Having a new baby rocks your world. I know for me, Javi was my hardest transition. But having a baby join an existing family with kids is a delicate situation, too. I want to make sure no one feels left out or left behind, and I’m also just so tired and overwhelmed that it can be hard to navigate and support all of the inevitable emotions with a clear head. I wrote a post many years ago — when Javi met Lola — about introducing siblings to their new baby sibling. I used those tips for Lola’s birth and Eva’s birth. Here are the things I planned to do + carry out when baby #4 arrived.
For starters, let’s talk gifts:
A fun little thing we did for each new baby is have the baby bring a gift to each older sibling. Walker brought a squishmallow and a new hat to each kid. The gifts were waiting in the room and may have been acknowledged before the baby! 🙂
The older kids each went shopping for the baby, too. Javi got him a stuffed animal, Lola got him a blanket, and Eva got him a onesie.
Now, let’s talk the hospital visit:
This time around, I felt like the kids were a bit older/mature and so we did a cliffs notes version of that original blog post linked above. Here are three things we did when the kids met baby Walker in the hospital:
And lastly, bringing baby home:
There are a lot of emotions when the baby comes home and into the older siblings’ space. In our case, we had to change up our whole 3-bedroom house to fit our new family of six! So the kids were already feeling like this new family member was “taking their stuff” — we all moved bedrooms, we had to give up our playroom (I’m still devastated about this one!), and we had to purge belongings to make space. So in order to foster love and acceptance and steer clear of resentment, I try to do these two things:
Overall, it’s been a very smooth month as we transition to being a family of six. The first week was tricky. We were late to everything, overtired, a mess, and had late dinners and missed bedtimes. Each week gets a bit easier. We’re slowing returning to our regularly scheduled programming. 🙂
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