In the car on the way to or from Springfield for Neil's funeral, Matt and I talked about how we wished we could have contained the news about my pregnancy. It would have limited the number of people we had to give bad news to, and it would have prevented the unintentionally hurtful things people said to me, assuming I had a newborn. Delaying the news until after the first trimester would not have helped. Delaying the news until the due date wouldn't even have helped. The only plan that would have worked was to have a baby and only tell people after the birth.
Shortly after we learned I was pregnant in January, I realized that the timing was right for our crazy secrecy plan to actually work. We only see family twice a year: summer and Christmas. We wouldn't see family or far-away friends until summer, and we would have to travel in May because my due date was in September and Matt teaches in June. As long as I wasn't obviously pregnant during that visit, no one would suspect I was pregnant until we sent a birth announcement. Last time I was pregnant, I didn't get outrageously huge, so there was a chance I wouldn't look pregnant in late May. Since I'm overweight anyway, I'd probably just look a little pudgier than usual. :)
BUT the problem with the plan was the people who see me regularly. If I was lucky, I might be able to delay telling them until the third trimester, but eventually it would become obvious. And if the local people said something on Facebook, the far-away people would find out and probably be really (justifiably) mad that they hadn't been told. SO CLOSE!
So we had to tell people at least before it became obvious. Because the crazy secrecy plan wasn't going to be possible, I figured I'd share my news with a few people after the first trimester. (For the rest of this post, "sharing" means telling people that I'm pregnant.) But the end of the first trimester was near the beginning of April, and I don't talk pregnancy, baby, or birthday in April unless it is absolutely necessary. By the time April was over, we were just a few weeks away from the 20 week ultrasound. And since we had put it off that long, we might as well wait until after the ultrasound so that we could share a due date and gender. That worked fine because the ultrasound was before our Missouri visit. It would be a little weird not to tell family before we saw them, and calling before the trip was perfect because I prefer not to actually see people when I share so that they can smile and do happy dances without my knowledge.
So the fact that anyone knows I'm pregnant is because of one little flaw in a crazy secrecy plan. That's how badly I don't want to talk about being pregnant.
My ability to not talk about being pregnant and to not deal with other people's feelings is made possible by other people sharing the news. Everyone who reads this blog can not only stay informed but also insulate me from the fatigue of repeated sharing by passing on information to other people. Because they amplify my message so that more people hear it, I think of these people as my Megaphones.
In addition to family Megaphones and blog-reader Megaphones, I handpicked a few well-placed individuals to talk to specific groups of people. First, my church family sees me often enough that they needed to be told. However, the ebullience and effusiveness that I love about my church is not a response to my news that I could handle, so I needed a St Thomas Megaphone. Matt and I decided to tell Shawn and Susie, friends who love us enough to not judge us because we invite them over even when our house is a disaster (which is pretty much all the time). Because they know us so well, their response was surprise followed by "How do we all feel about this news?" rather than happy dancing. Susie is the source of the term "going Mongolian," so she was the right person to share the news for us at church while we were in Missouri. Thank you, Susie. And thank you, St Thomas Church, for going Mongolian for me. The only response so far has been extra hugs and gleams in eyes during greeting time. And I can't blame people for gleaming.
My second group-specific Megaphone needed to spread the word at my other church. I'm a part-time church secretary at a Baptist church; and though I work alone most of the time, church members sometimes stop by. I picked Joyce, the women's ministry leader, to be my Lowell Avenue Megaphone. A few days after I shared with her, she stopped by the office because she was afraid I had picked her because I think she's a gossip. I reassured her that I don't think she's a gossip. She's got the best access to the women's ministry, which is really active and mostly made up of retired ladies, just the people most likely to show up at the church on a weekday morning. And those ladies have the connections to spread the message to pretty much anyone in the church. Thank you, Joyce. So far so good.
Thank you to all my Megaphones, whether I'm aware of your work or not. If you think of a group that should be told, go ahead and be my Megaphone. The only thing I ask is that you be willing to share bad news as well as good news. I hope not to have bad news; but if I did, that would be when I would need my Megaphones the most.
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