How To Tell Your Toddler About A New Baby

April 10, 2014

If You’re Pregnant, Here’s How To Tell Your Toddler About A New Baby

How do you tell your toddler about a new baby? As soon as you find out your are pregnant with your second child, it’s one of the big questions you might have. Especially if your first child is still pretty young…

As I’m now pregnant with our second child, we’ve been telling our toddler, who’s two, that she will become a big sister soon. Here’s how we did it.

Telling Your Toddler They Are Having A Baby Sibling – Soon!

Are you pregnant? Here's how to tell your toddler about a new baby - sibling surprise!

Eliza is only two, which is a slightly difficult age to tell that she is getting a new sister. Two is young enough not to understand, but old enough to understand a bit.

Toddlers do probably understand an lot more than you’d think, and they can also pick-up on unconscious vibes.  So as babies were a topic we’d all be talking about a lot, we wanted the new baby to be something that she was always aware of, and not a big “Surprise! Look what this is in your old cot” nine months later.

Here’s Are Some Ideas We Used To Tell Our Toddler About The New Baby: 

We were honest all along and didn’t hide it.

Pretty early on we just told her there was a baby growing in Mummy’s tummy – sorry, anatomy purists – and she seemed quite interested in this idea.

Great, we thought. Until two minutes later she started prodding at her own and saying ‘look Mummy, there’s a baby in MY tummy!’

PS – also be warned that they are likely to tell everyone, so make sure you are ready to have the news shared.

Books are a brilliant idea for telling toddlers about a new baby.

There are lots of great books for telling a toddler about a new baby. We turned to our trusty Miffy box set as handily, there is a Miffy book about this.

There’s a Miffy book about everything, from the cradle to – literally – the grave. We don’t talk about Dear Grandma Bunny though, I’m still in shock.

Books to tell your child about a new baby

We made sure our toddler was involved in the pregnancy.

Every morning when she came into our bed, she kissed my stomach and said “Hi, baby.” Something that we incredibly cute that we encouraged!

We took her along to appointments and scan.

This was often a necessity, but it helped to have her involved. She also came along to a scan, and she loved seeing her sister on the screen and it helped it feel real for her.

We made her nursery aware, and they helped:

Early on they said she never stopped talking about the baby, so they talked about it with her, as well as reading all the relevant books with her.

More posts…secrets of the second trimester and unusual pregnancy symptoms and follow me on Pinterest

Pregnant? Here's how to tell your toddler about the new baby

12 Comments

  • fritha

    April 11, 2014 at 9:43 am

    she’s so cute! I recently told Wilf he used to live in my tummy and now he tells people that he did but now he lives in his house with his own bed 🙂 I think books are such a great way to explain subjects that are a bit tricky. I was really annoyed when my first younger sibling came along although I was 5 and maybe had become a bit too used to be being the youngest. I still remember to this day relatives and friends coming round who used to make a beeline to talk to me completely ignoring me and heading towards the new baby and I remember being really resentful about it too. I think we’ll probably have a similar age gap with W and any potential sibling so it’s something we’ll have to think about when the time comes, I wonder if a smaller gap would have been better (for my sister and I). I’m sure Eliza will be an amazing big sister! x

  • Globalmouse

    April 11, 2014 at 2:11 pm

    That’s so funny about the black lines!! My oldest loved babies from when he was really small and so we told him we were getting him a real baby!! He was SO excited and called her “his baby” for so long. I’ll never forget turning up at pre-school to pick him up and telling him his sister had chicken pox so I couldn’t come in and him wailing loudly, “I don’t want my baby to have chicken pox” and everyone looking at us strangely!! Good luck, I hope it goes well!

  • Polly

    April 11, 2014 at 2:21 pm

    we bought this book for Lola when I was expecting Kiki!! TBH mine have always been fine about a new sibling, we’ve never had any issues at all!

  • laura redburn

    April 11, 2014 at 7:04 pm

    from an outsiders point of view, it is kind of funny (funny isn’t quite the right word) to think of how strangely little ones act when another comes into the family. hopefully it’ll be an easy transition!

  • Laura

    April 12, 2014 at 10:09 am

    It’s really good to hear she is excited of the new arrival and it’s so sweet that she kisses your tummy in the morning, I am sure things will go smoothly

    Laura x

  • lori

    April 12, 2014 at 8:13 pm

    Aww this is so sweet, I bet she’ll be an amazing big sister. F is always asking me to grow another one for him, sometimes it breaks my heart. One day soon I hope. x

  • Vicky

    April 14, 2014 at 9:57 pm

    I love Miffy – I didn’t realise there were so many different books! It’s a little similar to the Mog books – there seems to be one of those for every occasion too!

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