Sharing the news!
When it came time to tell our families we were not as excited as some people may be. We went back and forth on how we were going to tell them. We finally landed on the idea of wearing a t-shirt. We started telling family friends about a week after the first sonogram. I was around 11 weeks pregnant at this time.
We ordered my husband a t-shirt that said, “New Dad Rookie Dept Est. 2021”. My husband is from California, and we live in Kansas, so we decided to facetime them rather than call. When we facetimed his side of the family, we had them read it and they were all so excited! It was so fun seeing all their reactions and hearing the joy in their voices, even seeing some happy tears.
Now it came time to share the news with my side of the family. Believe it or not, we were not ready to tell my side of the family. I still don’t know exactly why we were so hesitant but for some reason our stomachs turned every time we thought about telling my parents. Due to that, we saved my parents for last. Sorry not sorry LOL!
We decided to have dinner with them over at their place one night and my husband wore a sweatshirt over the t-shirt until after dinner. When it came time, he took off his sweatshirt and literally no one noticed. NO ONE. He was sitting next to my little brother who was 10 at the time (yes there is a 12-year age gap between us). My brother finally said, “what does d-e-p-t mean?”. At that point my mom looked over and within seconds said, “oh my gosh”. My dad, however, was sitting on the other side of the living room and didn’t have his glasses on so he was getting frustrated that he couldn’t read the shirt. Finally, my mom read it to him. He didn’t say a word, just sat there for about 5 minutes while we continued conversation with my mom and brother. Then my dad got up from his chair and said, “alright I’m going to go do chores”, and he walked out of the house.
My dad’s reaction was the exact reaction we thought it would be. When I was about 6 months pregnant, I finally asked my mom why he reacted the way he did, and if he was excited or not for not only a grandbaby but his FIRST grandbaby. She told me that he was just nervous for us. He thought we should have waited longer. Which we agreed with! This was a completely unplanned pregnancy. It wasn’t till I was about 8 months along that my dad finally started getting excited for the baby, or at least showing his excitement.
The one question you ALWAYS get when you tell people you are expecting is “do you know the gender?”. At the time that we told people we had NO IDEA what the gender was, and I convinced my husband to NOT FIND OUT AT ALL.
That’s right we did not find out the gender of our first baby till the day we heard that little baby scream in the hospital room. This was such a fun experience and I recommend this for first time parents who want to have a once in a lifetime opportunity.
