In This Episode:
[0:13] – Question from a viewer: how did you know your body was ready for baby number two?
[0:25] – Disclaimer: everyone is different!
[0:41] – Our general thought process behind child-spacing
[1:24] – The four key points we considered when planning for baby number two
[1:39] – Factor one: sleep
[2:34] – Factor two: nutrition
[3:38] – Factor three: hormones
[4:26] – Factor four: the emotional component
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[0:00] Hello and welcome to Mama in Making! I’m Rochelle Serna and today I wanted to
talk a little bit about making the decision have another baby.
[0:13] So I got a question from a viewer, it was a great question, she wanted to know, you know, what factors went into play when we were thinking about growing our family, and how we knew that now is the right time.
[0:25] I want to say that I think this is a really, really personal and individualized question. Everyone’s gonna have different answers, and there’s all sorts of reasons why, you know, a couple or family might decide it’s time to grow.
Baby Now or Baby Later?
[0:41] I know, for us, when Vincenzo was about six months old people started asking when we were goina’ have another one. And a lot of people around me, and the way I grew up, we had babies close together. I’m very close to my brother in age, my husband’s very close to his sister, and so a lot of people were saying that we wanted to not wait too long, we wanted to make sure that they were close in age and that they’d be going to school together.
And then from a nutritional side, we know that pregnancy’s huge demand on our bodies. And so a lot of people in the field recommend waiting awhile and letting your body rebuild and be able to have what you need to carry on to the next baby, give to the next baby, as well as taking care of yourself.
Out Top Four Family-Growing Factors
[1:24] But it was really fun for me to sit down and think about, you know, what were the factors that really played a part in our story.
And it came down to four key things: it was sleep, nutrition, hormones, and then an emotional component. So I’ll dig into each one of those little bit.
[1:39] So, sleep! Um, Sleep was a really rough thing for us at the very beginning, when Vincenzo was born.
…And not even at the beginning {Oops! face}…
It wasn’t until about eighteen to twenty months that he started sleeping six hour stretches regularly. Before then he was sleeping three hour chunks all the time. And when he was sleeping like that there was no thought of another baby.
Like, if someone even mentioned it, I just—my brain would shut down because I couldn’t imagine having a newborn in a situation where I already wasn’t getting any sleep. So, even though I know you get pregnant, you have nine months, and hopefully things will change. I just couldn’t even process the thought.
So sleep was a huge factor, and once he started giving me those six to eight hour stretches, then I felt more comfortable and more ready. My body felt more balanced, and the brain fog went away, and that’s really when I started thinking about having another baby.
[2:34] And the next thing is nutrition! And of course I love nutrition. I love eating real foods that are going to nourish my body. But when it comes to pregnancy and thinking about having another baby, you know—after a pregnancy before, whether it be first, second, or third, your body’s pretty drained.
There’s a big demand when you’re pregnant. You’re growing human inside of you! And then also even nursing, you know, is a demand on your nutrients stores, so I really wanted to give my body some time to rebuild. And, you know, we eat pretty nutrient dense food anyway and we keep out things that may drain some of those nutrients.
And then, um, I also worked with a nutritionist that kinda’ kept me in check and just saw where I had any holes to fill and she recommended different foods and nutrients, and luckily my body was pretty much able to do it on its own given the the two years now that um I’ve had since Vincenzo was born. But I did get, have, a couple of real food high-quality supplements they used to fill in holes there.
So those two things were taken care of.
[3:38] Next was hormones! So this is extremely important.
Well first of all, I didn’t even get my cycle back until he started sleeping through the night. So until that eighteen to twenty months I started feeling a little more normal, my adrenals we’re in a better place and that helped my hormones become in a better place. And so when I started getting my cycle back, luckily it was really regular. Everything came back really strong and healthier than it ever was before I had Vincenzo.
My hormone levels were more even, and I think a large part of that is just the approach taken with, you know, a—de-stressing and meditation, and I think that’s helped a lot with my hormone regulation because my stress levels are a lot more balanced.
[4:26] The last thing is an emotional component. We really, you know, it took us a while to be ready to have another baby.
For a while we thought, you know, my pregnancy was really rough we had a hard time with that, and we weren’t getting sleep, and we were like, “gosh do we wanna have another one? Do we wanna do this again?”
You know, it was like you have to—they say you have to forget. You have to forget the labor, you have to forget what it’s like at the beginning, because then you just look back and remember the good things.
And so we really took a little while to kind of…forget, and um, now when we look back at pictures we really, we remember all those good positive things and we feel more energized and more emotionally able to give that, um, when a new baby decides to join our family.
[5:13] So those are the four things: the sleep, the nutrition, the hormones, and the emotional component.
It’s such a fun time and I am so excited to share it with you.
Talk soon, bye! {waving}
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To growing in love,
