My Big Fat Mouth

People call me "Dad" at work. I have a blog about my soon-to-be son or daughter. People know the deal: we're pregnant.

That wasn't always the case.

It turns out that there are tons of social politics involved in determining when you are allowed to start telling people that there's a baby on the way, not to mention who you're allowed to tell.

Being impatient folks, and having gotten that positive pregnancy test on Christmas Eve, we decided to tell the immediate family right away. Most of the books and things don't really recommend that, citing basically that you should tell anybody that you wouldn't be comfortable disappointing. A lot can happen to a little tiny, rapidly multiplying pile of cells, so lots of people keep their mouths shut until slightly later in the pregnancy.

We didn't. We went for it, at least with the family.

Obviously, they were stoked, but we also had to do a lot of hush-hushing because we didn't want to let the cat completely out of the bag. The instructions given to me were clear: don't tell anybody until we have the first doctor appointment. Got it. No problem.

What I didn't realize until much too late was that the first doctor appointment, in our case anyway, didn't count.

Ouch.

We went to the doctor's office. We sat in the waiting room. We went in the little tiny exam room. Baby Car was poked and prodded. We were given an approximate due date.

To me, that equals "appointment."

Turns out not.

We didn't see the actual doctor. We didn't take a fancy, medical-grade pregnancy test. We didn't hear a heartbeat or see a sonogram. So that means it didn't count.

I did not realize this.

I got home after the appointment, took my dogs out in the back yard, and dialed my cell phone. The one and only person that I told lived about 1000 miles away and didn't ever seem like the gossipy type.

Oops.

I think after I hung up, it took about eight minutes for the news to make it from Austin, Texas right on back to our little corner of Pennsylvania and blow up right in my big stupid face.

People at my work found out about it. People that Baby Car used to work with found out about it. Basically, my loving wife was counting down the days until she could excitedly tell everybody our big news and my single phone call systematically destroyed the whole thing.

It was a bad move. I got in trouble. And even if I didn't get in trouble, I would have still felt bad about the whole thing.

It turns out that one of the best things about being pregnant (aside from the comedic waddling) is sharing the news.

So take a note: don't screw it up!