The Smell of Little Pong

Preparing Freyja

I have, for the last few months now, been attempting to prepare Freyja for the arrival of her sibling. I had planned on leaving it until late into my pregnancy, but at the 20 week scan she cottoned on surprisingly quickly to the fact that there was a baby inside Mummy's tummy and left clutching her photograph tightly in her little hand. So, we've been talking babies for quite some time now.

Most days we have some sort of chat about what is in Mummy's tummy. She likes to hug it and kiss it and say 'aaahhhh' to it. However, she does also seem to think that she and Daddy have babies in their tummy's too. In fact, I think she might now believe everyone has a baby in their tummy...Unfortunately, when I ask her if she is going to help me look after the baby and if she is looking forward to the baby arriving, she tends to either ignore me or shake her head. So, I decided to branch out and get some books. I bought four off Amazon.

One is a really old fashioned book but I thought it would be good because it has photos. She does like to look at it but it's boring to read so I tend to hide it at the bottom of the bedtime book pile. One thing that is pleasing is that she thinks all the mums and dads in it are grandparents - this is both flattering for her real grandparents who are probably twice the age of those pictured and for me and Adrian who are at least the same age and most likely (in Adrian's case anyway...hee) older.

I also bought 2 picture books - 'Waiting for Baby' and 'My New Baby'. I like these because there are no words and Freyja can interpret the pictures herself. But the best one is 'There's a House inside my Mummy'. It's so much fun to read and Freyja loves it - she often asks for it and at the end, where there is a picture of the whole family, she points to the characters and says 'Daddy, Freyja, Mummy, Baby', which I'm taking as a good sign. In the book the little boy gets a baby brother, so we've started talking about brothers and sisters. She generally wants a brother, but I think that's because the little boy in the book gets a brother. And it may have something to do with the 'Koala Brothers' on Cbeebies which she really likes. I suspect she doesn't actually know what a brother or sister is.

I then decided we were ready to move onto more advanced techniques. I bought her a little doll family. She had been given a lovely doll's house but the original dolls had long gone so I wanted to get a little family to go in it. Now, as it turned out, it is surprisingly hard to find a doll family with a mum, dad, child and baby. I could get mum, dad and baby or mum, dad and two kids, but not what I wanted. Eventually I found it in Playmobil. She really likes them and plays with them a lot - although this often involves shutting the baby in the little cupboard. She also thinks the mummy is crying because of her painted eyelashes, which is perhaps not quite the message I want her to get. But anyway! The good thing is that she does seem to have grasped the family set up - Mummy, Daddy, child ('Freyja') and baby.

I don't really know if doing all this stuff will make one bit of difference, but if nothing else it has helped me to feel that I'm easing things for Freyja just a little bit. The goal now is to get through the final month unscathed - I've now been booted in the stomach by her so many times that I'm starting to wonder if it is accidental...

posted by solveig @ 9:03 PM