Second Kid Stress

So here I am, trucking along into my 25th week of pregnancy with Baby #2. That puts us into viability range, which of course, is a nice relief of a milestone. In only a few short weeks I will be pushed over into the Third Trimester. I am starting to feel the stress of having two children creeping up on me.

I'm sure all toddler and newborn moments
 look like this, right? RIGHT?!?!

I know very well I won't be the first to do it, but I am spending more and more time lately trying to wrap my preggo-brain around the logistics of the first few days/weeks/months of my newborn's life while intermingled with my toddler's day-to-day needs. Looking back on my experiences with my first born, I think about how easy it was from my perspective now (go back and read some old posts and see how much I am rewriting history here) and if I was going to be a first-time mom again (which is impossible), I'd be SO. READY.

But that's not really the case here. As much as I know all to well how it works to have a baby, I know NOTHING about what it is like to have a baby AND A TODDLER. And my freakouts are getting a little bigger by the day.

Of course, we must plan for the hospital stay, and my toddler will not likely enjoy or understand that experience and is best left at home until the baby has arrived. This requires planning, especially since we have no family nearby, are new to our new country and therefore have a limited social network, and well, Bugga has never been away from both her parents at once for longer than an hour in her life. And though I "lucked out" last time by only being in labor during daylight hours, there's always that chance that I will need to call SOMEONE to high tail it over to the house at 2AM to watch my daughter as we go speeding off to Labor & Delivery.

Once we get home, then at least we will have a couple weeks of man-on-man coverage with both kids since my husband will be home (thanking my uterus for birthing babies during end-of-the-year holidays once again). But once I am left to my own parenting when he goes back to the office, I am trying to wrap my brain around how I will juggle two severely different nap schedules, nursing, and toddler entertainment and activities that will likely require getting out of the house. Did I mention I'll be doing this in the wintertime? In Canada? Yeah, think snow - lots and lots of snow. I'm not even going to entertain my husband's jokes about nursing outside.

What tiny advice I have obtained here and there is that baby #2 (and any baby after that, should we be crazy enough to go for more...uh....forget I typed that) will be required to be much more flexible then we ever gave baby #1 credit for. Gone will be the eerily quiet household when the baby is sleeping. Gone will be the peaceful nursing sessions in the dark in the glider. And a myriad of other things too, I'm sure.

I'm trying to collect more information on how to plan for the changes, but I'm still coming up short for my own comfort. I found an e-book (The ABC's of Baby #2) last night and devoured it at the gym today - helpful but brief. If anyone out there in internet land has any tips, or resources, I am ready!!!