what did you do with #1 while having #2?

[taramoon13]

this is obviously directed towards those who had hospital births. it never occurred to me until our neighbor offered to watch ds (3) whenever i have to go have #2 (not due til feb). both of our parents are within 40 min. away, but ds has never stayed the night away from us. he goes with my dad & his wife 1 day a week for about 5 hrs. so i'd say they're pretty used to each other. the others see him a couple times a month and it's always around us for dinner and i don't think they're really prepared for the high intensity of ds for longer than 1-2 hrs.(other grand child is a quiet girl). if i go into labor in the middle of the day, there's not as much to worry about, someone could just come meet us at the hospital & get ds. i guess i'm just more worried about it happening in the middle of the night. just wondering exactly how it worked for you.

[lillymonster]

i haven't had my baby yet, but one of my sisters will take her. My mom and my IL are over 70 and I honestly don't trust either overnight with DD, but my sisters are used to high maintenance kids and have no weird exceptions of how kids should be, plus they had children late, so they aren't too far removed from being around kids.

DD will be close to 4 and never stayed overnight with anyone, but I am not really worried. I think DD will think it's kind of fun for a while, and she is pretty high maintenance.

[MaerynPearl]

My aunt watched DS while I had DD. If I had gone into labor at home, she would have driven the half hour to our house to get him before we went to the hospital. However, i ended up going into labor at her house! What luck!

And not necessarily directed toward hospital births... I have a neighbor taking DS and DD when I have DD2 even though its a homebirth! will be texting her when its time and she will come across the street and take them to her house (she has two little girls that are great friends with my kids so no problem for anyone to do this!)

[Honey693]

We're having a hb and DD is staying with a friend who has 2 kids. If we were having a hospital birth it'd be the same deal and then she'd be dropped off after the baby was born (same as we're doing for hb) since our hospital lets kids stay overnight and there's enough room for 4 people to comfortably sleep in the rooms.

[Twinklefae]

DS will stay with my bff and her family while I birth unless he really really really wants to stay. (I doubt he will - he's not a fan of anything 'weird'.)

If for some reason he can't stay with her, he'll go with my parents.

[_betsy_]

If it was a snowstorm (I was due with DD2 in Jan, in NY), the middle of the night or otherwise impossible or impractical to get DD1 to Grandma's, she would go to my SIL's who lives 4 blocks from the hospital. If that wouldn't work, our next-door neighbors would take her (they have a DD the same age and had just a baby of their own, though, so having DD1 there for more than a couple hours seemed cruel to them).

In the end, the midwife broke my labor as (loosely, at 41 weeks) "scheduled" on a Friday at noon-ish, and DD1 was at Grandma's as planned. She spent the night there, and then came to meet the baby the next day. She slept in her own bed and spent the weekend with Daddy until baby and I came home Sunday afternoon. DD1 was 27 months at the time, and dealt with it all very well.

[~Amy~]

The plan is for my mom to take DS while I deliver and then DH to come home for the night. If I have another c-section, my mom will stay at the hospital with me since baby can't room in with a section mom unless someone else stays too. If I am able to have a VBAC, I plan to either leave early and not stay overnight, or depending on the time of day I deliver & how we're both doing, spend the night in the hospital by myself with the baby and hopefully leave the next day.

[LemonPie]

I went into labor on a Sunday afternoon with #2, so my dad took my 2 yo son to McDonalds and the park while my mom came to the hospital with us. I was dilated to six when I got to the hospital and she was born about 3 hours after we arrived. My sister and her husband drove up to see the baby and stayed overnight at our house with DS that night. I went home the next day.

[Cujobunny]

My mom & my MIL live 2 hrs away so they both came to stay with me for a few days before my EDD (one of them slept in the guest room, one on the living room couch). My mom came to the hospital for birth, MIL stayed home to watch ds. I wasn't in the hospital too long, had a midwife, so went in at 5:20am, dd was born at 4:14pm, I was home by 7:30pm. If I wanted to stay overnight though, ds would have been fine with MIL, in fact he was asleep when we got home anyway.

[PrincessWinnie]

Not sure yet. DS goes to 1st grade at the elementary school across the street so if things happen while school is in, he will probably stay with our friends across the street who have two DS's that my son is good friends with. DH wouldn't stay with me for more than 24 hours so DS would only be there for a day or so and he would think it was awesome. They all go to the same school together so it would just be spending the night, being at school all day, then coming back there for a few hours.

If things are a little more "planned' and the baby comes around the weekend then my MIL (DH's mom) will come stay with DS so she can be close to us to see the baby (she lives an hour away).

[spatulagirl]

When I had #2, I had a neighbour come over and stay with DS. We told him about it so he was expecting it. When he woke up, she took him home to her house to play with her kids. He had never spent the night without us before but he thought this was great fun!

