When did you tell your older children that you're pregnant? Mine are 5 and 7.

[debinaustria]

Morning everyone

I'm 6 weeks today and want to hold off telling the boys for as long as possible or at least until 12 weeks. They've seen me being sick a few times this week but haven't twigged yet. How long did you manage to keep it from your older children?

Thanks

Deb

Mine were 5 and 6, and I waited until I was almost 20 weeks. They were very unobservnt, and totlly surprised when I told them
I only managed to keep it from them for that long as this included the summer holidays, as other friends and some of the staff at school knew, due to me having some problems early on.

12 weeks - my oldest was a bit affronted when she realised we had known for so long - but she got over it very very quickly

We managed to wait till I was quite far on, about 22 weeks I think, DD has just turned 6 recently, we told her on Father's Day as we were getting ready to go out for lunch. I was feeling a bit crappy & couldn't really be bothered going out but she was all excited, told her the news expecting a big reaction of some sort & she said 'Daddy my socks aren't right I'm going to change them'. Big impact in her wee world then
Now it's much closer (I'm 36+) she's really excited, I think when they can't see a bump or anything it's a bit unreal, we took her to a growth scan at 28 weeks & she was delighted, till then she kept asking me if it was a real baby in my tummy.
I think the longer you wait the better as it's such a long time for yourself & you've got these wee people asking you when it's coming it'll make it even longer.

after 15-20 weeks after all the tests and preg problems - also they didn't really notice. Plus to have to wait so long would be difficult for them! - so the less time to wait the better.

I was about 20 weeks (I wanted to wait til that later scan). Ds1 was 5 and just starting school - so we told him then as I was fairly obviously pregnant and I didn't want someone else to say something to me and him find out like that. He hadn't noticed before, btw - when I did tell him I said "have you noticed Mummy is getting rather fat?" and he looked me up and down and said "oh! yes!"

I think a pregnancy can seem an eternity to a small child - so (only my opinion) - the later the better. I'd had a miscarriage in between as well (which thankfully ds1 didn't know anything about - another reason not to tell too early, I think).

We are told our 2 DC after the 12 week scan. DS (8yrs) DD (4yrs). We showed them the picture from the scan and DS new exactly what it was straight away, although he thought it was his auntie's baby, cos she had just announced she was PG. When we said, no, it's in mummy's tummy... the grins on their faces were priceless. I think this is the nice thing of having older children who can appreciate it a bit better. But it has seemed an age since we told them... I am due next week!

I wouldnt have felt happy not telling them as we were planning on telling other people at this time too.

Thanks everyone

Deb

Hi, my children were the same age as yours and i told them as soon as i found out and then they followed the pg with me, scans, doc appts and midwife appts. They were really excited that they would have a new brother or sister but knew they'd have to wait a long time before he/she arrived.
As it was i had a baby boy but fell pg again when he was 8 wks old and now have a 5 wk old baby girl too!!
I'd suffered 5 miscarriages in the past which they knew about as i'd been so upset etc so i found it helped to keep them informed at all times how the baby was growing etc.

Mine are the same age Deb, we told them at about 7 weeks as I can knacked and kept having to slope off for a nap. Poor dd was worried that I was ill so we told them then.

Our thought was also that if something went wrong we would have to tell them anyway so might as well get them used to the idea of another sibling asap