Week 12: Making the big announcement

One of the most common pieces of advice you hear in early pregnancy is that you should wait until at least 12 weeks to start telling people that you’re pregnant. Everyone says so; everyone woman who’s been through it all before, the OB/GYN, heck, even I’ve told a cautionary tale or two about someone I knew who had spilled the beans too early only to be heartbroken at the first ultrasound. I knew the reasoning behind these warnings all too well, but when that home pregnancy test boasted a solid positive, all I wanted to do was tell everyone close to me. In fact, the first thing I did after taking the test was call my parents, my mother-in-law, and my siblings, knowing full well that I should wait until after my first prenatal appointment.
After my parents and siblings assured me they wouldn’t say a word to anyone else, my husband and I made an agreement to keep our mouths shut until we saw a heartbeat. This little agreement didn’t last long. My very intuitive best friends knew instantly the moment I turned down a glass of wine at a dinner party. Shorty after that, we finally had our first ultrasound at eight weeks and saw a little heartbeat. Knowing full well of the pregnancy rumors floating around the office, apparently a constant diet of saltines is a dead giveaway, I decided it was time to tell my coworkers. I bought a few dozen donuts and topped the box with a photo of the sonogram and a cute little message. No one was surprised, but they were supportive.
Even though the majority of our family, friends and coworkers knew we were expecting, I still had this paranoia about posting anything on social media. After all, we weren’t at that magical 12 week mark yet. The longer we waited for that announcement threshold, the more we thought about how we would do it. We searched through Google and Pinterest, scanning through hundreds of different announcements. Would we go the comedy route, tug at the heartstrings, or try to be clever? There seemed to be a bit of pressure there.
I started thinking about why there was this need for a big grand announcement, and then it hit me. Most women find out around 6 or 7 weeks that they’re pregnant. If you have the will power to wait to tell people, that means you have to keep this incredible secret to yourself for over a month! That’s enough to drive any sane woman crazy, let alone a hormonal pregnant one. So, what do you do to distract yourself? Well, planning and executing a killer announcement could do it. After weeks of debating how we would publicly announce, I grew tired of the whole idea. The pressure to make it something amazing took the fun out of it.
At just under 12 weeks I had a “screw it” moment. My husband and I were on a wine tasting trip in Temecula. Confused? Well, he gifted me this trip for Christmas, and we booked it for early April, unaware that I would be pregnant when the time came. We couldn’t cancel the trip, and I didn’t want to pass up quality time with no distractions, so we went. He tasted for two, we ate some delicious food, and we just relaxed. Anyways, we had a sudden urge to buy our unborn child’s first outfit. We decided to choose one girl and one boy outfit because we didn’t know the sex yet. My husband took a photo of me holding both outfits for our mothers, and after sending the text messages I turned to Instagram. I uploaded the same photo we sent to our mothers, did a touch of editing, and wrote a few sentences explaining that we were expecting our first child. With a nod from the hubby, I posted to Instagram and shared to Facebook.
It didn’t take long for the comments and post likes to flood our social media inboxes. As I read each comment and saw how many people stopped for a moment to wish us well on this new journey, I had no regrets about how we announced. It was simple and genuine, and that suits us just fine. Don’t get me wrong; I am still planning on having my talented photographer friend take a photo for us. I have a few ideas in mind, but the pressure is off, and that makes it fun again.