Scene: Hospital Baby Nursery, Time: 4am

“Knock, Knock, Knock.”

Me: “I’m here to take my baby back.”

Cranky Nursery Midwife: ” hmmmmm” looking at me like I am too young to be here (story of my life)

Me: “My name is Jess Dempsey, my baby is here, the midwife brought him in around 11pm.”

Cranky Nursery Midwife: “Ok, let me see, which baby is he?”

Me: “That one” I point, then the nurse pushes the baby in bassinet towards me before matching our wrist bands.

“Thats not my baby”

Cranky Nursery Midwife: “What’s his name?”

Me: “Aston Dempsey”

Cranky Nursery Midwife: “OK, well we don’t seem to have an Aston…”

Me: “Oh, no, it’s William Dempsey, sorry I forgot, ah, that’s his…”

Cranky Nursery Midwife: Looks at me like I am a total nut job “This one is yours.”

I will never forget this moment, the first night my little William Jeremiah was born and I sent him to the nursery so I could recover better from my cesarean. A far cry from when I had Aston and I was way to scared to send him there incase someone baby-napped him! Ha! I can talk, I almost baby-napped someone else’s baby!

Getting used to being a mother to another baby was very weird, I didn’t know him yet and clearly didn’t recognise him (in my defence, I was a walking drugged up zombie at 4am in that nursery) I even let them top him up with formula from the day he was born, overnight so I could get a stint of sleep, wow! who was I?

Comparing my story as a first time mum to being a second time mum is worlds apart. I hated the first three months of motherhood the first time around, I had no clue what to do and I didn’t get off to a good start at all with complications I can’t tell you about another time. With Will, I was off and running with flying colours. I loved him the moment I saw him, I knew that a top up of formula from the night nurse in the hospital nursery wasn’t going to poison him, he knew exactly how to latch onto my boobs and get enough milk from me and I knew from my first experience, that I wasn’t going to rock this baby to sleep.  With the walking talking baby manual herself, Midwife Cath, I fed my baby, with pleasure  as often as he wanted, he was always content and full which meant he would sleep, which meant I was content, which meant things were good. I let the family play pass-the-parcel with him without freaking out about him getting over stimulated, I let him sleep during the day in our lounge room amongst the light and noise and he slept, unlike Aston who was in a room with black garbage bags on the windows so not a millimetre of light could get in and yet he still wouldn’t sleep.

I finally understood what people meant by having a ‘good baby’. I suppose a ‘good baby’ is the one that sleeps and doesn’t cry much? Well, if that is what they mean, then I had a winner. Thanks to the lack of sleep I adjusted to having since Aston was born, I was fine with the night feeds and found it a pleasure to wake up for this baby and feed him the breast, left to right for however long he wanted and put him down in his bassinet to put himself to sleep, what a dream! It was Aston, the then 2.5yo who I would have to shush when he would come into our room at 2am to sleep in our bed and tell him to be quiet to not wake the sleeping newborn!

I loved breastfeeding this time, I loved that my size A boobs went to a size D, so did my husband but the poor man didn’t get much use out of them as they were completely off limits, look, but don’t touch! I thought I would breastfeed for at least a year as I was loving it so much but as it turned out, work started to come in again and I found myself coming home between meetings to feed then go out again and things started to get too hectic, I just couldn’t juggle everything so I decided to stop breastfeeding. This time around it was simple for me, the decision was made and we went straight into formula as this time I knew it wasn’t poison, it wasn’t an issue and it wasn’t any one else’s business what I did. Apart from the visual of me having big boobs in a bikini for the first time in my life during the summer, I was happy to get my little A cups back and into my normal clothes (I do not envy big boobs and all the tricks of the trade the women do to work with them, hide them and make them look good, its an art form!)

As for a routine? Yeah, I pretty much started it from when I got home from hospital in a way. I followed Cath’s bedtime and bath routine and just fed him as much as possible in the day to help him put on weight to eventually have enough calories to help him sleep longer. When I started bottle feeding at three months, I did take note of Save Our Sleep and her times because you do forget all that stuff and all the sterilising rules as time goes by with the first one.

Being a second time mum, for me, was completely different to the first time, the second time I knew what I was doing, I was calm and my baby reflected this. Being a mum with two kids, a website and it’s socials, a husband, a dog, a messy house, bills to pay, food to cook and hair to wash, is a completely different story.

Would love to hear any stories you have about being a second time mum or any questions you have, share it in the comments xx

I know this story has nothing to do with the gorgeous images above, you know I like it that way. To see some cute photos of the kids, just stalk my instagram  and if you go real deep and get back far as 2014 you will see some newborn photos (or in my motherhood tab on the blog)

This outfit is so chic, I am obsessed, Siyona Couture is the next big thing here in Melbourne, I styled this look from her runway collection to real-way, with a t-shirt that can take you from day- to night! Boom!