How best to prepare a 1 year old for a new sibling?

[Tallyhooo]

My DD will be 18months when bump arrives. We were having a conversation last night about how we can prepare her for a new baby? She'll still be very young and not really sure how best to explain or ready her? She's our whole world right now and am a bit worried about how she'll adjust and what we can do to help??

Any tips gratefully received!? Thanks

Mine was 19 months when her sister was born and we didn’t really do anything at all to prepare her! We had a couple of ‘big sister’ type books and obviously she knew I had a baby in my tummy, but that was as far as it went.
It was absolutely fine. They’re 4.5 and nearly 3 now and we’ve never had any jealousy and they get on like a house on fire. DD1 just accepted DD2’s presence.

Realistically you cant prepare a one year old - they don't have the processing capacity. You can try and prepare yourself by thinking about how you can maintain dd routine as much as possible / fit in time for her although so much depends on what dc2 is like. But she will very quickly not remember life without her sibling - so your new normal will be her new normal.

19month gap here, ds just accepted dd arrival. We knew she’d been accepted when he was ill and upset coming home when she was around 3 weeks old, and from outside I heard a shout of mummy, daddy and then dd name!! Before that she’d just been called the baby.
We read lots of “there’s a house inside my mummy” and “ topsy and Tim and the new baby”. So far they are great friends, time will tell if this continues. We gave ds a new toy when he met dd for the first time, said it was from her. He was very happy and excited.

Honestly, they just adapt. I had a 14 month gap with first two and 20 month gap between second two (and three years in between those).

The little ones didn't know
any different, we didn't make a big deal about it, everyone just accepted it and they are all
Good friends now!