We're having a baby! How we found out + telling my husband & family
For some people, being a parent is a life goal. That wasn’t necessarily the case for me. I didn’t always know that I wanted to be a mom. That is not to say that I don’t love kids. I think kids are amazing, funny and talented little humans. Liking kids is one of the reasons I used to work in education. But was being a “mom” and everything that comes with it something I wanted for myself? A lot of my own friends and people in my generations are opting out of parenthood (juggling a global pandemic, the impacts of global warming, the economy, the housing crisis in America, mass shootings and the messy political system we’re all facing? I can’t blame anyone who says, “I don’t want to add a kid to this equation.”) There is definitely something appealing about remaining a dual-income, childless family.
When we first started talking about if we’d like to have kids, I wasn’t 100% sure. Neither Simon and I felt like we needed kids for our life together to feel complete, but we also both like kids. And if I’m being honest, I have a lot of confidence in how amazing of a dad Simon will be—which helps me feel a lot more comfortable with the idea of being parents. Some months after we’d initially started talking about it, I ended up taking a big step in my career (moving agencies to become a senior writer) and the timing to start trying just felt right. For the first time in my adult life, the idea of getting pregnant actually seemed exciting. I found myself drawn to YouTubers and bloggers who were currently pregnant or recently had babies. I started looking at baby photography, kids outfits and nursery ideas on Pinterest. I often found myself picturing what our life would be like with a little one. Even with everything about having kids these days that feels overwhelming, I liked the idea of raising a little human and watching them grow into an amazing person.
Finding out we were pregnant
It was a Sunday morning in early spring. Because we’d been officially trying for a couple months, I’d been tracking my cycle and knew that as of that morning, I was officially “late.” It’s hard to describe but I just had a feeling. Something felt different than past months. I woke up so excited to take the pregnancy test. Simon happened to be away coaching in Seattle for the weekend, and I had the place all to myself. When the two little pink lines showed up on the test, I could’t stop smiling. (Our cat Wilma, on the other hand, was less enthusiastic when I showed her the test results). Simon would be coming home that night so I had the whole day to figure out how I wanted to tell him the good news. I read other people’s stories. I Googled and searched Pintrest for ideas on telling your partner you’re pregnant, and realized fairly quickly that pretty much every announcement idea I found just wasn’t us. They didn’t feel right. In the end, I opted for setting the positive pregnancy test inside our bathroom cabinet, on the shelf in front of his toothbrush (I’d considered briefly putting it in the cup that holds his toothbrush but just in front felt better). Then I waited.
In my head, Simon would come home and find it while unpacking. That didn’t go exactly as planned. He took his travel toothbrush instead of his electric, and it turned out, he didn’t have anything to unpack that required him to open the bathroom cabinet. I couldn’t think of any good excuses to ask him to look in the cabinet, so instead I just waited patiently. We had dinner, we chatted about our weekends, and it took every ounce of self control to keep my excitement hidden until he finally went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. I waited until I heard him open the cabinet door before following him into the bathroom. We just started laughing and smiling at each other while he stood there holding the test.
Telling my family the news isn’t a very interesting story. While we’re all spread across Oregon, we see each other and talk frequently, so I just told my mom over the phone. Simon’s family, however, all live in France. Seeing them in person is a much more rare occurrence. Before getting pregnant, we had already booked a trip to France to visit. The timing ended up being just after our 8 week scan, which was great. (Traveling on a long flight during my first trimester was less than ideal, but I’ll talk about that in a different post). We’d just gotten ultrasound photos of our little bean of a baby days before the trip, which meant we could tell his family about the baby in-person with the photos. Considering that we normally tell them big news over video call, it felt special being able to tell them something big in-person for the first time.
We’re so excited to meet our little one this holiday season and for our growing little family.