Sharing the News

I have two daughters and a baby on the way. When did you tell your older kids the good news?

Our Mommy MD Guide’s reply: My first two daughters are only a year and a half apart, but I waited 3 years to get pregnant with my third. I wasn’t sure how my daughters, who were then ages 5 and 3, would react to the news that I was pregnant, so I tried to wait until I was 12 weeks along to tell them.

But my oldest daughter figured it out before that. In hindsight, it’s easy to see how: You show quickly with the third baby, and her line of sight was right at my belly. One day, she asked me, “Mommy, do you have a baby in your belly?” It caught me of guard, and I said, “I ate too much for dinner.” But she and her sister kept asking, and so I admitted it pretty soon after that.

I was glad I did because my daughters were so excited that it was extra fun for me, too. They talked to their baby sister through my belly button. For a long time after the baby was born, they’d lift up my shirt to talk to the baby. I’d say, “The baby’s over there! Stop lifting up Mommy’s shirt!”

I had feared that once my daughters knew I was pregnant, they would keep asking day after day when the baby was coming. But they understood that it took 9 months, and they waited patiently.

My girls did ask a lot of questions, though. How did the baby get in there? How’s the baby going to get out? I answered the questions as clearly and honestly as I could.

—Rebecca Kazin, MD, a mom of three girls and medical director of the Johns Hopkins Dermatology and Cosmetic Center at Green Spring Station in Lutherville, MD