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Have a few quiet activities. Be prepared that she may want to hold the baby. My son is very sweet but he's started screaming (instead of talking in a normal voice)

My oldest was 20 months old when we brought home his little brother. He was a lot like your LO- very verbal and excited. I'm not gonna lie though, it was hard for the first 3-4 weeks. My normally sweet, well-behaved toddler started throwing tantrums and didn't want to be around me at all. It broke my heart and I seriously wondered if I had ruined his life. BUT after that initial adjustment period, he went back to his normal self. Now, 13 months later, they are best friends!

I would have a few special toys/activities for her while you're nursing/doing baby related things. Let her hold/touch the baby if she wants. And remember that if she starts acting out, it's a HUGE adjustment and you haven't ruined her life It must not have been too bad for me because I'm doing it again with the same age gap (21 months this time)!

My oldest was 19 months when we brought baby home. She met her at the hospital but I was there for 4 days so it was a slightly special circumstance I guess. She didn't really care about DD2 at all the first day. Like completely neutral. Around the 3rd day she would say hi to the baby. But otherwise paid no interest in her for a while. I agree to tending to your oldest child's needs first. That was my favorite piece of advice. I have no idea if it really helped or not but we've had no jealousy issues at all and it helped my mom guilt a little bit knowing that the kid that might actually remember some of this was taken care of.

Congratulations! Watching my boys together was by far the best thing; however, I do have to warn you that there will be regression with your toddler. My older son was turning 3 a few days after my younger son was born, and while he did great, he did throw a few more tantrums than normal, and I thought we were way past the tantrum stage.

One of the things that really helped was talking about how he had a special song that only he and I would sing to the baby. He LOVED that...we started singing it when we would be alone together, and the baby really responded to it once he heard it outside of the womb. I also made sure to make 1:1 time for him after the baby came for just mommy and me time.

@whiskers: Thank you Super early, just found out last week.

@lilteacherbee: @truth bombs: i would generally be someone who does NOT want help right in the aftermath of bringing a baby home, but DH works long/inflexible hours and we have no local family....so immediate longer-term visitors it was! we'll be doing similar for LO3 in december. luckily the last two have been born around the winter holidays, so it wasn't a stretch to get helpers here -- they would've been coming for a visit anyways and they just stay an extra bit longer!

if you have local family/good friends, i'd just try to set-up as much help as they are willing to provide. as the others have mentioned, whether they take DD1 to do fun things and pay her lots of attention, or whether they help with the new baby so that you & DH can do the special time with DD1...it's all good!

i seriously think DD1 thought all of the attention was just for her...it just happened to be that there was a new sleepy baby around too

We are planning to keep H in her normal routine, which I think will help very much. I'm also hoping to try to do some special mommy-daughter dates with her and spend some one-on-one time with her once baby sister is here so she doesn't feel slighted and also reminding everyone to pay attention to her first, not the baby.

At the time, this stressed me out so much! My oldest was a bit older when we had our second (he was 3.5), so I don't know if it was the age but we had a really smooth transition. It was really important to me to keep his routine as much of the same as we could, which I like to think helped. He was also very excited to be a helper, so we tried to give him little jobs to make him feel included (e.g. burping baby, picking clothes). In general, we just tried to make all the new life changes as positive as we could.

Mine was older (3.5), super independent and very easy child (still is) and she did start whining and throwing more tantrums after baby was born. What surprised me was that she didn't act out towards the baby at all or anything related to baby. It was other things...like she would throw a tantrum when we would tell her one last book or we're going to bed, etc. With the baby, she loved on him but was super helpful and showed no jealousy towards him. Thankfully, she was older and it didn't last long.

We read this book together called "You Were First"
(https://www.amazon.com/You-Were-First-Patricia-MacLachlan/dp/0316185337/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1472698120&sr=1-1&keywords=you+were+the+first) and it helped her know that she was our first baby but now a big girl. I seriously teared up reading this book!

Another advice I have is to make sure you have backup plans in place just in case. Our plan was to have her on her normal schedule, attending school, being with Grandparents (who she adores!). LO2 came two weeks early when my parents were out of town, when the school was on a long weekend (Friday and Monday off) and LO2 was born on early Friday. We were scrambling at the last minute, various different friends stepped in and took care of her and she kind of bounced around from place to place and all the change was probably not good for her.