only drink milk because they don’t have teeth.) Mammy might not have as much time to play with him but when she is feeding his little sister she can read him stories.

Later his little sister will get bigger (when she has teeth!) and then he can teach her lots of things. The first thing he is going to teach her is how to smile and laugh. But later he plans to teach her how to run and how to fight baddy monsters. What else is a big brother for?

So that’s where we are right now with our conversations about the baby’s arrival. I must admit I’m really enjoying them. Sometimes we go a day or two with no mention of the baby, and then other days he has obviously been puzzling over things and he has lots of questions for me about her. I look forward to seeing how he deals with the reality of her arrival.

Find my complete pregnancy journal here.