Is it too early to call Baby Bunching a success?

Baby bunching. I came across this term while mindlessly perusing the internet one day at work. (Sorry work.) I was bored and pregnant and while pregnant it seems I can only think about baby things when I'm bored and don't have anything better to occupy myself with. The girls over at BabyBunching.com apparently coined the phrase. Or at least they are claiming it. Baby bunching is, according to the site, having two kids under two, by accident or intent.

Next month (hopefully Elly waits that long to come) I will become a baby buncher. Something that I thought my friend Nicole, who chose to bunch, was a little crazy for wanting to do when I heard that she and her husband were trying to get pregnant when her first child was about nine months old. Not crazy in a bad way. Just crazy like, "Oh my gosh I could NEVER survive that" sort of crazy.

A few months later, Josh and I started talking about when we wanted another baby. In all honesty, I really wanted to get pregnant again and get that whole thing out of the way. I don't really like being pregnant and my first pregnancy was miserable. So I was thinking "band aid" approach. But as we talked we thought that it would be really hard on us, both physically and financially, to get pregnant right then. And I just felt like Evie deserved more time to be our only baby. And we REALLY couldn't afford it. Josh was getting ready to start going back to school full-time. He would still be working full-time but his hours were going to be cut back. Our expenses were going to go up and our income was going to go down. Not really the time to create an additional mouth to feed. So I got on a new birth control. Which I didn't use correctly. Oops...

Around the end of May I started feeling really crappy. Like all the time. I was on night shift then and was getting practically no sleep. I would get off work at 6 a.m., go home and catch a quick nap, then get up with Evie around 8 or 9 and take care of her until nap time after lunch. Then we'd snooze for a few hours, get up, I'd get ready for work and then go work another 12 hour shift. We worked a weird on-off schedule but I did this 7 out of 14 days. If it sounds miserable that's because it was. It was beyond miserable. But I was doing it. Up til May. Then suddenly caffeine started making me sick, I couldn't stay awake at night, I kept getting weird stomach bugs and having to leave work because I was throwing up. Admittedly pregnancy crossed my mind, but I didn't feel anything like I had with Evie.

I've never had a late period so when I missed mine everything clicked. The exhaustion, the sickness, it all made sense. I took the test on Father's Day right after I woke up and was so busy over the next hour taking care of Evie and cooking a big breakfast for my hubs (it was after all Father's Day) that I completely forgot to wake him up and tell him the results. In fact, I just left it sitting on the bathroom sink. When he got up and went to the bathroom himself, he noticed it. Then came running into the kitchen with way more enthusiasm than he had shown when we found out I was pregnant the first time. He was ecstatic.

When I asked him about the difference in reactions later he said that with Evie he had NO idea what to expect. We'd just talked about having a baby and decided that I would stop taking my birth control. We didn't really expect we'd get pregnant. It was a surprise. I had read some stuff on pregnancy and a lot of books and websites cautioned that it usually took 6 months for a couple to get pregnant and that it wasn't uncommon for it to take up to a year. Plus, I had been on the pill for nearly a decade. Medical opinions stated that it would take several months for my body to regulate itself and begin ovulating again.

Two pregnancies later I have come to the conclusion that I am apparently a very "Fertile Myrtle." And more serious steps need to be taken after Elly's birth to make sure we don't end up with 3 under 3.

Josh says he's more excited about Elly because he already has sort of an idea of what's going to happen and what the bring-home finished product will be like. At the beginning he was the only one excited. I was terrified. I mean, a baby is blessing. And I believe that God won't give you anything you can't handle. However, there was no way I could survive pregnancy on night shift. And a short time after finding out that I was pregnant I had several miscarriage scares. Lots of bleeding and numerous trips to the doctor where I expected them to give me their condolences and send me home in tears. So between worrying I was going to lose the baby, worrying how I'd survive pregnancy with a toddler while working nights, worrying how we were going to feed another baby...I can so vividly remember being so scared and stressed and worried. All while knowing that the stress and the worry were harder on the baby but I couldn't stop.

We made it through the first trimester (and second obviously) and I was incredibly blessed and fortunate to find myself moved to a daytime Monday through Friday position at work. Since then I have spent way less time worrying how I'd survive this pregnancy, because like every Mom knows, you just do what you gotta do. Somehow you find yourself handling things you couldn't have handled during your first pregnancy. Like getting very little sleep, never napping, chasing a toddler for 8 hours, cooking and cleaning and handling raw meat (just seeing raw meat in the grocery store made me sick when I was pregnant with Evie).

