Ben and I decided back when we were seven weeks pregnant that we wanted to tell close friends and family the good news. The announcement was met with a lot of happiness and on the whole people were happy with the announcement. There were those though that thought it was a bad idea for us to be telling people so soon and their main argument for this was “So much can go wrong in the first twelve weeks. What happens if you lose the baby?” At the time we both thought we were unstoppable, that those sorts of things happened to other people not to us, but it did happen to us.

I’m glad we told everyone because it meant we got to share our joy, however short-lived, with the important people in our lives. We got to talk freely about the pregnancy and baby allowing ourselves to feel some joy and not be ashamed of the circumstances. It was an incredibly joyful time and I think not only brought Ben and I together but also brought our families a little closer together. I know that I definitely feel a lot closer to Ben’s family since the announcement.

Announcing the pregnancy before the week twelve safety zone had passed also meant that we had a lot of support when things did go wrong. My friends understood why I didn’t want to go to Perth Cup with them on New Year’s Day. They understood that it was hard for a few days there to not do anything but watch DVD’s in the dark confines of the house. It also allowed them to help me through this situation because they understood what was going on, nothing was kept in the dark so there was no guessing.

All in all I think we did the right thing in announcing the pregnancy when we did and next time I intend to do the same thing.

Image by Joyseph (Flickr)