Secrets and Lies

I'm afraid, dear readers, that I have been keeping a pretty big secret for a while now, and it's been tough. I'm not good with secrets. I can keep other people's without hesitation, but my own, especially when there really aren't any consequences for blabbing, are a lot less likely to stay in the vault. It's even harder when your secret is good news. Once you've confided in one friend, it's easy to confide in a few more, and then suddenly you're announcing it to the other mums at playgroup. There were people we had to tell - a few key family members, and then of course there was the inevitable, "well, if they know, we really should tell..." I had to tell my boss, even before I told my parents, and then I felt bad that all my colleagues knew and so I shared it with a few more friends.

Like winning the lotto and not having the money in the bank yet, this unexpected piece of news didn't feel real until I told people. While I felt guilty telling virtual strangers, it was easier to tell people who weren't emotionally invested in it. If it had turned out that we'd had our numbers wrong, it would've been a lot easier to accept sympathy from the neighbours than having to deal with those closest to us, who also would've felt like they had lost something. The thing I struggled with the most was not being able to blog about it. I'm so honest here that it felt wrong, almost like I was lying by omission, to keep it off these pages. I promised my husband there would be no cyber announcement of any kind until we had told all of our family members. This of course led to a heated debate about who we each consider to be "family."

I did, despite having a very big mouth, feel quite protective about my little secret. I wanted to choose who I told and when I told them, and I hoped my close friends would hear it from me before it made its way around the grapevine. I had a few people ask me outright if I had recently had some good news. I have to admit I denied it a few times, and those closest to me here denied it on my behalf (thank you dear friends!). I did feel bad denying it and even lying about it, rolling my eyes melodramatically while exclaiming, "oh no! Definitely not!" It did get progressively harder to deny, and was made harder by the fact that I have been walking around looking like this for several weeks now...

So you see, despite my fairly recent protestations about not being ready for another baby, mother nature clearly had other plans and I am 13 weeks pregnant. We knew we'd have another one eventually, but we've got a lot going on this year, so it wasn't on the agenda at all. Once the initial shock wore off and the nausea set in, it all felt very real, and I had a serious case of deja vu - it really didn't feel like that long ago that we were in this position. The last time I fell pregnant without trying to, it didn't end well, so I really felt like this one wouldn't stick either, which is crazy I know. Until last week I felt like death, sicker than I've ever felt before. This time round it's like extreme pregnancy - I'm sicker, more tired, ferociously cranky one minute and desperately weepy the next (so, now you might understand why going back to work was so tough!). But despite all that I'm absolutely thrilled. Each week that has passed, every time I've seen my little button on an ultrasound or heard his or her heartbeat, I've done a little dance and I could not be happier. As you can imagine, 13 weeks of keeping this to myself has meant that I have a lot of things to say on the subject, but for now I just wanted to get it off my chest, finally! We're 6 months away from becoming a family of four, life is sweet, the secret's out.