Presence of Children

Do you think it’s a good idea to have an older child in the room for the birth of her sibling?

Our Mommy MD Guide’s reply: I tell my patients not to have their kids come to the hospital until after the IV is out and they’ve freshened up. Kids don’t want to see Mommy looking sick. And they certainly don’t want to see the baby being born. Kids don’t handle that well.

With my second and third babies, my husband brought the older kids to see me a few hours after the baby was born. In particular, when my second baby was born, I bought a gift at the hospital gift store for the baby to “give” to her older brother. That helped to ease the transition for him.

—Judy Dudum, MD, a mom of three, an ob/gyn, and a senior staff physician at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, with interests in nutrition and adolescent gynecology