Pittsburgh Nesties
billiburrows
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Preparing for baby #2
What did you do special to prepare your older child for the arrival for the baby?
I have a 3 yr old son. i've been reading him books about becoming a big brother, including him in shopping for the crib, etc. any other ideas of what i should be doing?
I read somewhere its a good idea to do something special as a family of 3 before we are a family of 4. like a vacation or something. ideally i'd love to take him to the beach but i'm due in the beginning of July so i'm hesitant to travel in the summer so close to my due date just in case i go into labor early. any suggestion on something else we could do?
Re: Preparing for baby #2
I did a "Mommy and Jake day of fun" before I had Liam. I surprised him midweek by taking a vacation day and not telling him until the last minute; when he woke up, I told him he wasn't going to school, but instead we were going to have a day out! We did the breakfast buffet at Eat n Park (which he loves), then went to the carnegie museum to see the dinos.
We also had Liam "give" Jake a gift at the hospital when he came to visit-he thought that was the best thing ever! It was just a hot wheels track that goes in the bathtub, he to this day, Jake still talks about how Liam gave him a gift
Jake - 1.15.08
Liam - 5.17.11
First of all, congratulations!
I think things were a little different in our situation because my daughter was only 18 months old when the baby came, so she didn't really have a real handle on what was happening. Luckly she kind of just went along with it. We did read a book over and over. I think it was called "Waiting for Baby". We showed her all the baby stuff and let her pick out a new toy to give the baby. Just keep him in the know and make sure when time gets closer he knows the hospital plan (where he will be).
I'm sure you could find something closer to home for a special day. What about Idlewild? We went when I was pregant with #2. I could ride anything but we had fun with Storybook forest and the pool and dh took dd on some rides.
Or what about Lake Erie? You could just go up for the day. Build a sandcastle and have a picnic lunch. The public beaches are actually pretty nice now and most of them have acess to bathrooms, shower and snack stands.
We're in a slightly different situation because C is only 20 months. Overall, we really haven't been doing much special besides talking to her about it alot. She LOVES babies though. She is obsessed with her little cousins.
I'm really going to concentrate more on making her feel important when the baby comes since she is really too young for actual anticipation. I'll plan some special outings for just me and her and we'll work on her big girl room over the summer as well.
My DD was 3.5 when DS was born. I didn't do anything big like a vacay with her, but I tried to include her in things throughout the pregnancy. We read books about being a big sister, she came to a few appts with me and we let her announce to the family the baby's gender. But I was also careful to back off the baby talk when I sensed that she wasn't feeling it b/c I didn't want her to feel like all we cared about was the baby coming. I made sure that we got to do fun things with her in the weeks leading up to his arrival that we might not be able to do for a while once he got here (like going to all of the germiest kids places where you would NOT want to take your newborn)!
We also had her pick a gift for him for the hospital, and he got her something too. I wasn't prepared for how hard it was for her to be separated from us, so my advice is to be flexible with your plans for that! I thought she'd be fine staying with grandparents, but she was very out of sorts and ended up spending much of the second day watching cartoons in my hospital room and then DH went home with her that night.
We also had the "baby" have a gift for Noah when he came to the hospital to meet him. It was just a pack of markers and a coloring book. I didn't really do anything special with him - I didn't even read stories about adding a sibling!
Once piece of advice I did get (and this is for you, not him), is to make sure you say "goodbye" to him as your baby before you go to the hospital to have baby #2. It's weird how grown up they seem once a newborn is in the picture. My boss gave me this advice (she says it's something she still regrets and her youngest is in his last semester of college!), and I'm glad I did. I just kind of made sure to give him a big hug and take one last look at him as my first baby.
this is making me cry! i am mentally preparing for it and preparing my son too. we transitioned him to a big boy bed and talk about all the cool things he can do as a big boy and how he will get to teach those things to the baby. ugh.