2 year old really upset about new baby arrival

[Bex87764]

I have a 2 week old baby..at first my 2 year old seemed pretty fine..she was (and still is) very curious and affectionate towards the baby, wants to stroke her and laughs when she makes any noise etc..brings her blankets and teddies! However the last few days she’s been very angry with me and major tantrums all day long.

I’m relieved she’s taking anger out on me rather than baby but I don’t know how I’m supposed to act to try and help the situation? The worst thing is the breastfeeding..she was fine with it at least but now screams hysterically when I feed and tried to hit her face on the floor..bites teddies etc and is really really distressed. When my husband is here at least he can try hug her and calm her down (although doesn’t work very well) but he had to go to work the other day so I had the two of them for the first time. I stopped feeding to comfort her but everytime I started again she would scream so in the end I had to just let her scream as I have to feed the baby and it wasn’t helping. I didn’t ignore her, I kept saying come give mummy a cuddle etc but I literally couldn’t see to both of them at once and felt totally useless and like I didn’t handle it well. What else can you do? She’s so so distressed ..eventually she did come lay down next to me but the same thing happens at the next feed.

We took her to the park and similar thing, she wanted me to carry her but I had baby in sling so lots of tantrums. She’s also regressed with sleep, was sleeping in own room but now wants to be back in with us around 3ish which I’ve let her as don’t want her to feel more pushed out but she hates me feeding baby in the night so it’s not easy!

Will this get better ..soon?! Is there anything I can do to help things? I’ve tried the whole, come read a book while I feed and nursing basket of toys etc but she’s beyond that at this stage and can’t reason with her when she’s that upset. She’s hitting and biting us and hit her cousin when he came to visit which isn’t like her at all...I feel so guilty as she’s usually such a happy child and we have / had such a close bond :(

Oh I feel for you op as I’ve recently had/still having the same situation! It’s so difficult

My little girl is 2 and we brought home our baby in October. She LOVES the baby to the point where she will try to squeeze her cheeks and wakes her when she’s asleep! In the early weeks she showed similar behaviour to what you describe and scream ‘WHAT ABOUT ME MUMMY’ when I was rocking/feeding the baby which broke my heart. I realised that her whole world was just us and her (especially with Covid) so it was normal for her to react like this, but it doesn’t help when you’re in the situation! She also stopped sleeping through too. I have no advice really other than we tried to make her feel really special. For example daddy took her on special trips to the theme park and I bought her little charity shop toys often for being a good big sister and gave them to her when I was feeding the baby. Sometimes the distraction worked for a bit. One on one time with me , I got my mum to hold the baby for me at soft play so I could play with DD for example.

A few months on now things are starting to improve but it’s still rough - I’m sorry! We still have the tantrums but less frequency and she’s sleeping better. There are beautiful moments which make it worth it though. Keep going , they will love each other !

Also we had the exact same thing with carrying - she not constantly asked to be carried and held standing up!! So hard to explain that I can’t because she weighs a ton !!

@Andthebaby33 oh wow a few months! I bet that’s been so difficult but it sounds like you’re coming out the other side at least. It’s heartbreaking as I just want to run and give her a big cuddle but I can’t not feed the baby and she’s just not quite old enough to understand and explain things a little more :( I feed football hold to free up one side of me for cuddles but she just stands at the other end of the room crying her eyes out and hitting husband if he tries to comfort her.

I think like you say one-on-one time and extra attention is all that can be done..I’ve been making sure to do Bath and bedtime every night just the two of us and when baby is past 6 weeks and can take a bottle I should be able to take her to the park etc on my own for an hour.

Hi OP. I so remember this, particularly the feeding. I had a 2yo and newborn too (6 and 4 now but feels like yesterday!!) Exactly the same, DD was lovely when we first brought the baby home then became really aggressive and naughty and the main trigger was breastfeeding. She would scream and scream. I remember her throwing her little toddler chair across the room while I breastfed once and another time she tried to physically pull him from my breast. It was something I hadn't even considered or had ever heard of happening. I think she was desperate for closeness with me and it was a closeness I had with him that she couldn't understand or be part of.

I remember our health visitor telling me that it takes the average toddler 6 weeks to adjust to a new baby. That was bang on for us and the breastfeeding thing didn't even last that long. I tried to distract. There was a lot of tv and chocolate buttons and when dh was home I would sneak off to feed him. We got through it, she adjusted. You will look back on this time years later and wonder how you got through it. Its the trenches of parenting! All the best to you and congratulations on your new arrival.

Just remembered! One thing we did was look at YouTube videos of baby animals feeding from their mothers eg lambs and piglets to normalise it a bit! As up to then she had never seen anyone breastfeeding and I think thought babies were fed from bottles

My second is almost 8 months and we went through this for the first few months with our first. Mostly all the anger was directed at me or his brother but he would just run up and slap his brother, or hit me.

We stuck with it, ignored the bad, taught him how to play with him e.g. patting or rubbing his belly ect. He came crawling into our bed every night and demanded all the attention.

Hes back to sleeping in his own room, he loves his little brother and the lovely little boy we had pre second baby is back (but with 2/3 year old meltdowns at times...life is tough for them sometimes). It's an adjustment for them and they need to regress a little to move forward.

@Bex87764 it’s been tough not going to lie. It’s so hard to see them so distressed but at the same time I think it’s important, certainly in my DDs case, for her to learn that I can’t always drop everything and have some boundaries in place. I just try and remain calm and just repeat ‘I know it’s hard, the baby will be asleep soon and then we can play’. She likes to be left alone when she’s tantrummibg though so cuddles be reassurance and rejected !

Something nice for you though - to prove it’s not all doom and gloom. Yesterday when baby was on her playmat DD1 got one of her books and started ‘reading’ it to baby and showing her the pictures. Made my heart melt 🥰

No experience but wonder if the following may work?
Sticker reward chart, sticker for all the good things she does, e.g. being a good girl during a feed. Every weekend she then chooses a treat if she gets lots of stickers. At her age even if she got 9/10 stickers available I'd still reward and say mummy knows you're trying your best, if you get them all next week that's going to be amazing!

@Cooperjay good idea on the youtube videos of animals feeding! My daughter is still not very verbal so it’s made it more tricky as im not sure how much she understands when I try to explain things but think this would help!

@LifeIsBusyn glad to hear you’re on the other side of this and sleep has returned to normal! I don’t mind her in our bed but just hope the reactions to the feeding the night calms down soon...

@Andthebaby33 that’s really sweet that your daughter was reading to the baby, this gives me hope! I never had any siblings so feel like this is even more uncharted territory for me but I can imagine it’s a hell of a lot to take in especially when they’re still pretty much babies themselves

DD was almost 2.5 when we brought her brother home and her bewilderment at the change to her family was just heartbreaking to see. One thing that helped us was me handing the baby to anyone I could, whenever I could to get down on the floor and play with her.

I think there’s an expectation when a new baby arrives that a sibling will be delighted to be a big boy/girl, and maybe that’s something they’re not quite ready for. I’ve been telling mine lots that she’s still my baby, and she seems to get a lot of comfort from it.

Just want to add more reassurance that it’s completely normal. DD1 did horrendous things to DD2 (tried to smother her, did a wee on her baby carrier on purpose etc). They are now mostly the best of friends.

One thing I remember that helped quite a lot was if I was helping DD1 go to the loo or was getting her lunch or something and DD2 fussed, I would say in a loud voice ‘oh I’m sorry DD2, I’m helping your big sister right now, you need to be patient because she is very important too’. That helped to balance out all the ‘no darling, I can’t do x right now because I’m feeding your little sister’ stuff.