Telling Others You’re Pregnant
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Sharing the news that you’re expecting a new baby can be an exciting time. When I was pregnant with my first child, we gave my father-in-law a picture frame carved sayings about grandparents. We wrapped it up and gave it to him for his birthday. He was so happy!
When FishBaby FishChick2 was in utero, I staged the above photo. FishChick3 was a toddler and the known “baby of the family.” It took some people awhile to make the connection that “the baby” really wouldn’t be wearing a “Big Sister” tshirt. I’ve enjoyed being a little clever when I spread the news of an impending arrival.
Yes, yes, I have.
There are a multitude of ways to share your good news with others. And I bet you know of quite a few!
For my first, my husband had been wanting a PlayStation 2 game console and I had been telling him for months he could have the PS2 when I got my baby. So when I found out I was pregnant I went out and bought him the PS2, wrapped it and had it waiting for him when we got home that evening (from a concert. It was really had to keep quiet for so long!). It took him several minutes to figure out why I bought him the PS2!
A few weeks later we were going to some dinner theatre thing with my parents. We sat thru this horrible and long play knowing that we had dessert waiting back at our house. We had made a cake that said, “You are going to be grandparents”. Again, really hard to sit through the play and not say anything!
For my second I made a onsie for the first child(who was just over a year) that said, “I’m gonna be a big brother.” When daddy got home and changed him into his pjs, that is when daddy found out! We then took a picture of child #1 wearing the onsie and sent it to family and friends. That onsie is now in the baby book!
When sharing the news of the impending second child, I made a tshirt with I’m pregnant on it. We were going to our families house for a BBQ and just went about our socializing. It took the family over a hour to finally read my shirt and notice. Boy, was it funny. My husband and I got quite a few laughs out of it in the days to follow.
🙂
I don’t remember how we told about our first child, but I vividly remember for #2 — at daughter’s 1st birthday party in may, we got her a book called “I’m a big sister” and had her open it last. NOBODY GOT IT!! My FIL even said, in typical loud and obnoxious form, “well, hopefully soon you’ll have a big announcement for us.” I gave him a look, I’m sure, and said “That WAS your announcement!!”
I felt ridiculous for the rest of the party. Talk about uncomfortable! I still to this day can fathom how none of them got it, especially since hubby read all the book titles aloud. Jeesh.
I forgot to add:
We told our 3 kids about #4 by doing the same Easter basket thing and videoing the whole thing and then put it on fb as a way of telling everyone we knew.
We told our siblings about the baby on Easter by sending them an e-card about New Life in Christ and wrote a message about being thankful for New Life in Christ and new life in me!
I told my blog readers about #4 by doing a “Not Me Monday” post about all the things I was not doing (throwing up, gagging several times a day, my kids asking why I was sick all the time, etc.)
What a fun topic!
#1: My folk’s were 1,000 miles away so I had my bro leave a trail of diapers with little messages on them throughout their house so they woke up and saw the diapers which said, “Hi Grandma and Grandpa”, “Make me a cradle (my dad is a carpenter)” “#1 on the way”, etc. For my in-laws, I snuck into their house with a pink and blue balloon and tied it to their favorite chairs and left a note on the table with a baby rattle next to it. It said, “Dear Grandma and Grandpa, I can’t wait to meet you in 7 months……etc.”
#2: Telling my hubby: I learned this time how NOT to announce to my hubby. I took the test while he was at work so I planned a huge surprise. The baby was due in Nov. so I cooked all day and made an enormous Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings (even though it would just be the two of us and our 1.5 year old daughter eating it). I made a card with a drawing of a guy with an arrow quiver and another arrow flying into it. When my hubby got home and sat down for supper I handed him the card and immediately started taking pics of him. He not only didn’t get the card, he was really upset about the surprise pictures after a long day at work and he hardly ate any of the food because he had to go to help with Youth Group. The dinner ended with me in tears and frustration and I discovered he hates being totally caught off guard like that. He did bring me flowers after YG and we made up and rejoiced together but I learned to never go so unbelievably nuts with big news like that for him.
#2: Both of our families were together in March at a cabin in the mountains for some snowmobiling so we put some magnets on the fridge. My in-laws are both bus drivers so I had found some school bus magnets. In one was a pic of our daughter and in the magnet driving behind it was the due date and a question mark. We waited for them to notice and it took a while and they didn’t get it right away (it takes my folks a while!)
#3: Sent my hubby an e-mail with a pic of our second child and a caption saying, “I’m a Big Brother.” He loved the e-mail approach much better.
#3: I wrote a poem and rolled it up into a tiny white crocheted bootie that had a ribbon I tied to it to hang on the tree as an ornament. We saw both parents on Christmas and had them open their bootie as their last Christmas gift. They saw the bootie ornament, pulled out the little rolled up paper and read, “Swinborne Baby #3, Wants to join the family tree, An unexpected blessing for us, the new little one will come in August.” They loved it!
#3’s ultrasound: Our first ultrasound was exciting. We didn’t tell anyone the date so it would be an extra surprise. My friend in MN baked a blue cake and delivered it to my in-laws’ house out of the blue. The top said, “It’s a ……..
They had to cut open the cake to discover the baby’s gender. Since I live in the same town as my own folks I delivered blue cupcakes to them. It really takes them a while. They both just thought I was giving them goodies as usual and had no idea what it meant. When I hinted there was some special meaning my dad thought they were St. Paddy’s day cupcakes even though they were more blue than green and St. Paddy’s day was 3 weeks past!!!
