Because I am pregnant. Pregnant but not yet showing. Pregnant and excited but also pregnant and worried about the risk of miscarriage.

 

We got a positive pregnancy test four days before my expected period.  And every day for the next week until it finally set in.

 

We. Are. Pregnant.

 

We are pregnant.

 

We are pregnant!

 

Since pregnancy calculations start from the first day of your last period, I was already “4 weeks” pregnant the moment we got our positive test.  (Albeit the baby was really only two weeks old…)

 

One month! One month sounded like a milestone to us, but it was still three weeks away from learning whether all was healthy with our sweet embryo.

 

Why? Because most OBGYNs wait to schedule your first prenatal appointment until you are 7-8 weeks pregnant.

 

I read that the fourth week marks the time when a blastocyst becomes an embryo. At this time, the baby is about the size of a poppy seed. Your brain may understand that there is very little testing a doctor can do at this early stage in your pregnancy. But that poppy seed is already your baby, and your heart is dying to make sure that your baby is alright.

 

Oh heart, you have to wait at least three weeks to find that out.

 

My husband and I chose not to tell our families the news until we got through our first appointment. We had experienced a miscarriage two years prior. (Discussed here).  For us, waiting the full first trimester to tell our parents and siblings was unrealistic. We live too close and spend too much time together to hold such a big secret for long. Nor did we feel we could we plan a sweet reveal without hearing the baby’s heart beat first.

 

If I had to hide the pregnancy for three weeks, I had to succeed. I didn’t want our moms rooting the information out of us because I was acting peculiar.

 

So, I drank ice tea out of beer bottles.

 

The idea came to me when we were meeting my in-laws at a restaurant. Non-pregnant me would always enjoy a glass of wine at these dinners. His parents would notice if I didn’t.

 

What to do?

 

We rushed to arrive at the restaurant before his parents.  I divulged my secret to the female bartender.

 

“I am five weeks pregnant and not ready to tell our parents. Would you be    able to pour a bud lite bottle out, rinse it, and pour ice tea in it for me? I’ll pay for the beer and the ice tea.”

 

She got a kick out of being in on our secret. And it worked like a charm!  I re-used the trick the next week at a family dinner on St. Patrick’s Day. That time I filled the bottle with ginger ale. (The trick is getting a dark beer bottle).

 

After we revealed the news to our families, I told them that they had not really seen me drink for about a month, even if they thought they did. They were all amused. Interestingly, they all said they noticed I was drinking beer over wine. Believe me, their spidey-senses would be buzzing if I hadn’t come up with this little trick.

 

CHEERS!