Explaining morning sickness to a child who does not know you're pregnant

[faintpinkline]

At the moment only DP and I plus a few health service people know I'm pregnant. I want to keep it that way until at least after the 12 week scan as my history ain't great.

However, I am suffering from morning sickness. Understandably our 6 year old is starting to get concerned that Mummy keeps rushing to the bathroom and being sick or at least retching violently. Mummy does not want her breakfast (believe me I've tried eating it with no success), mummy looks not very well every morning. We keep trying to reassure her that mummy will be fine but she's clearly not convinced and yesterday I heard her telling her friend mummy keeps being ill and I think she's going to die.

What the hell am I going to do? She's desperate for a sibling and would be so excited if she knew I was pregnant but I can't bear the thought of letting her down and seeing her so sad if something goes wrong again which it might

I really don't know what to do for the best. I'm 8+5 now so a long way to go before my 12 week scan.

I had a similar situation, i have had 4 mc and have 4 children the oldest was 6 at the start of the fifth pregnancy. I was ill and ended up in hospital although luckilu only brieflyu with sickness and my older daughter also got really concerned that i was dying or very ill (she was going through a phase of thinking about death and it didnt help that she knew my own mother had died when i was a child!)
I told her i was pregnant. I had to explain pregnancy loss to her at roughly the same time as my sister had a mc late on. She really did seem to understand that pregnancy sometimes ends in loss and although she was worried and sad it didnt seem to cause her as much heartache as the worry abotu me being ill.

I told my niece that i might be having a baby and thats whats making me not feel well but we would need to wait and see if the doctor says theres a baby for us, my sister also told her the same thing unfortunatly my sister had a MC so told niece that there was no babies so they wouldn't be getting one swifty bought her a new toy and baby was all but forgotten about.

Some people don't like this approach and prefer to tell children the whole truth but i felt at 4 she didn't need to know.

thanks dirtydishes, I am sorry about your losses.

I will talk to DP about maybe telling her but I worry he's going to say no. for the moment we've just told her that Mummy has a bug that's making her sick and it may take a while to go away but I will get better.

Just feel so sorry for dd either way

I think honesty is the best policy, by 6 children start trying to work out whats going on for themselves.

I haven't personally had this issue as this is my 1st DC but I have been very sick throughout and found out that my mum was too. She had this problem, trying to explain to my older brother why she was so poorly. She reckoned - and I agree - that not explaining it could be far more distressing to the child as they will be terrified that mummy is really sick. She said she told my brother that yes, mummy wasn't feeling very well and she was going to be poorly for a while but it was definitely all right and nothing bad was going to happen to her and he didn't need to be worried - in fact, a good thing was going to happen at the end of it.

I'm very sorry for your loss and completely understand why you are nervous about explaining pg. But I think it would be best to try and explain to her at at least a basic level what is happening to you, just so she understands that no matter how poorly you, its a natural process and hopefully something wonderful will come of it. That has surely got to be better than whatever her imagination might make up?

Good luck x