Growing our Family

I’m Nicola, I’ve been blogging for Babipur since 2010 when Quentin was less than 6 months old, and we’re currently pregnant with baby number two.

Quentin is now a fantastic almost three year old, with bundles of energy and is soon going to become a big brother!!

I’m now well into my third trimester and getting increasingly nervous about how Quentin will react when we bring home his baby brother or sister.

Bump Bonding

We’ve been doing our utmost to try and help him understand what the future will bring for us, He’s attended scans and midwife appointments with me, we’ve brought him a baby doll to play with as he’s fond of helping out and I expect he will want to help me when baby is here too.

I’ve tried to encourage him to feel bump kick and the best I’ve managed to get from him is a few raspberries blown into my belly button.

Visiting Other Babies

We’ve visited friends who have also recently had babies, so he understands what a baby is and he’s been exposed to tiny babies at the childminders as well but so far I’ve been unable to hold a new baby in his presence due to them sleeping and feeding.

I thought him seeing my attention diverted elsewhere would have been an important reaction to gage, hoping that there will be other opportunities to try this again before my due date.

Books

I’ve brought a number of books, a couple of paperback and board books with loads of pictures of breastfeeding, babies being cuddled and bathed and snuggled up in bed. I find he’s not overly interested in them, he much prefers the Gruffalo to them at the moment. Though I intend to make a greater effort in reading them with him in the coming weeks.

Help Us!

Now I’ve read things like – When he first meets baby for me to not be holding him/her so I can cuddle and introduce Quentin, and obviously he’s going to find it strange that the baby won’t be leaving at the end of the day.

but my concerns are Jealously and Rivalry!

Please offer me any advice that you found helpful when your second child arrived, is there anything else I can be doing to help prepare Quentin for the new arrival?