If you have other children did you wait for 12 week scan to tell them?

[unsureforevermore]

I am almost 10 weeks - I have a 8 and 5 year old I have had my midwife app today and another 3 weeks for scan to wait. I am not sure how much longer I can keep this quiet! None of my family know as I don’t want them to slip up and tell the kiddies - it’s my little girls birthday on Friday and I feel like it would be nice to just tell them.

I feel like if something happened now they would be very aware something was wrong but I don’t know !

any advice? I am struggling with tiredness and sickness so might help to tell family ? Pregnancy

Aye she might be desperate in theory but when the reality hits it can be different. My friend’s DD nagged and begged for a sibling but when it was announced (she was 6) she cried most of the day and took a looooonnnggg time to bond with the baby when she arrived.

We didn’t, but I was hospitalised with HG at 8 weeks. DH brought DS (then 2) to see me. He didn’t tell him the specifics of why I was unwell, but DS picked up on what was going on, what he’d overheard and told his nursery nurse in great deal that Mummy was having a baby. He was actually waiting to see a SALT at the time, but the whole baby thing got him chatting away!

My kids are 7, 6 and 4 and I'm due in may. We told them after the 20 week scan cause I wanted to make sure the scan went well first. And also it's such a long time to wait that I'd rather tell them half way through so that they don't need to wait so long.

We waited very late but they are close in age - 4 in 5 years. Even a couple of months is a long time for a child to wait - think how they are in the run up to Christmas.

Family knew but had more sense that to tell the DC without checking first. Plus my DM could sniff a family pregnancy at 50 paces - a skill which mystified me until I started spotting the next generation 😀

When did you tell the eldest about DC2?

Don't underestimate how oblivious others can be to a pregnancy. I didn't tell anyone aside from DH before 20 weeks, others not until 24 to 26, and everyone was surprised despite it feeling to me like it was really obvious.

If you do decide to tell them soon definitely keep it away from the birthday in case something goes wrong and that then creates an unpleasant association for the child associated with their birthday. Not quite the same, but an aquintance told their child at Christmas that she was expecting, she was around 12 weeks. When she very sadly miscarried a few weeks late,r her child was heartbroken and somehow decided they must have upset Santa so he had taken the baby back. The next Christmas child was convinced they wouldn't get any presents because Santa hates them. It was unthinkably awful for all of them.

Children's minds work in funny and unpredictable ways, personally I therefore try to keep things like that very separate.

We never told the kids until the 20 week morph scan. It’s way too long for them to wait otherwise, to them it’s like years, and we also. Believed it was best to check all was fine at that scan. We did have one where the scan threw up issues, and that allowed us to make decisions, get a plan of attack, how it was going to work etc before telling the kids.

I would tell them. By 6 weeks with my third you could tell I was fatter (my SIL guessed from a photo), my DS worked it out by 8 weeks so we just told him. But he had been though losing our second at 24 weeks so he was hyper aware of pregnancy and loss. He was only 3.5 and still understood to some degree and would have been upset if we hadn't told him with our third.

You do need to be aware that they might tell other people.

Yes. My sons were 10 and 13 and also were aware I'd had recurrent miscarriages so definitely didn't want to tell them until at least first scan was OK.

We didn’t tell ours when they were 6 and 7 until the 12 week scan. It felt safer to tell them then, we had seen a heartbeat and it was a viable pregnancy at that point.
We had lost babies before and kids just really don’t need to know about that level of sadness at their ages. I mean obviously some sadness and tragedy is unavoidable (death of a pet/family member etc) but this is one that you can easily avoid or at least reduce the chances of by telling them later on.

I went to a wedding at 5 weeks and nobody noticed that I wasn't drinking.

Nobody actually looks that hard tbh.

I told everyone after the 20 week scan. No one guessed.