The Baby is Out of the Bag!!

What a relief.

We spent a beautiful day in New Hope yesterday, stuffing our faces and enjoying time with family. And finally, we were able to tell Sean's brother and sisters, though unfortunately, two were by phone anyway. Grandma Diana is thrilled because she's been keeping our secret (along with Grandpa Len) for the last seven weeks, and now she can shout it from the rooftops! And the baby got it's first presents--a Big Bird doll like one Sean had when he was little, a beautiful frame with spaces for pictures of each of the first 12 months, and a baby bootie bank with a crisp $20 from Stef's dad. Today I'll email this link to as many people as possible, and hopefully they will all take a look at The Littlest Wilson and catch up on all the fascinating stuff that I've been writing about and write comments and VOTE on the sex of the baby. I know for sure that Derek can't wait to read all about my doctor's appointments and Fetal Nuchal Translucency...

The first thing everyone asks when we tell them we're expecting is "How far along are you?" I guess there are two schools of thought when it comes to breaking baby news. Either you tell everyone you know as soon as you find out, whether that be at five weeks or twelve, or you wait until you're out of the woods, which is commonly known to be after the first trimester. Turns out that Sean is from the former school, and I, the latter. I made the decision to tell my bosses at work much earlier than I would have liked, but in an effort to explain why I had been acting so strangely as of late (tired all the time, cranky, peeing every two minutes, and my memory and ability to multi task right out the window). And we told specific people like our moms and dads and siblings and grandparents and closest friends as soon as we reasonably could. But it was really important to me to be able to wait to make it "public" until now (and I'm not even technically in my second trimester yet, but we just couldn't keep it to ourselves any longer!).

The more I think about it, the more interesting the difference in the two ways of thinking seems to me. Stef (Grandma D's fiance, henceforth known as Papou Stef) said "the Greeks don't tell anyone till after three months, and after the baby's born, no one comes to visit unless they're specifically invited until the kid is a few months old." There's a profound regard for the sanctity of the new family, almost like intruding would burst a protective bubble. Of course, that only applies to non-family! It's funny because I always thought of it as a personal preference thing, but I'm sure he's right--it's got more to do with culture, and that's just how my family was. Even my mom's side, which is more Jewish than anything, subscribes to that way of thinking, but then my Grandma (and consequently, my mom) always had a really intense respect for privacy and a person's right to share what they want to share when they want to share it.

For me, there is a line (albeit fine, and seemingly arbitrary to others) between what I feel comfortable sharing and what I don't. Sean doesn't get it sometimes and thinks I'm just really sensitive, and I admit that sometimes I do go a little overboard. If someone asks me a question that I'm not comfortable answering, I'd think it was an inappropriate question, whereas someone who doesn't mind sharing that kind of information would think it was perfectly fine. It's a really hard thing to gage, so as a rule, I err on the side of caution. For example, I always felt comfortable sharing that Sean and I want kids...but not whether we were trying for kids. I feel comfortable discussing the emotions that are involved in trying to conceive in vague terms, but I feel really uncomfortable when someone asks me how long it took Sean and me to get pregnant, and I would never ask anyone else that question. I might be more sensitive to that than the average person, but what those uncomfortable situations have reinforced for me is that you just never know. You never know what a person's comfort level is, and you never know what private difficulties they're dealing with.

Luckily, we're beyond all that! Now I just have to get comfortable with people touching my belly...