Revealing...

As excited as we were to hear that we were going to have a baby, as you probably have realised about me, I was thinking about the nitty gritty. Who will we tell first, how would we tell them, and what will they say?

We were both raised in conservative, protestant (Dutch Reformed) families. To live together before marriage is frowned upon, not to mention having a baby out of wedlock. But we had lived together for close to 2 years, we were engaged for more than a year and we have only postponed our previous wedding dates due to her cancer recovery. Everyone should be happy for us, right?

The choice of who to tell first was obvious when we thought about it, her mother. Luckily the only emotion my future mother in law has displayed from the first day she was told, is joy. We were relieved and scared at the same time. Next her father will know and what will he say? As with her mother we have received nothing but support from my future in laws, including her two brothers.

My family was a bit of a different story. Her family live 1000km’s away and doing these things over the phone is infinitely easier than face to face. To add to the stress my parents live right next to us so if things go sour there is simply no running away. We would have to be strong and face the music.

As with her family we told my mother first, mothers tend to be more receptive and supporting of pregnancy news. As we thought she was happy, but had her reservations as to our wedding plans. We would have to postpone again and doing so will mean our first borne will arrive before we are legally married. As with my mother, my father took the news well but also immediately inquired as to our wedding plans. As we were quite sure we will not be able to afford the one day spend-a-thon that is a wedding before we have our baby, we firmly decided that we would only get married after our little miracle arrived.

Being firm and having your firmness accepted however are to different things, but to the credit of every person that has since learned of the pregnancy we have received a lot of support. My mother being the first, even beating us to the punch, to buy some baby clothes, Tupperware, and start knitting a blanket.

We still wanted the pregnancy to remain low-key as we have had a few mishaps in the family in the past and a pregnancy that does not go full term is never an easy thing. As such I will not divulge on the matter any further.

Asking everyone we told to keep quiet and them actually keeping quiet was never going to work as we soon realised. Not only did our parents, mine and hers, have slips of the tongue, I am a very talkative (hence the blog) person. I told people at work, my aunt we met in the mall, and just about everyone else we met. Our family as a whole however have not been told yet. We are still working on the details of the “Big Reveal”!