For one: I have learned that seeing the heartbeat or hitting that popular twelve week mark makes no difference. People typically wait to announce because they want to wait until they're safe from miscarriage, but I have learned that you are never safe. I was 16 weeks, well into maternity clothes, had heard the heartbeat many times, was starting to feel little movements and was getting ready to find out the gender. And there are many women in my support group whose babies died at 22-40 weeks. You name it, it can happen and not just before 12 weeks.
For me there is no "magic" time to announce. If I'm pregnant, I'm pregnant.
Two: I am the kind of person who NEEDS to talk about my feelings. If something bad happens, I want to get it out and talk about it. So if I miscarry and no one ever knew I was pregnant, it would be strange to talk about. I feel like most people end up telling people about their past secret miscarriages anyway, so why not just announce from day one? It won't bother me to tell everyone that I lost the baby. I've done it before and everyones support was the most helpful thing. Keeping it to myself would be so extremely isolating, lonely and sad.
Three: I wan to acknowledge this baby and pregnancy. Every pregnancy is a wonderful gift and no matter how far along I am, I want to celebrate. If I didn't announce this pregnancy and then later miscarried, I would feel horrible. Like I didn't honor or acknowledge one of my babies. After losing Brynn, I want to make sure I honor every one of my babies, no matter how tiny. I have gender neutral names picked out in case of an early miscarriage. To me, not announcing early is like saying the baby doesn't quite exist yet.
Four: I believe in the power of prayer. Especially lots of prayer. I wanted to get the word out so that all those people who also believe in prayer could pray for me. I had an amazing experience once in high school. I was part of a magnificent 200 person marching band and one of my fellow trumpet players had developed a brain tumor. He was unable to march, but still came to every rehearsal and played his trumpet on the sidelines. The day before his surgery to try to remove the tumor, our instructor got us all in one big huddle to have a "moment of silence" for Brandon (she couldn't use the word prayer). Two days later he came walking into the band room still with all of his hair and announced that when they did the last brain scan before surgery, the tumor was miraculously gone. The doctors could not explain it. So, if I can try to get that many people to pray for this baby, I'm going to try.
The only thing that made me hesitate to tell early is other peoples judgement. For whatever reason, many people seem to think it's such a bad idea to tell early. I'll hear some people say things like "can you believe she announced so early?" or "she's already telling people...she has a long way to go". I worried what people would think or say, but then decided I didn't really care because the people I'm really close with would be happy and excited. It's just a few people I'm acquainted with that would be judgmental about it, so it doesn't really matter.
I wonder if most people don't announce early simply because they think they're not "supposed" to?
I do understand that some people don't like to talk about their feelings/ issues/ what's going on in their lives, so for them they don't want to announce. I get that.
But for me, I am excited. I am VERY aware that this pregnancy may not last 40 weeks, or even 6 weeks, but I'm going to be happy for every second I get. Some women never get the chance to be pregnant and I'm so grateful that I do. I am trying to celebrate the possibility of this baby and not solely focus on the bad things that can happen. Lets pretend nothing bad can happen, go along like it's not even a possibility because whatever is going to happen will happen and worrying about it will just make the entire thing miserable and I'll look back and think "that was a miserable pregnancy". Why not make the time you have enjoyable?
I did wait until I had two 48 hr HCG's checked before I announced because I wanted to make sure it wasn't just going to be a chemical pregnancy that ended immediately. I at least wanted to know that it was truly a baby developing in there.
It was odd at work yesterday. I got many congratulations, but most of them seemed like half of a congratulation. Like they were being cautious or couldn't let themselves really believe it was a true pregnancy yet. The tone was like "congratulations...maybe". And some people hesitated to say anything at all. Once someone else would say it, only then would they pipe in and say "oh yeah, I saw that on Facebook". I feel like people are afraid to be happy for me, which I understand I guess. I'm sure they think I'm nervous, so they're trying to be cautious. But I'm not nervous like I thought I would be. I'm relaxed and happy and ready to celebrate again. I want to be done being sad.
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