to tell or not to tell

We aren’t telling yet that we’re pregnant. Yet here I am posting for the whole world to see. What to do? I also haven’t announced this blog yet so perhaps I can continue to write away until we’re ready and then send out invitations for the blog. But that could be 6 weeks away! ~ since I don’t know how far along I am…. (I had to send in all sorts of information by email to the nurses at my OB and one of them called later to say, “I’m entering in your info and I just wanted to see if this was an error—It says the date of your last period is 2005.” “No error,” I said. “That’s the right date.” “The computer won’t even let me enter it…” she said. And then, “So you don’t know how far along you are?” “Nope.”) My best guess is that I’m 6 weeks—I’ll find out on Monday. I don’t think I want to write to just strangers until we find out. So this leaves a dilimma.

Nearly 3 years ago we got pregnant for the first time and were so excited. It was only the 2nd month of trying and I could barely contain myself. I knew the common wisdom to wait to tell folks but I didn’t understand it. Why would you wait? Even if you miscarried, wouldn’t you want these same folks to know? (These folks being family, of course, and not the random woman you work with… ) A week later I miscarried and I discovered rather quickly why it is that you’re not supposed to tell. It was awful. I went to a ballet with my mom and kept running into teachers she taught with whom she had told and when they would hug and congratulate me I’d have to say, “well, nothing to congratulate now…” It was bad enough having to talk about it when I felt so blue, but it was horrible having to convince them that I was fine when I absolutely was not. That, and people say the most ridiculous insensitive things. Things like, “That’s the risk you take when you get pregnant,” or “At least you already have a kid,” or “You’re young; it’ll happen,” Well-meaning, I know, but really really stupid. You’d never say anything like this to someone whose spouse had died… “that’s the risk you take when you get married,” “you’re young, you can marry again.” Seriously. Grief is grief and it’s amazing that our society is so ignorant about this particular form of grief. Okay. Done with that rant.

So what does this mean about posting on this blog? Perhaps I’ll delete this post before it ever becomes public. Maybe this is just an exercise for my brain to empty out and see how it feels. Or perhaps I can make it all public and then if anything goes wrong folks can read about it here. I could even give specific instructions as to appropriate responses. Well, for the time I’ll go ahead and put this up. My family won’t yet read it…