I feel as though I’ve been quite successful (if I do say so myself!) in keeping my pregnancy/baby stuff separate from my beauty posts for the past eighteen months or so. Mostly thanks to the fact that I have The Uphill blog, which I use as a sort of cathartic online diary for all pregnancy and personal stuff, but also because I actually really enjoy escaping fully into the world of beauty when I’m making content for A Model Recommends. It’s my “grown up” world, my professional world – I have to be sharper and do more research and the work requires more in the way of editing and honing and so I don’t like to fuzzy it up with my (often confused) thoughts about parenthood and weaning and leaking breasts.

But I thought that I’d break rank to give you a quick life update – not least because in the New Year I’ll be weeks away from having another baby! I’m now 33 weeks pregnant, give or take a day, and my torso looks like it’s been stuffed with a beach ball. I’ve noticed a general filling-out of everything with this pregnancy – my face is rounder, though everyone close to me keeps assuring me it’s not (they’re being diplomatic – which is nice, but they forget that I stare at photos and video clips of myself for hours and hours every week!) and my legs and bottom and arms have decided to fatten themselves up for Christmas a bit, by the looks of things. None of these changes bother me – it’s just part of being pregnant – but I definitely think that they are more apparent with this baby. Unless with Angelica I was just in a total baby bliss bubble and didn’t take any notice!

And I can tell you that it’s a hell of a lot easier being pregnant when you have a permanent place to call home – at this point last time we were moving from one holiday let to the next and – despite my semi-fond memories of this time – it was difficult not being able to put together a nursery or prepare little bits and pieces for the baby. We actually moved holiday homes whilst I was in hospital having a c-section – Mr AMR went back after I was safely in recovery and moved us from Saffron Walden to Hertfordshire overnight, with my parents doing relays in their little car and poor Dexter the Dog in the boot and all of my beauty samples and baby bits shoved into suitcases.

Needless to say that we’re on more of an even keel, this time around. I’d say that, actually, I’m more nervous about the birth (see post here), but everything else is far less stressful. For those wondering about what will happen here on A Model Recommends in terms of posts, I can tell you that I’ll be trying to do exactly the same as last time; pre-scheduling posts to carry you through the couple of months around the new baby’s birth and then resuming normal service when I’ve got into a good feeding-napping sort of schedule. (Though this time there’s Angelica the Toddler in the mix, so I’m trying not to be too ambitious!)

If you’re not following The Uphill and would like to receive an email when a new post goes live then you can sign up for the mailing list here – otherwise the website itself is here, and my pregnancy diaries are here, in case that sort of thing floats your boat.

Back to beauty after this short interlude – I just wanted to keep you all in the loop. I realised the other day that some people, who don’t follow on Instagram or Twitter, had completely missed the news that I was even pregnant again. So consider this a necessary update.

As you were!