We passed the halfway point and I found myself marveling at how unbelievably fast this pregnancy was going by. It helps that this pregnancy has been flawless since we got out of that scary first trimester. Well, really, since after about the 8th week. Since then I've had no problems. Well, nothing I consider a "problem." My doctors want to stop my contractions because they're worried they're going to cause me to go into labor early. But unless I start dilating I'm not concerned. Besides I'm really looking to get this pregnant thing over with at about 37 weeks. I'm pretty sure if they stop my contractions I won't be having the baby naturally that early.

Now that I'm in my last couple of months (my last month is this goes my way) I am incredibly excited. It took me a little while to decide that maybe having 2 babies at once wasn't going to be a bad thing. The more time I have spent researching tips on surviving baby bunching, the more excited I've become. I've learned that a lot of people these days are bunching their babies. One reason seems to be that women are waiting til later in life to have their children and are bunching to beat the biological clock. Others felt like getting the whole infant, diaper, bottle thing out of the way all at once was best for them. Still others have done it so that their children are close emotionally due to their proximity chronologically. I feel like I'm joining a community of tough mommas. Tough mommas who have managed to survive two babies in diapers. Not just survive, but thrive.

I suffer no delusions that life is going to be perfect and hunky dory after Elly comes. I'm sure there will be times when I am so sleep deprived and frustrated that I just sit down and cry. Who knows, I might spend the first six months sleep deprived and frustrated. Lord, Elly might not sleep through the night til she's 3 for all I know, though I hope not! The point is, I remember what a newborn is like. And I know that things will be difficult. I think adding a child, regardless of how many other children you have or how old they are, is probably a challenge. As I read blogs and articles from other baby bunchers, I see the kinds of challenges I'm going to face and I feel like I'm as prepared as I can possibly be. I've also read about the joys and rewards that will come when the kids are older, and I absolutely cannot wait.

I'm so excited about becoming a baby buncher. And I know it seems insane. And possibly a little goofy. I've spent time researching what the best gear is to simplify life with two. I researched and picked out a double stroller (the Graco DuoGlider) and have been blessed with fabulous in-laws who purchased it for us. After doing a lot of reading and talking with my husband I decided having a second pack n play would make life easier. Then I found a really awesome Graco Playard super on sale (and it even matches my double stroller...not that anyone will ever see the two together, but hey, its neat) and got that. But I feel so much better prepared for this baby than I ever could have been for my first. I honestly don't feel like I would be so prepared if my eldest were 3 or 4 and I were getting ready to have a second. I still remember all the tricks that I learned for dealing with newborn problems, from swaddling, to feeding, tummy time and starting solids and teaching them to fall asleep. All those things are still so fresh in my mind. I knew what things to start stocking up on while pregnant because we would definitely use them and what things to wait on. I remembered not to buy many newborn clothes, because they don't wear them for long. I remember that they also outgrow newborn diapers super quick. We've got newborn and size 1 diapers. Probably enough to get us into size 2 diapers because I waited and got great coupons so we spent very little. We've stocked up on formula whenever there have been good Similac coupons. I've gotten some great Gerber and Beechnut coupons and managed to stock up on some stage 1 baby food. I've seen clothing on sale and managed to get things that Elly will be able to wear in the spring when she grows into them. Not that we don't still need stuff. I remember Evie going through more diapers than I could have ever imagined in the first six months of her life. And with two babies using them, we will probably use more wipes in the next six months than I even want to think about. In fact, thinking about it is kind of scary.

But I feel so prepared for this baby. I'm not worried or stressed about it. I know its awfully early but I already feel like a successful baby buncher. I feel like this whole thing is going to be great, difficult, but great. And although I may have moments when I'm ready to throw in the towel (or maybe that should be burp cloth?) things are going to be okay. Neither of my children will remember life without the other. They'll grow up thick as thieves and best buds. I'm sure they'll fight and pull each others hair. I'll have to intervene in disputes over who the blue jeans belong to and someone hogging the bathroom. But they'll have someone to play with and someone to talk to. Someone with all the same memories, who knows them better than anyone else for the rest of their life. And I think that is just awesome.

So sure, the baby hasn't been born yet. But I'm going to go ahead and call this whole second child thing a success. What do you think?