How We Announced our Growing Family

When you've been married for almost five years, your family has a tendency to ask you if you're pregnant on a regular basis. So when it finally came time to make the big pregnancy announcement, I knew it had to be good.

With my first pregnancy, things didn't quite go as planned, but we still were able to have some fun with it. I was really sick one day and on the urging of my sister, I went and bought a pregnancy test. I didn't tell her I was going to do it, but she swears to this day, "she knew" before I told her by just looking at me.

For the rest of our family members, however, I told my husband I wanted to wait until I saw the doctor before sharing any news. So imagine my surprise when, as my mom is walking through the door the next day, my husband just blurted out "Hi Grandma." After her celebration dance, we had to swear her to secrecy and came up with the plan to reveal the big news at brunch on Mother's Day, a month later. I bought all the women Mother's Day cards and signed them from the baby. It took a minute for people to notice, but when they did, it was perfect.

When it came time to make the next pregnancy announcement for our second baby, I had a secret weapon: my 2½ year-old daughter. I purchased her a 'big sister' t-shirt and then took a picture. I really liked seeing everyone's reactions in person the first time, so I literally carried the photograph around and would show it to members of the family. After they'd look at the photo, I'd have my daughter tell them she was going to have a baby brother or sister. She loved getting to be the one who got to tell the big secret!

Though my ideas weren't anything over the top, I truly enjoyed them, because they allowed us to be with the people we loved while sharing some of the biggest news of our lives. Seeing everyone so excited about our new additions to the family let us know that our little ones would be so loved when they arrived.

Photo by Tuva Mathilde Løland on Unsplash