I’ve decided my midwife doesn’t lie to me. She told me “you’re going to show sooner, you’re going to be bigger, and it’s not going to be like your first pregnancy at all”. She was right, and I appreciated her honesty and not making me think that I was just getting really fat too soon. She tries not to laugh at my husband, who is guilty of being neurotically overprotective normally and more now that he’s responsible for keeping me extra safe to keep his 2^nd child perfectly safe. I have to admit it’s a bit endearing when before I ingest anything, he goes on Google to “make sure” everything’s safe. I won’t complain, it’s this sort of neurosis that keeps me in massages and homemade fruit salad.

Lucky for me, I’m told the second time labor is generally much easier. I like the phrase “generally”. It gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, I can sneeze and there he is. My midwife informed me that if I could do it once without an epidural, the second time I won’t likely need one either. No, I don’t have a moral reason for not wanting one nor do I think anyone who has one is less of a woman or a baby when it comes to pain. My reason is more childish: I hate needles. The fact that I hate needles is only worsened by a lack of faith in a medical professional to be that close to my spine without either killing me or paralyzing me or some other unpleasant side effect because I happened to have the doctor who’s working off a hangover. Yes, I’m aware of how irrational and crazy this sounds, but you won’t convince me to change my mind. The unfortunate side of me being irrational and crazy is that I’m also incredibly stubborn.

The biggest advantage is that you know what you’re walking into. You know that your plan doesn’t always pan out the way you planned it, and you lack that anxiety of “what do I do now?” Even better, you don’t have that anxiety of “will I be a good parent?” If you didn’t kill the first one and they ended up basically decent, you’re in good shape this time around. That’s what I keep telling myself anyways. It comes back to you, every part of the labor and first year of being a parent though it sometimes comes back slowly. My midwife informed me when I told her I was afraid I’d forgotten the pain, that I never really forgot and it’ll come back to me quick. I hope she’s wrong on that front though, I would like to never remember how painful it was. If Michelle Duggar is still in pain with the amount of children she popped out, I don’t think there’s any hope for the rest of us.