[Aliy]

my grandma was in town so i called when my water broke and headed to the hospital... weren't sure how fast i would go... water breaking last time i had a baby an hour later... it was 5 hours the second time but it was natural not AROM)


she took him back to their place. ( they had a house as well in the city we were living in)
and then after the baby was born they brought him to meet his brother. He had just turned 2 the day before. then they took him back to stay with them until i was ready to come home the next day. He really likes his Great grandma so it worked out well. Hopefully she'll be around with number 3 gets here but she is in mexico until a week before the due date so i'm not too sure what happening this time but a HB is planned

[Lady Lilya]

This is relevant to home birth too. I don't plan for DS (3yo) to be exposed to the birth.

Our intention is for me to have a male-free birth, actually. So ideally DS and DH will hang and I will try to keep me contained to the room that is kinda out of the way of the rest of the house. If that isn't working out well, DH thinks he'll take him to the nearby hotel.

In case of emergency transfer, we want DH to come with me. So, I asked the midwife about this. Do I hire a doula to be responsible for the childcare part of my needs? She told me she'd bring her teenaged daughter or son, both who have babysitting experience. If it comes to that, the midwife's kid will watch DS while we go to the hospital. So I figure I'll suggest that the midwife's kid spend time with DH and DS throughout the labor, and then if something happens he/she will already be somewhat familiar with things. We gotta work out the details, but this is the rough plan.

[Kelly1101]

My MIL lives 10 minutes away, so she came over and stayed (in our house) with Em while we were in the hospital. One night, she went home and my mom stayed at the house with Em. She took it really well, probably because she still had her room and her same routine.

[finnegansmom]

Originally Posted by Lady Lilya

Our intention is for me to have a male-free birth, actually. So ideally DS and DH will hang and I will try to keep me contained to the room that is kinda out of the way of the rest of the house. If that isn't working out well, DH thinks he'll take him to the nearby hotel.

That's interesting, there were only women at my last birth -
we had called my inlaws to pick up ds1 who was only 21 months at time, and they didn't make it in time. My dh was with him when ds2 was born and my doula was with me with my midwife, then my doula ran out just as he was born and switched with my husband. It's not exactly how we planned it, but he just came so fast and my son was kind of freaked out (middle of the night).

I really liked having only women there, it was very dim and cozy and quiet... totally perfect birth experience.

[lach]

My mother is coming to stay about 2 weeks before my due date. She'll stay with both kids while DH and I are at the hospital, and is staying a month after my due date. If the baby comes before then, I have NO CLUE! LOL we'll be in big trouble. Our nearest other relative is about 2 hours away. I think we'll just have to call on the generosity of a neighbor. We're not particularly close with any of them, but I can't imagine they'd hold it against us that we need help during an emergency! And we'd get them a really, really nice thank you gift

[othersomethings]

I can give you a different perspective on this: What my parent's did with us.

My mom had 11 kids, 9 were successful home births. I'm the oldest so I remember pretty much all of them, and my last sibling was born when I was 22. Most of my mom's labors were pretty short. like, 8hrs or less from start to finish. With a couple of them only 3 or 4 hrs. So it wasn't a big deal for kids to be elsewhere.

When it was just "what to do with #1 while #2 is born" I was 2 and I was packed off to Grandma's house.

when #3 was born, we spent the morning with a friend from church who lived close by.

both #4 and #5 we were in a kids playgroup and one of the other moms took us.

#6 was during the night, so all the kids were asleep...only me and my brother woke up and I was 12 or 13 so it was no big deal. I watched the birth, and my 10yo brother showed up in time to see some placenta in a bowl that pretty much scarred him for life (he says)

#7 was during Sunday morning and someone (not dad) brought us to church.

#8 the young ones went to grandma's house, I stayed and participated. The older boys played at the neighbors.

I don't remember #9. Probably some repetition of previous scenarios.

#10 was the middle of the night, and no one woke up except me (I was already 18 by this time and still living at home) until it turned into an emergency transfer complete with ambulance and EMT's carrying my mom downstairs with an arm hanging out of her to go have a C-section. That woke everyone up and there was a lot of calming kids down and reassuring and so forth at 4am.

#11 was a VBAC and pretty much the same as #8. That was one of her longest and hardest labors, she labored most of the night and into the morning and afternoon. But again, little ones at grandmas, older ones working etc.

Now that I'M facing the same question...DD will most likely chill with some of her relatively young aunts and uncles (we live close to my parents at the moment) with grandpa.

[Lady Lilya]

Yeah, we have no nearby relatives, or even friends. We just moved here last month.

My mother can't come because she is taking care of my 93yo grandma.

[gummibears]

My MIL offered to watch #1 in the waiting room so, that's likely what we will go with as he adores her and it should work well with his DS and some other busy toys with him.

[Ambyrkatt]

Just had #2 earlier this week and DS stayed 2 nights with Grandma while I was in the hospital. DS is almost 5 and has spent the night at her house before, but never 2 nights in a row. The 2nd night, he did want to come home, but we didn't get to check out of the hospital until close to midnight, so we just let him sleep at her house the 2nd night and DH went and got him first thing the next morning.