Toddler hitting husband after finding out I'm pregnant

[CaBro]

Hi,
I'm currently about 5.5 months pregnant, and we told my toddler (2.5yo) about a month or so ago that he is going to have a baby brother. He's expressed various degrees of excitement and apprehension, but at the moment is being very sweet with me and is giving the baby bump little kisses, which is lovely.

He is, however, being quite frankly a bit horrible to my husband - hitting him, pinching him, telling him to go away, and saying he wants mummy to do everything. My husband and I split the childcare 50-50, so this is both sad for everyone and also really difficult to deal with! They normally have a lovely relationship, and my son has never been a hitter/biter before. I can't help but think that it's related to my pregnancy, and I wondered whether anyone else has experienced this, and if so did anything help?!

I honestly wouldn't worry about it too much. A 2.5 year old isn't going to understand fully what's going on, at least not until baby is physically here. He may sense a change and be feeling a little bit insecure and is acting out, but ultimately it's very common for toddlers of that age to start favouring one parent over the other. You will probably find in a few weeks he's obsessed with your husband and not too keen on you 😆
My second child is 3 and I'm 31 weeks pregnant and he verbally expresses that he's having a baby sister soon, but he really doesn't have any further understanding of what's going on. How does your son behave when it's just him and your husband alone and you aren't there or is this new behaviour all done in front of you?

You are not alone, from the moment we told our nearly 3 yo I was pregnant she only wanted Mummy, told Daddy to go away, screamed if he tried to bathtime, bed time, nursery drop off etc, I ended up taking on a lot of the childcare which was a lot with being pregnant too as I just couldn't bear her being so upset. It is really upsetting for both parents, I feel you. We have noticed she is getting slightly better now and wants my husband more. I have also started to take a step back a few nights a week and let him to bed time etc, although its really hard and cries for me, we're trying to take little steps in getting her used to us both caring for her, especially ahead of the babies arrival!

Yeah I mean he's been through stages of parental preference before, but never this extreme! It's worse if I'm around, but even when I'm not around he's acting up with my husband - the other day when he was giving my son a bath, my son kept trying to pinch him! And obviously my husband has to hold a boundary with that kind of behaviour, so then it kind of ruins their bathtime together. I do think that although he obviously doesn't really have an understanding of what having a baby brother will entail, he is thinking about it and processing it a lot - he's very into his toy baby at the moment, and he says stuff like 'I'm going to push baby brother in the pram', followed about 30 seconds later by 'I don't want a baby brother'!

Idk, I guess it's all quite a lot of uncertainty for him...added to the basic chaos of being a toddler!

Ah it's really nice to hear it's not just us (although obviously sorry you're going through this too). We are trying really hard not to just default to me doing things just bc it's easier at the moment, but it's tricky not to! That said, because of the way we balance stuff with work, most of the time if it's my husband's shift with our son then me taking over from my husband isn't actually an option, so whatever happens they spend quite a lot of time together! Fingers crossed it just passes (and glad to hear things are a bit better for you).