When to tell 5 year old DD?

[Saltpepperpaprika]

I'm 12 weeks pregnant, IVF baby, long time coming 🙂 DD is 5 and has been desperate for a sibling for years. We're so excited to tell her but just can't figure out when, and how. It'll be a Big Deal to her, it'll be the best day of her life literally. I have a friend who's the same weeks as me and has told her 2 year old and he doesn't really understand/care, I'm a bit jealous of those low stakes! Everyone else in our lives already know pretty much, but I'm very concerned about protecting DD's feelings. I can't stand the thought of getting her hopes up and then something goes wrong. If she was much younger I would wait till the 20 week scan but she's old enough that she will have noticed something before then. Next week is the 12 week scan but I don't know whether to tell her after that, or wait a bit longer for the trisomy results, or till 16 weeks till we have a gender scan and even more reassurance...I just don't know. I also have a cute idea of buying her a t-shirt that says big sister and a babygrow that says little sister/brother, I would love to tell her by doing that, but then I have a horrible thought that something awful could be found at 20 weeks and on top of the heartache she'd be left with those items 😞 and maybe we should tell her earlier in a more low-key way. What is the best way of handling this?

We told our 4 yo after the 12 week scan, mainly because we didn't want her to hear it from anyone else and we told everyone else after the 12 weeks.

Kids aren’t as quick to make the connection between size/appearance and pregnancy as you might think. As you’ve seen with the vitamins, just because she notices something doesn’t mean she will understand what it means.

Even if you are quite obviously pregnant she probably won’t realise, especially as she sees you every day so the change will be really gradual, and if you wanted to keep it from her you could just say that you’ve got a bit bigger recently and brush it off.

I didn’t tell my 3yo until I was about 24 weeks because I didn’t want him to have a long wait, but balanced with giving him time to prepare.

Obviously at 5 she is older but I still think leaving it until after 20 week scan is much better - if something went wrong you would have to help her deal with that as well as yourself at a very difficult time, and there’s no real benefit to her to knowing earlier than that as it just means she has a longer wait.