I didn’t wait – I announced my pregnancy right away

A guest post by Katie Morris

I woke up last Sunday morning and took a pregnancy test.  I don’t even know what made me do it.  By the numbers I shouldn’t have even taken a test for another full week, and on top of that we had cancelled our fertility procedure this month because my husband couldn’t make the appointment due to his work schedule.  Aside from those reasons, I knew the test would be negative because for the past 18 months every test has been negative.  But, for some reason I peed on a stick anyway.  When I walked back in the bathroom several minutes later to check on the test I was in absolute shock when I saw that there were TWO PINK LINES!

Of course I shared the news with my husband immediately.  He was ecstatic!  We figured that I was about three weeks along, maaaybe four.  Later, I texted a picture of the positive test to my parents, “sister,” and best friend/sister-in-law.  They were all thrilled. I’m pretty sure my mom cried!  My husband called his parents and told them.

With conventional wisdom telling parents-to-be to wait until after the first trimester to share their happy news with family and friends, most people probably would have stopped at that.  Some might not have even shared their news with that many people.  But not us.

Not this time.  Later that night, after talking it over with my husband I announced our pregnancy on my Facebook page.

Announcing our news on Facebook wasn’t an emotional decision made in the heat of the
moment.  Our discussion went something like this:  On one hand, we don’t want our four-year-old daughter to know about the pregnancy for awhile, and for obvious reasons announcing our news publicly makes that very difficult to control.  On the other hand, if we announce it now we will have literally hundreds of people in our corner, praying for our unborn baby and supporting us.

I announced my pregnancy via Facebook post almost immediately for three major reasons:

Our Excitement

When you’re trying to get pregnant, seeing two pink lines on a pregnancy test is exciting!  It was especially exciting for us because we’ve been trying to expand our family for over three years.  It seemed that the fastest and easiest way to share our excitement was by making a public announcement in the heat of it!

Prayer

Our friends and family would’ve been excited for us whenever we made our announcement, so that alone wasn’t the reason I announced my pregnancy early.  Our main reason for announcing our pregnancy the day we found out was so that we could get prayer warriors on our team.  As born-again Christians, we firmly believe in the power of prayer.  And since we also believe that life begins at conception, we want as many people as possible praying for the health and safety of our unborn child for as long as possible.  We live far away from our family and friends, so making our announcement on Facebook was a fast and easy way to reach dozens of prayer warriors in just a few minutes.  Because of my post, we know of dozens of people who are now praying for our family and especially our unborn child on a daily basis.  This is above and beyond the people who have been praying for us all along!

Support

The final reason I announced my pregnancy so early was so that we could have the support of our loved ones.  Many of our closest friends and family members are not prayer warriors. But just because they don’t believe the same way that we do doesn’t mean they can’t love us and support us on this journey.  As I mentioned earlier we’ve been trying to expand our family for a long time, so journey is definitely the correct word.  In the past 40 months we’ve gone through several rounds of fertility treatments, had a ton of negative pregnancy tests and experienced two miscarriages.

Our first miscarriage was at twelve weeks and our second was at four weeks.  These were by far the most emotionally difficult times of our lives.  The thing is, at the time when we needed the most emotional support we hardly had any because nobody knew!  For our first loss, we had decided not to share our news until we saw a heartbeat on ultrasound, which never happened.  For our second, we found out about the pregnancy at the same time that we found out about the miscarriage. Had I announced my pregnancy if I’d known, however, I would not have regretted it.

I don’t really understand the culture of secrecy that surrounds pregnancy loss, especially since it is, unfortunately, very common.  I think it’s a shame that so many women suffer and grieve the loss of their babies in silence.  Given those feelings, I’ve been very open about my miscarriages, even sometimes telling people that I have three children – one with me and two in heaven.  I know that if this pregnancy ends early, I will be open about this loss too.

And since that’s the case, we decided to share our excitement from the very beginning so that our family and friends can support us along the whole journey – whether it ends the way we want it to or not. I announced my pregnancy early regardless of the outcome — because I know I have support either way.

I was a little apprehensive about making our announcement a short fourteen hours after the lines turned pink, but 160 likes and 89 comments later I know we made the right decision.  So far, everyone has respected our wishes not to mention anything in the presence of our daughter, and now there’s a whole army of people in our corner sharing our excitement, praying for us and supporting us through this pregnancy!

So, how about you… when did you announce your pregnancies?

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Category: Pregnancy

Tags: guest post