I had a wonderful homebirth with my 23 mo. old daughter in attendance. My dad and stepmom were here to help her out and we expressed to them that we wanted her to always feel free to be with us --not to worry about her disturbing me. The one rule we had for her was she couldn't touch me/climb on me/nurse/etc. while I was having a contraction. She would watch me have a contraction, ask my husband if she could touch me, he'd say no, she had to wait, then when it was over, I'd say, ok, you can touch me now, and she'd extend her index finger and touch my arm-it was cute! We prepared her (almost daily, towards the end) by talking about birth, watching videos (her own birth video included) reading books, etc, but mostly I think what helped her the most was acting it out, and "playing" birth, which she still does on a regular basis (very realistically). #2's birth was only 3 hours, so she never had a chance to get bored or tired or anything, but it was great having her close to me, knowing that she was ok, hearing her playing with grandma and grandpa. When her brother was born (in a kiddie pool) she was right there, saying "the baby's out" over and over, but she didn't want to touch him until the next day. One thing we forgot to mention to her was the afterbirth, as it was something I barely noticed with my first birth, but after #2 was born in the pool, I got out to expel the placenta, and it took a full 45 minutes and intense pushing--harder than required to birth the baby because I was having no contractions at all to help me. We tried nursing both kids, lots of positions, even a shot of oxytocin, but it was the combination of my midwife saying that the next step would be to have an OB "remove" the placenta, and my older one wanting to nurse to sleep ( I certainly didn't have time to make a trip to the hospital to have some OB shove his arm up inside my uterus) that gave me the motivation to really PUSH out the placenta, much to my 2 year old's alarm. She didn't freak out or anything, but she was totally unprepared to see a huge, bloody slab of meat come out of me and it was the only thing that bothered her at all. She has never ever expressed any sort of ill will towards him (ok, one particularly stressful day we ran out of gas and I was nursing him in the car when she wanted to nurse but couldn't, and she suggested we put him outside) and she's very proud of her baby brother. I credit this to the fact that she was included in his birth and tandem nursing. Speaking of which, I've got to go, hope this was helpful, enjoy your birth!