When venturing into our parental journey, our hope was always to have our second child when our first was around two years old. Once Roman reached 6 months, I secretly started fantasizing about having another much sooner. Strangely enough, before that 6 month point I had trouble imagining having another at all. I wasn’t traumatized by my experience with Roman; I was just so intensely attached to him that having another baby felt like a betrayal of some sort.

At my last ob appointment, while I was buckling Roman into his stroller to leave, my doctor said, “Aren’t you a little sad, he’s still just a baby?”

I’m not sad, so apparently I went from one extreme to the other. I feel happy for my children that they will have each other through all their years. I daydream about them playing together, about family dance parties and adventures. (I feel it is important to document this now, so my future self can look back and laugh when they are pulling each others hair out.)

After finding out I was pregnant with our second baby I was so hungry for feedback on what to expect with this 18 month age gap. Every mother I encountered at the playground with a toddler and an infant was greeted with the ever popular, “how old are they?” followed by a slew of more questions if it turned out they were in fact “two under two.” I quickly got the impression that it isn’t something people like to talk about, as it seems they’ve learned already that when it comes to siblings it all depends on the individual children and every age gap has its perks and drawbacks through different phases.

I was also just so curious what to expect of my son as an 18 month old. How much will he understand; how well will he be able to express himself; what milestones and behavior bumps will he be experiencing? After some observation of 18 month olds, I concluded there will be no predictability with this either. Roman recently experienced a long independent streak followed by an intensely clingy phase, suddenly exhibiting jealousy when he sees me holding another baby or hugging family members. I am completely clueless as to what the next 4 months might bring. Right now he hasn’t the slightest idea what is going on. We point to my belly and say, “Isn’t mamma’s belly getting big?” but he has no interest. I can picture him looking at his sister with sweet curiosity, the way I see him check out the other infants he’s encountered, but I can’t imagine how this will affect him, what he’ll think, and how long it will take him to understand.

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I’ve encountered a lot of advice on how to prepare older toddlers for new siblings and have been working on collecting age appropriate advice for easing the transition for Roman as an 18 month old. Here’s what I have so far:

1. We bought him a baby doll to teach him to be gentle or “nice” — (a lesson we attempt frequently in general when he’s being “rough” and playfully smacking us.)  We thought maybe he’d love the doll, point to it and say “baby,” carry it around, cuddle it… the experiment backfired. Either he’s totally creeped out by dolls or he knows exactly what is going on and already resents the new baby because the only attention he’ll pay it is to steal its pacifier and push it away in disgust. So that’s my experience so far with that advice.

2. Establish a solid routine before the baby’s arrival to maintain consistency and a sense of security during a time of great change and confusion.

3. Have the baby in a bassinet, as opposed to our arms, when Roman meets her for the first time. After recent incidents of jealousy when catching me holding other babies, I think this is excellent advice.

4. Don’t ignore the older child when the new baby is getting attention. This is something I am not too worried about with Roman still at such an adorable and entertaining age himself, I imagine he will be stealing most of the attention away from his sister. However it is quite clear that attention is very important to him, so we will have to make sure to be sensitive to this.

5. Schedule daily alone time with each child. On a recent trip to visit family I noticed how happy Roman was when I took him in to bed to read stories and go to sleep. It seemed that after spending so much time in bigger groups he was excited to have alone time with me, so I made a mental note that this will be an important routine to establish when the new baby arrives.

6.  Schedule help in the first 6 weeks to be sure there are always enough hands and eyes to care for both children during the initial transition. I also want to plan lots of fun outings for Roman with his dad and grandmothers throughout that time to make sure he is getting enough special attention.

7. Bring the baby “alive” for the older child. In other words, speak about the baby’s thoughts and feelings so they seem like more than a crying poop machine. For example, “your sister loves to watch you play, she thinks you’re so funny!” This is something that probably works better with older children, but could be put into practice with an 18 month old as well. I’ll just have to wait and see how much of an effect it has!

8. Give the toddler presents from the baby. Again, I’m not sure if this will register with an 18 month old, but it’s worth a try!

9. Wear the new baby around the house and on outings to make it easier to play with Roman and focus enough attention on him. 

10.  Establish better sleep behavior and complete major changes before the new babies arrival. Right now Roman co-sleeps, wrestling himself to sleep in bed with us after story time, sometimes for 5 minutes, sometimes for 2 hours. Three months before the baby is born we will be moving to a two bedroom home and plan to transition Roman to sleeping in his new room through the night with less struggle at bedtime. (This one is probably more for our own sanity, but also to ensure that he doesn’t associate the necessary changes with the new baby’s arrival.)

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Any “baby bunching” bees out there with advice on bringing home a new baby to a young toddler? Recommendations on Do’s and Don’ts I should keep in mind?