Why you should NOT wait to announce your pregnancy!

I have pondered this blog posts for several weeks in my head. There have been so many different thoughts and emotions that have gone into sharing about pregnancy, the excitement and the sadness that can come with a loss.

Let me first start out by telling you…I have 4 beautiful children and have 2 babies I am anxiously waiting to meet in heaven. I don’t know if those babies are girls or boys…but it doesn’t matter…I already love them as if they lived here on earth. My babies in heaven,  I lost during my first trimester of pregnancy and both pregnancies ended with D&C surgeries, where it “felt” as though they were “taking” my precious baby from inside my womb. Both pregnancies ended unexpectedly when my hormone levels and the babies heart beats where not found to be healthy….and both losses felt surreal…like it couldn’t happen to me. My first 3 pregnancies were relatively healthy and resulted in beautiful babies. So when I got pregnant with my 4th pregnancy I quickly announced to everyone how excited I was to be pregnant…I had never had a miscarriage and honestly didn’t even satisfy the thought that it could happen to me. I didn’t see a daughter for the first 12 weeks as it was my 4th pregnancy and everything seemed and felt totally normal. When I did go into the doctors for my first prenatal visit I was so excited to see my sweet little babies heartbeat on the monitor…and instead I saw a baby…but no heart beat. I knew immediately what that meant…and I was devastated! After recovering from that loss I knew the only way I could get through losing a baby was to get pregnant again with a healthy baby. I did get pregnant relatively quickly…only 6-8 weeks later! However…with that pregnancy I did not want to tell ANYBODY I was pregnant…because I was scared I would have to tell them if I lost another baby again. I spent my entire pregnancy living in fear that something could go wrong…all the way until the end of my delivery. I found that even in the delivery room I was anticipating something to go wrong with my baby.

Recently I discovered I was again pregnant. This time I went into my pregnancy guarded…knowing after my last loss that miscarriage is always a concern. So with my heart guarded I made sure to contact my doctor immediately to make sure I got my hormone levels drawn and monitored. After two weeks of monitoring my hormone levels my doctors became very worried that I was having an eptopic or unhealthy pregnancy…so again I went in for an emergency D&C surgery.  It was this recent experience I began to realize that I had not told anyone of my pregnancy yet and I needed support…love and most of all PRAYER!

Thus comes this next part of this blog post…3 reasons why you should NOT WAIT to tell your loved ones you are pregnant!

1. You are expecting a new baby! It’s exciting and you want to enjoy every single second of that excitement…because as well all know pregnancy doesn’t last forever….and you only get to vast in the excitement for a short time! Plus as exciting as this pregnancy may be for you and your spouse…your friends and family most likely are going to be just as excited to share all these precious moments with you!
2.  A healthy pregnancy or not you will need prayer and support! There will be some happy moments and sad moments through this pregnancy…starting from the very beginning. Every baby is a blessing from heaven and every pregnancy as much as a blessing as it may be…may also feel like a curse…between the morning sickness, unknown hurts pains/discomforts, fears, exhaustion and whatever else your pregnancy may bring along with it…and let me tell you from experience that prayer is extremely helpful when you are not feeling so blessed. When my doctors begin to tell me that they didn’t think this last pregnancy was going to result in a healthy baby…the only thing that got me through the sorrow was knowing there were TONS of family and friends praying for me!
3. If the unknown of happens. No one want’s to speak of the possibility of miscarriage…but since 1 in 4 pregnancies results in miscarriage it is always a possibility.  And let me share with you from experience…when you are suffering the loss of a baby the last thing you want to do is start calling family and telling them not only did you not tell them you were pregnant but hey we just lost a baby. I had to experience this first hand…when I ended up in an emergency D&C surgery and had to call both my husband and my own parents to let them know I not only am pregnant but I am also losing the baby in surgery in about an hour. It’s a very awkward and uncomfortable conversation to have.