Introducing siblings for the 1st time!

Adding in new family members is exciting, right?! You can’t wait to hold that tiny little baby and smell those precious baby smells, but it’s also hard and stressful! Especially to the other tiny humans already in your family!! So let’s talk about some ways to make it a little bit easier on older siblings, especially when those “older” siblings aren’t very old at all! 

For us, we have a 5 year old, an almost 3 year old, and one that will be here any day so everyone is right at 2.5 years apart.  When we had our 2nd baby, we introduced him to our oldest by: 

Having the oldest come to the hospital, but making sure the new baby wasn’t in the room at the moment the oldest walked in.  We had a moment to hug and love on our oldest.  We then had the new baby rolled in to “meet” our oldest. 

Next to the new baby, in the bassinet on wheels thing, we had a little gift bag from the baby to our oldest.  It had a t-shirt that said “big brother,” some stickers, and a big brother activity book.

Fast forward to now that we have 2 and are expecting our 3rd any day, we have gift bags for each of our oldest including: 

I mean it’s hard to be mad or resent someone giving you gifts, right?! For each of these items, I tried to pick out things that would not only serve as gifts but would also be helpful to keep my other kids entertained while I was caring for and nursing the new baby.

We made sure to communicate to grandparents or anyone else in the room at the time, that the small details mattered to us, for example-

*We wanted to be sure the older siblings were addressed first (they were meeting the baby, not the other way around)

*We (mom & dad) were with the older siblings when the baby was brought in and introduced, so again they were meeting the baby WITH us, rather than us holding the baby and bringing in the older siblings

*We tried hard to always refer to the older siblings first and make them feel like the “special ones” in those first few situations of a family of five

Our two older siblings are best friends (most of the time, except when they’re fighting incessantly); I’m not sure if that first meeting had anything to do with that or not, but anything to try to keep the peace and help everyone in the family always feel special, right?! Already praying for smooth introductions when our newest addition decides to make her appearance!

What worked or didn’t work for you as you were introducing your new babies?