Preparing for two...

As I write, I'm a week overdue. Or rather, it's not me that's late (I'm never late) but Baby Buckley 2.0, who was due on 4th May. So I'm hovering about in that strange space between nothing and something, waiting for something Very Important to happen, but having no idea when that might be. Baby B has been a tricksy little thing, having been in the GO position for ages now and giving me a few twinges about two weeks ago that left me convinced I'd deliver early. But here I am, many days later, with Alec at nursery, Andy working away at all the physics, and me with little else to do but watch Downton Abbey and bounce hopefully on the birthing ball.

The odd thing is that preparing for No. 2 feels no more real than preparing for No. 1. Yes, I know there will soon be another small creature in the house - and the readied Moses basket and tiny nappies suggest that it's likely to be a baby - but it's still impossible to piece together this information with my bulging belly and picture a brand new human being. I know what to expect this time, of course: there will be sleepless nights, hours sitting on the sofa unable to move because of the feeding/sleeping baby and many, many nappies to change. But there are still so many unknowns too: What will he/she look like? Will they have hair? Will they look like Alec? Will they be a good sleeper/eater? Will they have colic? Will this one turn out to be completely different to the first?

And then there's the prospect of two. Given how much time is taken up just looking after our fairly competent toddler already, where will the extra time come from to look after the baby? And of course there's the dreaded destabilising of our happy status quo: what will Alec make of the baby...?

Friends tell me that yes, having two is hard. That you will marvel at how much time you had before you had two of them, how you had it so easy and simply didn't realise. How sleepless nights are so much more difficult to manage when you have a toddler to get up for in the morning, and how no time will ever be your own again - if you aren't with one of the children, you will be with the other.

But if this were the full story, no one would ever have more than one. They also tell me that seeing your two children together is one of the most beautiful things in the world and that even though you thought there was no more love left in you after No. 1, somehow you find it all over again for No. 2. So we're going ahead and doing it. It's too late to back out now. See you on the other side.