The secret keepers

It’s a strange one. You have something you want to tell all your loved ones, but at the same time, it’s crucial they don’t find out just yet.

The sharper ones will have already figured out that something’s up, whether it’s the significant, unspoken looks of “are you okay?” across a room, or the more obvious declining of alcohol (or in our case, herbal teas with unfortunate side effects in pregnancy).

We didn’t tell anybody we were pregnant until after our twelve week scan. This is the received wisdom, the idea being that after this scan, you’ll first get confirmation that the foetus is “viable”. Miscarriage happens most often before this point, so you don’t want to ring around family and friends with good news, only to snatch it away from them later on.

On the other hand, I’d seen stuff online suggesting that you shouldn’t worry about telling people you’re pregnant if you’d also tell them you suffered a miscarriage. I can see the logic in this, but it’s still not a fun conversation to imagine so we chose to wait, either way, until we were out of the woods.

This proved tricky: we had two weddings to get through first, one of which was my sister’s. Maddy wasn’t showing any signs of pregnancy and she was lucky to have fairly mild morning sickness, but it still meant declining drinks (getting through the hen do sober was the first of many pregnancy challenges for her) without arousing anyone’s suspicion (or worse, stealing the thunder).

At the wedding I bumped into an uncle who I’d half-promised to accompany on a cycling holiday to Spain the following year. He began telling me excitedly about the month they’d picked for travel which corresponded with our due date, and asked me about coming. I tried to palm him off with “I’ll check the calendar” but he pressed me, and panicking, all I could do was tell him “Me and Maddy will be busy next April, if you follow my meaning”, along with significant looks. He got the message as I added “my mum doesn’t know yet” when I spotted her lurking in the background. Months later when we told everyone, it turned out he thought I meant we were getting married.

A few friends told us later that they’d guessed our news: when Maddy eagerly volunteered me to change our friends’ newborn’s nappy, they worked it out pretty sharpish. Only one person asked me outright if Maddy was pregnant, and I tried to adopt a friendly “no comment” response – let’s not jinx anything. Everyone else told us afterwards that they’d noticed something was afoot.

After we reached twelve weeks and the scan was complete (and everything confirmed to be in working order), we went out for coffee—decaf for Maddy—and then sat outside in the summer sun to call our families and tell them. After psyching ourselves up and working out who to tell (and in what order), we facepalmed as each of our sets of parents failed to pick up the phone.

Eventually we got through and told our delighted families that they’d shortly become grandparents, aunts/uncles, second cousins and all the rest of it. My mum was on a boat in the Qatari gulf celebrating her birthday, and immediately announced it to all her friends, almost in tears at the prospect of becoming a granny. My dad sounded happier than I’d heard him in a decade, his voice quavering as he found himself momentarily lost for words.

Best reaction of them all was my sister Katie, though, who waited until I’d finished speaking, paused, then uttered the immortal words “you MOTHERFUCKERS”. Turned out she’d worked it all out during her wedding and was annoyed we’d waited so long to confirm the news. It felt weirdly—Freudianly—appropriate.