#4: Telling Hubbby: Got a sweet card from the store about the blessings of children and new babies and gave it to him late one night.
#4 Telling relatives: I decided to wait until the 8 week mark just for fun but it was difficult hiding my intense sickness. We thought it would be fun to tell everyone, including our children, on Easter morning. On Easter we gave my folks a tiny basket with four easter eggs in it. (We had mailed the same package to my in-laws with instructions to open on Easter. They had already guessed it must be a pregnancy announcement!) In each of the eggs was a pic of one of our kids except there was a slip of paper with the due date in the fourth egg. With the basket was a photo card, thanks to the shutterfly freebies, with pics of our kids on the front and a pic of our youngest with a Big Brother caption and a poem, “God has blessed us with another, Justy’s little sis or brother, So Jer Bear’s birthday gift will be, a week-old new Swinborne baby.” (Our 4th child is due a week before Jeremiah’s birthday in early Nov.)
#4 Ultrasound News: Had my cake-making friend in MN deliver a bunch of pink balloons to my in-laws to announce it was a girl. We delivered a bouquet to my folks.
#5: When my bro who is a missionary in Honduras called to tell me my parent’s were going to have a 5th grandchild, he wanted me to get it on surprising them. (Paybacks for making him do a diaper trail back in his college days with our first announcement?) So I baked a special brownie and made a really cute sign on it that said, “A Baby Brownie is on the Way” on one side. Their last name is Brown. On the other side I glued a little letter from my brother’s wife, written to my parents, saying that they had a special Anniversary Gift for my folks and the delivery would be in April. I took the brownie to my folks’ house and video-taped the whole things so I could show it to my brother later via internet. My folks, in typical fashion, did not get it at all at first. They thought it was an Anniversary Gift since their Anniversary was that week, and they thought it was a dessert-of-the-month-club thing where I would be bringing them a dessert every month until April.
With our first daughter, I gave my husband a gift of little blue booties, and a little pink bib. Then we went to see my inlaws and he showed them the bag. My MIL pulled out the bib, and just thought I meant my husband was messy! With our second, my husband knew I was pretty sure we might be pregnant, so I waited until he pulled in the driveway, and then texted him a picture of the pregnancy test. He loves texting. I watched his reaction from the window. It was funny. For everyone else, we let our 2 1/2 yr old daughter tell them.
So this is my first time commenting on here, and it’s going to be a doozy!
With our first child we had both sets of parents over for dinner and gave our moms little photo albums that said “Grandma’s Brag Book” and our dads mugs that said “Grandpa” on them. Pretty standard, but everyone was excited, and my best friend called while we were having dinner and she was confused why we were having a family dinner when it wasn’t anyone’s birthday but quickly figured it out and got really excited and said “Oooh! Oooh! Ok, call me back as soon as you’re done!”. She was on pins and needles for a good 2-3 hours after that 😀
For our second we had our daughter wear a shirt that said “Big Sister” to dinner at our families houses for Father’s Day, which was fun since that kinda had a ripple effect since not everyone saw her at the same time. We snapped some pictures of her in the “Big Sister” shirt and I did several blog posts in one day of everything we had been doing over the past few weeks and sent an email to our friends telling them we were playing blog “Where’s Waldo?” and they had to comment on the appropriate post once they found out where “Waldo” was.
For our current pregnancy I made fortune cookies and my husband printed out several different regular fortunes and then a couple pregnancy related ones that said “Your family will grow by two feet next year” and the more obvious “Matt and Elizabeth are pregnant”. That one was fun since we had a family dinner with my side of the family and weren’t really sure who ended up with the revelatory message until they said something. It was a bit tougher with my in-laws since my MIL was on a diet and I didn’t think she’d eat her cookie (we saw them separately from my family and I like to try out new recipes, so making fortune cookies really didn’t cause any suspicions), so my husband called her to be sure she did eat it, and she called us back a few minutes later very excited about the news. To tell our friends we just took a picture of a plate of the fortune cookies with the different fortunes scattered around and I did a “recipe roundup” on my blog that included pictures of the different things I’d tried making recently, and linked the post on Facebook so our friends had to look closely to find the hidden message (not everyone did!).
http://stockemerfamilyfun.blogspot.com/2010/06/recipe-round-up.html
I’m not sure what we’ll do next time, but I’m excited about this post to help give me ideas!
Thanks for delurking with such creative ideas!
I sent my husband a cluster of 3 flowers at work, saying “congrats on #3!” when I found out I was pregnant with our third.
So fun to read all these stories! Mine are all boring, by comparison. With my first, we lived far away from everyone and just called. With my second, we were in the ICU waiting room (my FIL was dying) and I started cramping and bleeding and had to go to the ER- that’s how everyone learned I was pregnant. 🙁 With this last baby, I was scheduled to have surgery in a few days and found out from the lab work! Needless to say, I HAD to tell everyone- and quickly- since they all thought I was going in for surgery within days. Come to think of it, Jessica, you guest-posted for me because I was supposed be recovering from the operation… I remember having to email you sweet ladies and tell you all that plans had changed! 🙂
We lived away from both sides of the family and we wanted to wait until Thanksgiving Day to tell everyone. We couldn’t be with them, so I made a whole bunch of onesies with “I love Grandma,” “I love Uncle Jimmy,” one for each person. I told them to make sure they opened the present right before the Thanksgiving meal. They thought it was candy and were eager to enjoy the goodies.
It totally blew them away when they opened the packages. Apparently, my father cried.
It was awesome.