When your children don’t want another sibling

[Ishihtzuknot]

I am pregnant with my third baby after a bit of a gap, there isn’t a dad involved so I’ll be raising baby alone as I did with my elder two. I broke the news to them at the weekend and they didn’t seem fussed at all. I get it’s not exciting news in general to children, but I prayed they’d be happy at least and be a bit excited about having a baby around. They love their baby cousin and friends babies and used to ask me to have another baby. Since the announcement they have made comments like ‘ we don’t want a baby here’ and ‘a baby will take over and there won’t be room for us’ I have reassured them things will stay as similar as possible, I’m in hope the baby will just fit into our lives, but I can’t help worrying I’m making a mistake bringing a baby into our family. With the risk of jealousy and pushing my children away or causing them to resent me for not being there as much as I currently am, not to mention not having anyone on hand to help me so I get some alone time with them. I was having doubts beforehand and scared of how I would cope but now my children have expressed they’re not happy it’s made the situation much harder. I couldn’t ever abort and I know they may change their mind once it’s sunk in and the baby’s here but I’m gutted they’re not excited and pointing out all the negatives. Does anyone have any advice on this and if your children were the same did they eventually come round?

How old are they

Sorry they’re 10 and 9

They are probably worried they will be pushed out. For what it’s worth my oldest always tells me she wishes she was an only child and to “take away” the younger ones. How far along are you?

Thank you I’m 10 weeks now I will be telling family soon so that may help once other people know and hopefully get excited that they’ll feel the same, as of yet they still aren’t interested whenever I bring up the subject so it’s really worrying me tbh that it’ll cause a divide and resentment

I’m a single parent, 6 year gap. My eldest was devastated when I told him I was pregnant (didn’t surprise me tbh). He was ambivalent throughout my pregnancy but mostly really liked DC2 when she did arrive. She was cute, and really obviously adored him!
I just empathised loads (recognised he was upset, worried, angry, whatever), enjoyed the fleeting moments when he was excited (took him to a private scan at 20ish weeks once the NHS anomaly scan had gone ok, humoured him with an awful babygro he spotted in the shops and wanted to buy, etc), acknowledged the bits he’d rightly spotted would be tricky, reassured him about the good points of getting a new sibling etc.

I figure that ultimately it’s up to me to support him through difficult feelings rather than for him to change his feelings to ones which would be more comfortable for me IYSWIM.

At 8 and 2 they now get along really well and I’m really proud of their relationship - although I think he still has moments when he wishes he didn’t have to put up with her.

Do they know how you came to be pregnant? It’s your business so you don’t need to share, but if they didn’t have cause to think you were sexually active I guess that could come as a surprise and be difficult to process (and they might not want to ask). I don’t have any thoughts on how to handle that, mine are donor-conceived, but thought I’d flag it as a possible angle.

Congratulations on your pregnancy. I think at 10 weeks a baby seems quite a distant prospect to your children - they may well get more excited once there is a bump and kicking and shopping and so on?