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There is first of all the question of when to tell the child about the new baby, then how to tell him. Then we have to try to understand what he makes of it, and how he is thinking about it, especially if he isn't yet at the stage of using many words himself. But, as most mothers know, infants understand a great deal before they are able to talk themselves, but they understand in their own way. So if you tell your toddler that you are going to have another baby, “Won't that be lovely?”, he'll go through phases of imagining and interpreting in different ways what this means as far as he is concerned.
The important thing is not necessarily that we should be able to formulate or even understand everything that goes on in his mind about it from the time that he is told till the arrival of the baby and after. What matters is that we should recognise and, to some extent, be in tune with his conflicting emotions about the whole affair. We need to make it possible, by showing our interest, for him to ask questions when he is able to formulate them, and to try to answer them as simply and as truthfully as possible.