Fourteen Ways to Tell the World You're Pregnant

1. Plan a trip to Canada to surprise your mom and siblings for your sister-in-law's baby shower. Be forced to cancel your trip because of a huge winter storm. Tell your mom over the phone instead. Cry happily.


2. Call your sister, who is also canceling her trip to Canada because of the winter storm. Tell her that you had an ulterior motive for wanting to go to the baby shower this weekend: because she and Trish both had family gatherings to make their pregnancy announcements, and you wanted one, too. Cry some more happy tears.


3. Make a baby shower card for your sister-in-law and email it to your mom to print out and give to her at the shower. Write, "A Special Present for Our New Niece" on the front, and, "You won't be the youngest cousin" on the inside. Cry when you see the picture of Trish crying when she got the card.


4. Take your in-laws out to dinner because you've been craving steak. Take the waitress aside on your way to the bathroom and request a special dessert to be delivered to your table when you're done eating. Watch your in-laws' confused expressions gradually turn to excitement as they watch you top your bowl of ice cream with pickles. Hug and cry and cry and hug. Taste the pickles and ice cream and wonder where on earth that stereotype comes from. Take the pickles back off and eat the ice cream plain.


5. Place a praise request in the offering plate at church thanking God for another new baby that will be coming to the church this year. Make sure to sit at the front so that your little slip of paper gets buried under other things and overlooked when the pastor reads the prayer/praise requests. After the service is over, dig the slip out and give it to the pastor in person, hug/cry, then run around the church telling everyone else in person, which ultimately, may have been more fun than making a big announcement to everyone anyhow.


6. Have your husband call his brother and tell him the story about you ordering pickles and ice cream. Then, after he doesn't get it, because of some sort of generation/gender gap and the failure of the pickles and ice cream myth to be quite as ubiquitous as you thought, explain it to him. Receive a big hug the next time you see him.


7. Plan on telling all of your husband's extended family in two weeks at the Valentine's party. See the look on your mother-in-law's face on Sunday afternoon, after keeping the secret to herself for a day and a half, and decide to make the rounds telling everyone that afternoon instead.


8. Call your husband's sister and ask her whether she thinks her nine-month-old would like a cousin to play with.


9. Come right out and say, "We're pregnant!" Get some hugs.


10. Ask your cousins how they're doing on their babysitting classes, and whether they will be ready to be babysitters by August. Get some hugs.


11. Change your status on Facebook to "pregnant".


12. Post a pregnancy count-down ticker on your forum profile page. Casually point it out to other forum users.


13. Blog about it.


14. All of the above.

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