Telling your mom that you're going to be a mom is...strange

I wanted to call my mom the day we found out. I wanted to call her at 6:45 in the morning (which would have been 5:45 her time). But I didn’t. Because I was scared to get her hopes up. I was worried (am worried) that something will happen. So Chris and I decided to wait to tell our parents until after we saw the heartbeat. The change for miscarriage drops to below 2%, so we thought at that point, it would be a little more “real”. That’s not to say if something happened between the pee test and the ultrasound we wouldn’t have told people, but, I don’t know. It made sense to us.

The first real challenge for me came on Grandparents Day – Sept. 12. I wanted so badly to call my mom and tell her she was going to be a Nana. I talked to her that day and it took everything in me not to tell her. Then there were the days were I was so sick and she would call and I would put on my telemarketer voice (learned from a summer of selling magazine subscriptions over the phone) and act completely cheerful and normal, even though I thought I was going to throw up at any second.

The day that we had the ultrasound, we took the pictures and had copies made. I immediately mailed them to my mom, with a card and an “Expectant Grandma” pin that I bought in Savannah (I told my girlfriends it was for a lady in my office that just found out she was going to be a grandma – they bought it!). I knew she would get the package on Saturday morning, but then I got worried that someone else would open it. So late Friday night, I called my brother. I told him he had to make sure that mom was the one to open the package. He asked why. I told him he’d have to keep it a secret, to which he asked, “Are you pregnant?” Yuppers – my brother’s a smart one. But he came through for me, making sure mom was the one who opened the package (which she thought was my brother’s birthday card from me and could not understand why Stephen wanted her to open his birthday card.)

Obviously, my mom is super excited. She’s wanted this for years and she is dying to tell people, but she has to keep it quiet for a few more weeks. Of course, her idea of keeping it quiet is telling people that don’t have Facebook pages. God bless her.