I'm Pregnant with #2!

let's get into it shall we?

It’s time I tell you!!! I’m pregnant with our second babe.

Writing to you doing hip circles on my birth ball after a morning of being an actual human jungle gym for my 2.5 year old son, Maverick. Pregnant with a toddler was the newest event at the Olympics this year, did you catch it? I joke that second pregnancy does not feel as “precious” as the first. During my first, laying on the couch was a daily ritual, I’d chant alongside my sound bowls and meticulously boil jammy eggs every day. Now we have wrestling matches on the couch, I have toddler truck noises as my soundtrack and, well, I’m still getting my eggs. But needless to say, it’s not chill…AND it’s no less special. To see my son understand what’s in mommy’s belly and acknowledge the baby on his own is just a new level of joy unlocked. To think about my husband also becoming a dad to TWO, I mean c’mon. A kid in each beefy arm!? Hopefully while I’m laying flat on the couch lol.

If you know me or have been keeping tabs on me over the years, you know that I rarely share big life things in real time as they are happening. I think I enjoy the temporary privacy and the ability to process and metabolize it all on my own and with my family without lots of eyes watching. It’s an energetic thing, not a you thing lol. So I’m coming to you 6 months pregnant with the announcement!! I’ve been hibernating this winter and growing another little Legister. Baby (yes we know the gender and can’t wait to surprise you all when the babe arrives) will be joining us beginning of summer!!

Where do I begin?! I feel like there is so much to catch you up on. Finally feeling the energy and motivation to write about this experience. I will be going very deep and detailed on Substack over the next few months—my pregnancy, my process to conceive (a not so linear one, more on that soon), how motherhood and marriage is morphing, life with a toddler and a newborn, and all the things I’m doing, not doing, eating, taking, thinking about. You know lol. I’d also love to answer your questions, so please comment and let me know what you want me to get into. This is the place I’ll be totally free to rip. On IG I don’t always feel like I can say it all. Substack is that place.

How I’m actually doing

Today? Grateful and uncomfortable. Grateful for the opportunity to do this again, for this body that is capable of so much more than I ever gave it credit for, and for the love and support I have around me. As much as I can, I try to focus on what’s good — sometimes it’s just hard to ignore what is uncomfortable right now! I looked in the mirror the other day and had a brief moment of panic because I couldn’t fathom how I could get more pregnant. I have a few months to go. Like, HOW.

couldn’t muster up the energy for a real pregnancy shoot so I set up my iPhone lol

I feel a little more uncomfortable this time around and I think it’s simply because I don’t have as much rest or “me time” as the first pregnancy. I laughed the other day going through my camera roll and finding pictures of me meditating on the couch, holding my belly, sleep score in the 90s. I literally chucked my wearable into the abyss when I went into labor with Mav because I did not want to see my stats every day postpartum. I knew they’d be rough.

So yeah, just a ton of duality in the last 6 months. My brain is constantly trying to figure out which thing to feel, as if I have to choose. Holding these last moments with just Mav so close, while also experiencing this hot frustration that he hasn’t slept through the night since the day we conceived. (Kids feel everything energetically — truly.) It’s another expansion of my capacity and I’m witnessing myself labor through it, breathe through it, reach new levels of patience. It’s not always pretty. But I’m not running from it.

What’s surprising me

Even though I’ve done this before, I still felt insecure about my body changing in the first trimester. Like, I knew the deal. I’ve been here. And yet, there I was in my head, being so judgmental about what was happening. My therapist reminded me that my body is doing exactly what it needs to do to create a life. So I’ve been repeating that to myself a lot. And I just remind myself that my body is resilient. Remember what it did the first time!? Now that I’ve popped and people know I’m pregnant, it feels a little less of a struggle. But that in-between phase, not quite showing but definitely not fitting into anything, not feeling like yourself, hormones going insane…it’s just still weird the second time around.

What has genuinely surprised me in the best way: so many of my friends are pregnant right now and due around the same time. It feels like a little gift!!! There is something so deeply comforting about having a crew to tap into and say, wait, are you also not sleeping? Are you also having insane thigh rub? Just really nice.

How I’m moving these days

Honestly? I’m working out more now that I’m pregnant than I was during the period before I got pregnant. I know, weird. But something kicks in for me when I know I’m growing a human..I want to do everything I can to support it, including moving my body consistently.

Walking a ton, strength training, Pvolv and pilates are my top four out of the house workouts. I love the Evlo app for prenatal strength at home. It was built by a doctor of physical therapy and has a week-by-week prenatal program that I follow along with. It makes me feel safe and like I actually know what I’m doing!! Pvolv is a completely different vibe, but also designed by doctors of PT, using different equipment, and I love beingled because it honestly pushes me harder than anything I’d do alone. I like to impress the teacher. Hehe

And I have become obsessed with stretching and mobility in a way I wasn’t the first time. I remember being in labor with Mav thinking why did I not stretch more because my hip flexors were absolutely on fire!!!! So this time I’m doing pelvic stretches, hip openers, all of it. Instagram keeps serving me the exercises and I just keep doing them. It’s working!! Hoping it really helps with labor.

Oh and I just started pelvic floor therapy because ya girl has been peeing her pants every time she coughs, sneezes or jumps. It is already helping. We are also going to be working on optimal birthing positions, getting baby in a good position,

What I’m eating these days

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about this so let me just walk you through a typical day, minus supplements because I’ll get into that in another post. Morning starts with lemon water! I noticed that coffee first thing wasn’t sitting well, so I swapped it and honestly the lemon kind of wakes me up anyway and I find I’m able to go #2 pretty quickly after, which is LUX in pregnancy. Then I do two scoops of Paleovalley chocolate bone broth protein with water. It tastes like hot chocolate and has about 25 grams of protein. Then eggs. Usually four in the morning, because I’m trying to get six eggs a day total for choline and protein. The Glucose Goddess has a book out called The 9 Months That Count Forever (we interviewed her for Almost 30 recently) and she gets into this. I personally love nerding out on this stuff and learning all that I can about nutrition during pregnancy. I think because it gives me something I can control lol. But it also makes me feel good and hopefully supports my growing babe.

