10 Ways to Involve your Kids with the Birth of a New Baby

We had our 4 sons back to back to back to back. Quite literally, we had 4 boys in 3 1/2 years (I still can’t believe we did that). Life was CRAZY and FUN and NON-STOP with 4 babies from 2004 through 2008.

Then… dare I say it, life started to get a bit easier. All of a sudden everyone was out of diapers, strollers, cribs, bottles, binkies and I didn’t need a diaper bag anymore. We had talked about having another baby on and off for about 4 years.

We decided to go for it! Victoria was born 4 weeks ago on July 9th! You know, everyone keeps asking me… “How did you get your boys to be so involved? They are so in love with her!”

Honestly, it was something we consciously did throughout the pregnancy and then even when she was born – we got them involved. The one thing I was concerned about was making sure the boys felt that a new baby was a family thing, not just a mommy and daddy thing. We hadn’t had a baby in 5 years, and I didn’t want the boys to feel that a new baby would be taking over their house. We wanted to make sure the boys all felt part of the process and not just bystanders.

I have to say, my boys are HEAD OVER HEELS in love with Victoria. It melts my heart and I just feel very grateful.

Here are 10 Ways to Involve your Kids with the Birth of a New Baby:

1) Have some fun announcing the news that you’re pregnant — We told them the night we put our Christmas tree up. We also made them feel extra special because we hadn’t told anyone yet, just them. We told them it was a BIG secret until Christmas Day and that they couldn’t tell anyone. It really did make them feel special.

2) Bring them to an appointment with you — This one is kind of an easy one, but one that really left an impact. Having my sons hear the heartbeat of their sister made it very real for them.

3) Finding out the sex, make it FUN for them — 2 of the boys thought girl, 2 of the boys thought boy. When we found out what we were having, we wanted to make it SUPER DUPER fun for them. We also didn’t announce it to anyone what we were having until we told the boys! As you can tell, they were over-the-moon to get a sister, especially our William!

4) Naming the baby — I had ALL the boys involved in the naming process. I wanted them to know the names we were thinking of and then give me their opinion. When we decided on Victoria, I even had them make a video!

5) Let them shop/register with you — This is for moms-to-be who need to register all over again (life us). We had nothing for a girl and had gotten rid of all of our baby gear. We went to Babies R Us to register and I let the boys hold the register “gun” and register for things that they thought were cute. When she got them as gifts, they felt SO special!! They kept saying, “That’s what I registered for!!”

6) 1st guests to the hospital — When we had Victoria, I made it clear to Matt that I wanted them to be the first people to see her. Not our parents. Not our brothers or sisters. Not anyone, I wanted it to be them. And I wanted to make sure they knew that. It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life to see.

7) Special Gifts to THEM for BABY — I made special onesies for each of the boys from Victoria. I wanted each of them to feel loved by her, so I had these made to mark their territory! 🙂 Each boy got one from her!

8) Bring her along for the ride! — Oh, yes. This is one of the beautiful things about having a summer baby, it’s NOT COLD! 🙂 I felt good enough to head out 2 weeks post c-section to the boys swim meet. The boys LIT UP when they saw Victoria was there! It made them feel happy to see that she’s part of their lives, she’s not home missing out on things. They may be “older,” but they’re still young. They NEED to see me and her at their things.

9) Let them help out — The boys love to feed and hold her! It’s great because they genuinely love doing it. It’s been a big help!

10) Siblings do have a magic touch — Victoria was crying the other night, so Alex asked if he could hold her. I snuggled her upright on him because I thought she may have needed to burp again, so I started patting her little back while Alex whispered in her ear. Look at what happened… little lady feel asleep! Brother love.