Life: We're having a BABY
Eek! It feels SO good to let this BIG secret out.
We found out we were expecting our first baby over Thanksgiving week and I was so overwhelmed with a mix of emotions. How will my clients react? What will this mean for my business? When should we tell everyone? So many questions.
A few things we knew after getting over the initial excitement of it all were: 1. We are so ready for this and the timing was perfect for us. 2. My clients will be understanding and (hopefully) just as excited as us! If they aren't, then it's not meant to be. 3. We wanted to keep this as our little secret for a few weeks and would tell our immediate family over Christmas and closest friends over New Year's. Perfect timing!
Family Announcement
Waiting to tell our family on Christmas ended up being the best gift and the most memorable holiday of all. We had copies of our 7-week sonogram (I was around 8-weeks on Christmas) and found little (kind of cheesy) Santa ornaments at Target with a picture frame attached. The little sonogram looked like it was in Santa's belly, which was kind of fun for the reveal. On Christmas morning, my parents opened their ornament - with lots of shock and tears! Followed by Christmas night at Justin's parents and the following morning at my grandparents. Such an emotional and exciting 24-hours! And the best part? No one was expecting it, so it was a total surprise to all!
Friends Announcement
Not telling our friends was almost more challenging than family. Let's be honest, we totally enjoy our Friday night dinners and Saturday cocktails with friends over the weekend. I played it off by ordering Moscow Mule's - sans the vodka - for a while. For a bit, it felt like every bartender at our favorite spots were in our secret, while our friends were clueless. We started to slowly spill the news to a few close friends after Christmas was over and then made a fun announcement with a champagne toast - except mine was water, which gave it away - on New Year's Eve. Again, super fun and exciting to finally share the news.
And then we decided to wait some more.
I waited until I was between 13 - 15 weeks to start telling my clients. I wanted to feel really confident in the pregnancy and to have a plan set in place before letting them know. For social media, we wanted to wait until Valentine's Day to make the big announcement (exactly 16 weeks) because again, we wanted to feel confident and we thought it would be a fun way to share the news because Valentine's Day is also my birthday.
I have already learned so much through my first 16 weeks of pregnancy. It hasn't always been easy, but I feel so fortunate that I am given this blessing, to begin with. I am feeling so great physically and really emotionally ready for this new chapter. I am not sure how much I will share, but I did write a 1st Trimester Update blog post, that I will share with you all. It's been so good for my soul to write this out and to remember everything along the way.