How Did You Prepare Your Child for Another Baby

Parentberries
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We told our 3 year old as soon as we knew. He got right into it straight away. We’d already started talking about how babies are made, but we had to have many iterations of this conversation.

Lots of library books in this topic was really helpful.

As I’m coming up to my due date (I’m around 34 weeks) we have lots of chats about what will happen when I go into labour (ie who will stay with him, who might need to pick him up from school, how long I might be in hospital, whether he can visit) and what will happen when I come home.

I have an EXTREMELY curious child and we’re very open and matter-of-fact about all things biological, so we’ve discussed the two options for hope the baby comes out, which way my son came out, what this might mean for how much I can lift him and play on the floor, etc. He eventually wanted to see a video of a birth which we started by showing puppies and then a human and he was very interested in these videos. We also showed him a c-section (I want a vaginal delivery like I had with him, but I’ve got complications so this is increasingly unlikely), and he thought it was fascinating.

We’ve also talked about what his role will be, how he can help, how sometimes he might need to wait for something, but that sometimes his baby brother might need to wait for something while we help him.

We let him make a few small decisions (like when we got the baby capsule put back in the car, he got to decide whether this seat got moved or stayed where it was), what the baby will wear to come home, and what our first outing could be. This has been really helpful because he is totally feeling like he is part of the decision making.

I developed gestational diabetes and made him responsible for reminding me to take insulin and getting to prick my finger (if he wants to) to do the blood glucose monitoring. I explained we did this for him too, which made it more relevant I think.

He’s very very excited and kisses the belly lots and sings and to talks to “his baby”. I know there will be moments of frustration and jealousy from him… That is inevitable I think, but I’m pretty hopeful that so far, he’s viewing this as an awesome thing that he I firmly in the centre of along with us.

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Somethig I did when I was pregnant and a childcare teacher that I then carried over to doing when expecting with my own kids is each week those pregnancy trackers can give you an idea of how big baby is inside of you by comparing it to something (a blueberry, a banana, an orange). Each week I would make it a point if visually sharing that with the kids. Like at the store we’d find a banana while our kids were in the cart and saying this is how big the baby is now.

With my last being born last June there were COVID restrictions in place but also with restrictions the stay was incredibly cut short so during that first day my kids met their sibling via FaceTime but by the second day we were discharged and they were seeing him in person so it wasn’t that big of an issue or any issue really.

Congratulations!

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@esita Sounds like your son is such a good helper! That’s really awesome that he’s so interested! We are open about biological things as well, so if my daughter is interested we’ll probably take a similar approach. She asked Daddy last night if he had a baby in his belly too, so we’ve already explained a few things to her! :joy:

@Alix2016 that’s such a good idea!! I’ll definitely try that out. Last night we were trying to explain to our DD that baby was the size of an apricot, but I had already eaten all the apricots in the fridge so we couldn’t demonstrate lol!

We told our family over the weekend, and they’re thrilled of course! DD seems to be getting more excited every day now. Yesterday she kept lifting my shirt to give [name_u]Baby[/name_u] hugs, kisses and tickles - and she asked [name_u]Baby[/name_u] to play Candyland with her :joy:. We also gave her some big sister books and told her they were from [name_u]Baby[/name_u] and she REALLY liked that.

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Sounds like you are all over it! Best of luck!

I can recommend “there’s a house inside my mummy” as a good book to explain why you’re so damn tired :rofl:

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