Hellobee

As with our last adoption, we have very little time between when we matched and when we’ll be bringing a baby home. This means that there is no time to withhold any of the information from the girls while the situation becomes more stable. We were going to have to tell them about the baby right away and get them prepared for a new sibling as soon as possible. As I mentioned in my last post about preparing an older sibling for adoption, I think this is more challenging without all the typical gradual onset cues of pregnancy.

When Mr. Jacks and I finally decided that we’d be moving forward on this adoption, we were excited to break the news to the girls. We waited until after telling the agency we would accept the placement. This gave us a little breathing room and time to prepare. Since September, each night we go around the dinner table and talk about our favorite part of the day and what we are grateful for that day. Focusing on the positive aspects of our days has shown to improve happiness and cognitive performance, so it makes us all feel good and the girls look forward to doing this every night. We decided that we would tell the girls about the baby during our gratitudes. That night I said that I was grateful for Mama S and that Mama S was having another baby who would be joining our family… and how grateful I would be that our family would be able to take care of that baby. It was actually a pretty emotional moment for me and I’m sure the girls could sense that.

I thought the girls might be pretty confused about me dropping this bomb in the middle of dinner, but they both got it right away. I think the most amazing part was Jack Jack’s reaction. Her jaw kind of dropped and she asked, “This baby is growing in Mama S’s tummy just like me??!!” I imagine she felt really proud and confident in that moment. She really understood that her new sibling would share a special connection with her. Little Jacks immediately peppered us with a ton of questions about the adoption and the baby. I wish I had videotaped the whole event so I could re-live the excitement around that dinner table!

We quickly realized that telling the girls isn’t just a one time event, but an ongoing process. They have questions that come up daily and they both fantasize about what it will be like with a new baby (maybe) brother. Little Jacks seems to think that all babies enter families through adoption. We had a long talk about the difficult circumstances that often lead people to place their babies and how we know a lot of adopted children, but there are also a lot of children who stay with their birth families too. Jack Jack wants daily reassurance that baby is still going to come live with us. While my natural inclination would be to make a definitive statement that the baby will come live with us, the stark reality is that anything could happen between now and placement, including that birth mom could decide to parent. The only thing that I can really tell her for certain is that whether the baby lives with us or with birth mom, he will always be her baby (maybe) brother.

We’ve also allowed the girls to participate in the naming game. Due to my baby name obsession, this is a constant topic in our home. We are so lucky that we get one more opportunity to name a child and we want to make it count. We created a list of names to try on for size a few days at a time each. The girls get to vote on which ones they like best. They’ve also had an opportunity to offer their own suggestions, which have ranged from comical (Flower) to interesting, but maybe not our style (Angus). This hopefully allows them to feel like they are making an important contribution to baby preparations.

All in all, we’ve taken a pretty laid back approach to preparing the girls for the transition this time around. If there’s one thing I learned last time, it’s that all the preparation in the world doesn’t ever address the challenges that the kids will go through when a baby finally does arrive home…. so we’ll just cherish the time that we have as a family of four and keep the dialog going.

Do you have any tips for preparing the family for the arrival of another baby?

The girls at Disneyland.  We never thought it would be the last vacation we would take as a family of 4!