Snacks can range. Usually an apple with nut butter, Paleovalley beef sticks, seed crackers with cottage cheese or hummus or sardines. Lunch is usually a big salad—arugula or romaine, whatever protein I have (salmon, chicken, hard boiled egg, steak), avocado, sweet potato, pumpkin seeds, cucumber, Primal Kitchen ranch. Dinner is almost always a protein and a vegetable, sometimes white rice or sweet potato. I make a bone broth and coconut milk rice that my fam loves (legit white rice in rice cooker or pressure cooker, ⅔ bone broth for liquid and ⅓ coconut milk)

I’m not eating for two. I’m eating maybe a few hundred calories more. But I’m staying really focused on protein, omegas, iron, and fiber through food, which has made me feel genuinely good and energized. I also like to cook, so I do make most meals…This way I know what exactly is going into them. I love a good takeout moment, especially for the convenience and no dishes, but I never feel as good after if I’m being honest.

Not every day and every meal is balanced or nutritionally nourishing, do NOT get it twisted. I let myself indulge and I let myself have things that I’m craving. I just don’t do it allll the time. I’d say I’m dialed in to eating well 80% of the time (which has been my way for a long time, so doesn’t feel like I’m forcing myself), and 20% of the time I just let myself have things that feel good to my soul (bagel with peanut butter and banana as we speak).

Sean and the second kid conversation

I’ve heard—and Sean has heard—that the second child changes the life of the non-birthing partner more than the first does. I don’t know that he’s fully digested it yet (nor do I expect him to), but we are in the process of having multiple conversations about it. Not a one-and-done sit down, it’s definitely an ongoing thing.

date day—getting a pedicure with my hunny

What we’re focused on is communication…daily, weekly, monthly. In the morning: how was the night, how are you feeling, what do you need, what does your day look like. During the week: how many dinners do I need to cook, how many days do you have after-work stuff, what’s your capacity. We use the percentage check-in that Brené Brown talks about. We just text each other a number. He came home from a work trip recently and I texted him, what’s your percentage? He said 60. I said 50. We both just knew. Went into the evening with way more grace and way less resentment than we would have if we’d just assumed the other person was fine.

With the second, we’ll need to get even more intentional about this. How do we keep Mav feeling loved and like our guy while also welcoming a newborn? How does Sean carve out real focused work time so he can actually unplug when he’s home? How do we keep our date days going? None of it will be perfect, but talking about it out loud means we’re less likely to let resentment build quietly in the corner. And walking through specific scenarios and what our approach could be, will hopefully help make the experience not feel so overwhelming when we’re in it.

I’ll be sharing more on the support team we’re assembling for this transition. That deserves its own post. Coming soon.

How I’m doing mentally (aka I don’t feel cute anymore)

I’m just going to say it. I had a window in this pregnancy where everything was kind of working together. ~*mind, body, spirit*~ And I felt like cute preggo. Glowing, cute in clothes, doing my thing thing. That window has closed lol.

right now, writing to you

Right now I’m bigger sooner than I expected (the body has done this before and just adjusts accordingly asap), in the middle of a week-long sickness that has genuinely rocked me, and I am never fully rested. Never. I look in the mirror and I don’t fully recognize myself and I don’t always love what I see. I’m saying this not to be dramatic but because I think a lot of women feel this and don’t say it out loud because pregnancy is supposed to be this beautiful sacred thing and you’re not supposed to also be like…I don’t feel cute or I don’t really love this right now.

But here’s what’s been rattling around in my head about it: pregnancy is one of those experiences that just will not let you stay attached to one version of yourself. It doesn’t care about your aesthetic or your routine or the particular way you’ve decided you look best. It will shake up what you’re focused on, it will pull attention away from one thing in order to free up space to give to another.

And weirdly? There’s something kind of liberating in that.

It’s just weirdly nice to no longer perform the version of yourself that checks all the boxes—fit, rested, put together, glowing. I’ve been forced to sort of reckon with how much of my sense of self was tied up in that image in the first place. The focus on appearance just dissolves for a stretch. It’s not that I stop caring, but the body just takes center stage in a completely different way. It’s doing something wildly profound and it doesn’t need to look good doing it.

I think pregnancy recalibrates you. It’s not the only thing that does this—illness does it, grief does it, any season where your body is just in charge and your ego has to take a seat. But pregnancy is one of the more prolonged and visible versions of it. You’re out in the world, visibly changed, and you can’t hide it or manage it.

I’m not going to pretend I’m fully at peace with all of it right now. I’m not. I’m uncomfortable and tired and (currently) sniffly and sick and I’d like to feel good again soon. But I do think this season is doing something to me underneath the surface. It’s loosening something that needed to be loosened. My relationship to how I look, to what “well” looks like, to what I need to feel like me. It’s getting renegotiated whether I like it or not.

Which honestly might be the most valuable thing pregnancy gives you, beyond the obvious.

Thank you for being here. If you’re on a conception journey that hasn’t been linear—me too, and I’ll be sharing that story here very soon. If you’re pregnant alongside me, hi, let’s be in it together!!

Topics I’ll be covering in upcoming posts:

How Sean and I are preparing our marriage and homelife for two

How I’m setting up a support team in time for two kiddos + How I’m prepping Mav

My supplement stack

How I’m prepping for my unmedicated birth

+MORE!

Comment below, DM me, I’m here.

Love you guys. x