Womb to Bloom - Maternity & Beyond

And you thought the learning curve was steep with your first baby! When you add another child to your family, it throws everything out of balance for a while, and both you and your older child will have to make some adjustments. You’ll all have to prepare for more noise, more chaos, and more love. And if you have a blended family, you may need some special tools. If you’re about to embark on the journey of raising more than one child, the tips and tricks of the experienced moms below may help make that trek a little smoother.

Preparing Younger Children
The majority of parents who have more than one child do so when their older child isn’t actually much older. An age span of less than four years is typical. If your kids will be very close in age—two years or less—it’s tough to help your first child understand what’s going to happen. Marcy, 30, used her daughter’s doll to help explain the idea.

“My kids are 20 months apart, so I had no idea what to do—or if I should do anything—about preparing her for her new sister. Luckily, when she was about 15 months old, she began to carry one specific doll around everywhere. This was about when I was beginning to show, so I would hold her doll against my stomach and talk to Kate about how a real baby was coming to live with us in x number of months. I don’t know if she actually understood any of it, but I felt better because I had done my mommy duty!”

It can be especially tricky to prepare first children who are two to three years older than their sibling. At this age, many are just beginning to give up their “baby” things such as cribs and diapers. A change this huge can cause them to temporarily regress to wanting to sleep in their old crib or needing diapers again—both because change is hard and because they see the baby doing these things and getting lots of attention.

Talk to your toddler about what a big boy he is and how proud you are of his big-boy accomplishments. Perhaps tell him that the new baby will be watching him to learn about being a big kid. And when it comes to passing down his things to his new sibling, try to take his feelings into consideration.

Tara, 31, remembers that a small gesture went a long way with her three-year-old daughter. “Sandrine took the news of her new brother very hard. She didn’t want to talk about it, and she really didn’t want to see any of ‘her’ things in his nursery. My husband was reassembling her old crib in the nursery one afternoon, and she got hysterical, crying that it was her crib—even though she hadn’t used it in six months.

We thought about it and decided that if it would help her feel like she didn’t have to share everything that was hers with her brother, it might help her through this transition better. We took her shopping with us and asked her to help us pick out a new crib. She was delighted. She took special care to pick out one that she thought was perfect. We saw it as a small investment in our daughter’s happiness.”

Tara and her husband stumbled onto an important way of helping first-borns cope with a new sibling. By getting them involved in the process—letting them pick out a rug for the baby’s room or the paint color—they feel more invested. They feel like it’s “our” baby, rather than viewing their sibling as“that-interloper-who’s-stealing-all-of-mom-and-dad’s-attention.” Some parents give their older child a gift from the new baby on delivery day to soften them up. And let’s face it, kids like loot, so it’s not a bad idea.

If your children will be sharing a room, you’ll need to take some extra steps to ensure that your older child doesn’t accidentally hurt his sibling. Kids have a natural empathy, and when the baby cries, your older child may decide to throw a stuffed animal or toy into the crib to help soothe the baby. So be sure to talk to him about what he can and can’t do around the baby. If you’re nervous about letting them room together unsupervised, you can get a crib tent—meant to keep cats out of cribs—that should provide the protection your baby needs from his overzealous older sibling.

The Baby Gap
Whether through choice or circumstances, some parents don’t get around to having a second child until their first baby is much older. Having kids spaced out by several years—or even decades—has some unique advantages and disadvantages.

Amy, 30, and her husband had a baby exactly nine months after they were married seven years ago, but when they tried to have another baby, nothing happened. “We badly wanted another child right away, and it was so easy to get pregnant with our daughter that we thought it would be a piece of cake again. Well, five years later, nothing was happening, and my husband, who’s 15 years older than I am, decided that he was getting too old to have a newborn again anyway.

Just as we decided to shut down the baby factory, we got a surprise: I was pregnant! We hadn’t anticipated there being six years between our kids, and while we were happy, we were also a little worried. Would our kids be too far apart in age to form a close relationship? Would we resent the extra years we would now be spending raising kids? It took a long time before we were able to push the doubts aside, but now that our son is here, we wouldn’t trade our experience for anything.”

With older kids, the great news is that they’re relatively independent. You don’t have to worry about them waking up at night when your new baby is crying, they can get themselves up and dressed for school in the morning, and they can entertain themselves during the day while you’re tending to the non-stop needs of a baby. The downside, of course, is that you may be seriously out of practice and a little wary of starting over again.

Dreama, 31, remembers how nervous she was when she and her husband decided to conceive a sibling for her 11-year-old son from a previous marriage. “My husband had never been married and didn’t have biological children, and I wanted him to experience the blessing of raising a child from birth. So I very much wanted another child, but at the same time, it had been so long since my son was a baby that it really was like starting all over for me. I couldn’t remember anything about feeding schedules, how to get babies to sleep through the night—or even how to hold a newborn. Everyone assumed that I was completely prepared, but I was in even worse shape than my novice husband because at least with him, people didn’t expect very much!”

If it feels like you’re starting over, it’s best to act like you’re starting over—especially if your spouse is a newbie. Taking another birthing class will help refresh your memory about pregnancy and birth, while having another baby shower will help you with the practical need to restock all of the gear that you’ve given away over the years. And ask lots of questions—of your obstetrician, your friends, or any other mom who can offer some good advice. Try not to feel like you should have all the answers just because you’ve done this before.

Blended Families & A New Baby
You’ve probably heard the phrase “his, hers, and ours” to refer to a blended family where each parent brings at least one child into the marriage and then decide to have a child together. If the children are young enough, it’s not much different than adding a full biological sibling to their lives. But when there’s a significant age gap between your existing children and a potential new baby, it’s common for kids to experience the usual concerns and jealousy, along with issues that are specific to expanding blended families. Older kids may have the self-awareness to be concerned about where a new baby leaves them in the family pecking order.

Mary, 34, and her husband dealt with this issue head-on with their two children. “My husband and I each had one child before our marriage, and we really wanted to experience having a child together. Our kids were seven and nine when I became pregnant, and as soon as we found out, we sat them down for a heart-to-heart—before they had a chance to worry about what it would mean for them. We told them that we were so excited about the coming baby, but that it didn’t take away from our love for them. We said that we could never love another child more than we loved them, and they would always be our first babies. When the new baby was born, we even called them by nicknames that announced their importance, like ‘Hey, my special first daughter. Come over here.’ That way, they knew that we hadn’t forgotten their unique place in our family.”

Tabitha learned from her own childhood what not to say to her son when she and her new husband decided to have a baby. “I remember that when my dad and step-mom told me about my little brother coming, they said something like, ‘Now we’ll be a real family.’ And I thought, ‘Your new baby makes us a family—but I didn’t?’ So when I told my eight-year-old son that I was pregnant, I told him that we loved him so much that we wanted another one just like him. He smiled really big and was totally on board with the baby from the beginning.”

No matter what the dynamics of your family are, a new baby is guaranteed to shake things up for a bit. But the more you can prepare both yourself and your child for what’s to come, the easier this exciting change will be for everyone.