Our Story: Keeping Secrets

Since we had decided to keep things to ourselves until Christmas for a cheap and exciting present for family, we had to leak the news to friends. Some of my close coworker friends knew. Some of Ryan’s coworkers knew. I emailed some friends and told them. We would have a get together at my mom’s house on the 21st and leave for the in-laws on the 22nd (also my mother-in-law’s birthday). The secret would have to be kept for almost two weeks.

The day after we found out I was pregnant, we had some semi-professional pictures taken of the two of us. It was actually a fluke. I had scheduled these pictures a few weeks in advance. I felt tired and didn’t want to wake up early to look pretty, but in the end, I’m glad I did it. I looked amazing from the glow of pregnancy. But in so many of the pictures, I had a toothy smile and Ryan’s lips were pursed. Or I’d have a far off distant look in my eyes and he’d be looking right in the camera. In most of the pictures, my hair looked terrible. There was one group of hairs that were not behaving. There was no mirror in the studio. Would’ve been helpful! I would constantly reapply my colored lip gloss in between poses thinking I was licking it off from nervousness. I didn’t know I was making the color much darker than I usually wear. Most of the pictures just didn’t look like “me.” Of the eighty or so pictures, I liked only one. Ryan and I both looked great. My hair was perfect. We had the same amount of smile on each of our faces. And you could see my wedding ring. I fell in love with the picture and coined it, “the hot picture of us.”

We told the photographer of our pregnancy news and asked for a suggestion on how to tell family. Of course the answer was “with a picture.” I sat on a stool and had my hand to my mouth as if surprised. Ryan had a big grin and knelt next to me and put one hand on my tummy. I coined this picture as “the oops picture.” This is how I would tell my family of a new baby. Ryan had other ideas. He could tell his family which ever way he wanted. He was leaning towards getting a small plastic car from the game of Life and putting a blue peg as the driver to represent him, a pink peg in the front passenger seat to represent me, and another peg in the back to represent a baby. Not my idea of fun and exciting. Not overly obvious like I wanted. But it was his news and he could tell it any way he wanted.