Rex
We tried for what felt like so long for our first baby that when I finally got pregnant, I couldn't have been happier.
From the word go I was stuffing my face with folic acid, patting my emerging bump whenever I got the chance and daydreaming of sitting in a hammock with my beatific offspring.
Her name was picked before she was conceived and my pregnancy pretty much flew by with (in rose-coloured hindsight) no problems.
The baby was born and she was and is our pride and joy so naturally we thought we would try for another one when the time was right, assuming it would take forever.
I was knocked for six when on the very first attempt I got pregnant. My partner was delighted.
"I thought that's what you wanted," he cried. He couldn't and doesn't understand that this wasn't how I planned it at all.
I thought I would have another year. A year with my beautiful daughter. A year to get over being fat and lumpy. A year to become me again, to remember what it was like not being pregnant.
He sat, nonplussed, as I burst into tears, telling him how I just needed 'time' to take it all in.
That was weeks ago and I'm not sure I have found that time yet.
Since then I have veered from utter panic to complete denial. My precious baby is only eight months old.
I haven't got any space in my head, and certainly not my heart, for a new baby.
But if I think back to how I was 10 weeks into my first pregnancy, things were so different. I would sit stroking the bump, telling her how much we would love her, playing her music, reading her stories and making sure I was relaxed and calm at all times, eating healthily.
Now I am standing up straight, wearing heels, trying to ensure nobody can see that I have put on weight, cursing that I can't enjoy my morning coffee and fighting back emerging nausea while trying to do my job and manage an increasingly demanding baby.
It couldn't be more different.
It's well-documented that parents who wonder how they will ever love a second child, realise as soon as they are born, just how it's done.
This is no comfort to me yet. I still have a couple of weeks to go before my first scan and I can tell people and therefore get the reassurance I need. So on top of worrying that I will never love my second baby as much as my first, I now worry that by not loving it yet I am already transmitting waves of rejection to it, however much I try not to.
I keep trying to imagine whether I want it any other way. We wanted another baby, we tried for another baby and now we're having one. None of the alternatives are remotely preferential.
So why am I so consumed with dread?
More on Parentdish: Second child syndrome