Keeping mum

When we found out we were expecting, obviously we were over the moon and wanted to shout our happy news from the rooftops.

Except we didn’t really, because I was only about 4 weeks when we found out, it was still so early so not only were we worried about telling people, we were scared to get our hopes up too.

Because of the fertility drugs I’d been taking due to my PCOS, there was a slightly higher risk of miscarriage, plus I’m a born worrier anyway so I was so nervous about, well, everything.

Keeping our happy news quiet was more difficult with some people than others. On Boxing Day, the day after our two big bombshells (see my very first post) we went up to Yorkshire to see Hubs’s family. Since they aren’t big drinkers, plus I’m well known for drinking a shit-ton of water anyway, it wasn’t hard to keep schtum there. But between Christmas and New Year we had a group of hard drinking, hard partying friends up to stay so it was much harder to keep it quiet. Especially as they had bought us a bottle of champagne to celebrate our engagement. I had to fake a kidney infection as to why I wasn’t drinking that night!

Another difficult person to hide it from was my dad, as we went to spend New Years with him and my stepmum and when we get together, we normally enjoy a bottle of rose or two and then they get stuck into the port (not me though, I preferred a wee glass of Cointreau on ice normally, port is too heavy for me) and on NYE, dad had bought us a bottle of pink fizz for the occasion. My “kidney infection” prevented me from partaking and luckily, he didn’t question it too much. When we actually did break the news, he said he kind of knew anyway, fathers intuition and all that!

Not so easy was keeping it secret at work. Our office is a long room with most of the desks facing either side on or at the loos at the far end, so when we went back to work on January 5 the morning sickness was in full flow, so to speak. I suffered from quite bad morning sickness until 20 weeks, sometimes being sick 5 times a day and peppermint tea, which I usually love, made my stomach heave. So people at work twigged fairly quickly, particularly those who had children themselves.

I told my lovely editor in mid January and she was brilliant and kept it quiet, but as time went on obviously word spread, as it does in offices, and the knowing looks as I emerged from the loo for the fourth time in two hours became more frequent. I finally told a handful of people, including our MD, when I was around 10 weeks but it was such a relief when the 12 week scan came around in mid February! Not only was baby healthy and had passed the 12 week danger point (as it turned out, I was actually 13+3 weeks when we had the scan) but we could finally tell people. The cat was out of the bag!

So what other tall tales did you mummies tell to hide your amazing secret in those first few weeks?