11 weeks, 1 day

Keeping a secret

  

This might be the hardest secret in the world to keep. I’m incredibly superstitious, and even though I know in my head that telling people something doesn’t make bad things happen, it’s hard to convince my heart of that.  Add to that the fact that a friend had a bad experience with telling too soon and then miscarrying, it only doubles my reasons to keep it quiet.

The original plan was to wait until the second trimester, and tell everyone in person.  We already had plans to visit J’s family for Easter and we live close to my family.  The problem is, Easter is very late this year.  April 24 to be exact.  I hit the second trimester right around March 29, almost a month before.  It’s hard enough keeping the secret for 13 weeks, but for another 3?  So we decided to compromise. We’d tell earlier, just not in person.  The big news goes down tomorrow.

Step 1:  J’s parents always send us a card for every holiday, we may even get one for Arbor Day.  We just received a St. Patrick’s Day card from them this weekend.  We tend to stick to the basic “card” holidays – Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother/Father’s Day, and Birthdays.  But we figured they wouldn’t be suspicious of receiving a St. Patrick’s Day card from us.  We got one that talked about magic, stuck a sonogram picture on the inside of the card and wrote this little poem below:

There’s magic in springtime, as everyone hears,

But truth is, there’s magic throughout all the year.

The summer brings lightness, the winter brings snow,

October brings 10 little fingers and toes.

I hope they figure it out, but I have my worries.

Step 2:  Tomorrow is my mom’s birthday, so we’re all getting together for dinner.  Going along with the “card” theme we seemed to have developed, we got my mom a “Happy Birthday Grandma” card.  It talks about why every child needs a grandmother.  The card alone wouldn’t signify anything to her, my brother has a history of giving strange, inappropriate cards (like Congratulations on your new house!).  So, once again, the sonogram picture is going to go on the inside of the card and hopefully that will be a big clue.  I’ll have my camera at the ready, and I’m hoping for a camera-worthy reaction.

Step 3: My grandmother is the oldest living member of our family.  I wanted to make sure we had a special way to tell her before the rest of the family found out.  BUT I wanted to make sure she didn’t know before our parents, because frankly, I feared she would spoil tomorrow night’s surprise.  I’ve been working this past week with Jamie at The Dainty Ampersand to design a nesting necklace to be sent to my grandmother with this note:

Almost ___ years ago you gave your first grandchild a necklace to commemorate her birth.  She thought it was time to return the favor.  J and I think this necklace is going to look great on you, come October.

The necklace itself consists of three discs, each depicting a role.  The top disc says “mom”, the middle disc has our version of “grandma”, and the bottom disc says “great grandmother.”  I can’t speak to the finished product yet, but Jamie has been wonderful to work with, going above and beyond to make sure the necklace arrives in a timely manner, but not too timely (if you catch my drift).

In other news, it happened this week.  I finally “feel” pregnant.  I can’t describe in exact words what that means.  But all of a sudden on Monday I became just ever so aware of my uterus.  Different than bloat, and not like cramping, but almost as if I could actually feel it expanding and pressing outward, like there was something in there.  And part of me feels like this is ridiculous.  We’re past the microscopic stage, but things down there are still too small for me to actually be feeling something.  My uterus is growing and expanding, but not at some sort of rapid “you won’t like me when I’m mad” type of transformation.  And yet, I can feel it.  I do feel different.  It’s the first time I haven’t felt “normal” in the past 11 weeks. And I kind of like that.  A reminder that something is going on.