Guest Post- Preparing an Older Child for a New Sibling! {New Year, New Babies, New Mommies of 2}

Hi everyone I'm Darlene from http://youngmammatales.blogspot.com  I'm so excited to be here today! I'm going to share with you guys today a little bit about preparing for baby number two!

Everyone says your older child is in for a big change when number 2 comes along, and for us I think that will be even more so the case when baby girl comes along at the end of April. By then, our son Jasper will have had almost FIVE years being an only child. Almost five years of staying home with me every day, never having to share me, his dad, our attention, his personal space or toys. When grandparents come to visit, it's just to see him and he knows it. He was the first grand child on both sides, and has been spoiled from day one.

 

 Soon he will have another person here that he has to share his mom and dad with, and since he is old enough to know and remember how things used to be, I'm imagining this change will be much more difficult than if we would have given him a sibling while he was just one or even 2.

We want to make the transition as smooth for him as possible and we are doing everything we can do help him prepare. How could we not? His life is about to be completely turned upside down!

I've read books, blogs and online magazine articles and talked to parents with multiple children to try to figure out what will work best for our family, since every child and every situation is different.

Here's what we have come up with.

1. Since he will be sharing a room with his sister (around 5-6 months when we transition her in there) we   have already bought her crib, and as soon as we get back from Christmas we will put the crib in there and start preparing him for the invasion of his space. We think it will be better to do this before she gets here, to give him more time to get used to the idea.

2. Involve Jasper with as much baby stuff as possible. So far he has been to both ultrasounds, and that really got him excited and made it more real. We had a 4D ultrasound and they gave us a DVD to take home and he always asks to put the movie in to watch the baby.

3. Get him involved in the shopping- so far he loves picking out baby outfits to buy- we think this gets him excited about it instead of feeling left out and that shes the only one that is getting new things, now he actually gets excited and has even bought an outfit with His money!

4. Get some big brother books- he loves having us read to him, so I think he will love this.

5. Get him around some babies! We are heading back to Iowa for 2 weeks of Christmas fun and I have a brand new baby niece and two friends who just had babies so getting him around babies will help him visualize what is coming in April!

6. Talk (a LOT) about how important big brothers are. We have already started this and he already realized what an important part of her life he is going to play. I think we will come up with a few special big brother jobs- he is always such a great helper and it makes him feel important so he needs to have some big brother jobs to concentrate on!

7.After baby gets here, we plan on having separate Mommy Jasper, and Daddy Jasper dates. We do those now, and it's something fun and special, and I don't want that to stop when she gets here. They will be pretty short in the beginning, like going down the street just the 2 of us for ice cream when I'm able to leave her for a little while, but continuing this special ritual is very important to me. I grew up in a family with 5 kids and my parents would make the time to take us out one on one and it was always So special to have mom or dad to ourselves! And hopefully this will make him feel like he isn't being replaced at all.

Anyone else have any great tips to getting the older child to adept to a new addition? I know it won't be easy, but hopefully these steps will at least help prepare all of us for the changes that are going to come this spring!