The Right To Keep Your Mouth Shut

I was perusing babycenter.com and their august birth month forum and I came across this rant yelling at people for not telling others they are pregnant. I was taken aback! Seriously? Who are you to decide when the right time to tell people is? Like with any medical condition, I’d say pregnancy (though harder to hide than some other medical conditions) is up to you to disclose. Some people want to keep it just between the family members for a while, it’s their secret, their lives that are going to change, why on earth should it be shouted from the rooftops? It doesn’t make you any less happy about your expected arrival, everyone has reasons for waiting to tell other people.

The big one is the first trimester being the “danger zone”, not a lot of people who have either lost a child in the first trimester or had someone close to them lose their baby want to announce their pregnancy until the danger period has passed. The way I understand it MOST people don’t announce until after, but there are people due the same time as me that are screaming from the rooftops and urging others to do the same. It won’t change anything, telling people about your baby is a choice you need to make, you and your significant other.

Another reason people withhold their news is because they know someone who has either recently lost a baby or are having trouble conceiving. I think it’s admirable to be cautious of other people’s feelings. Whether you tell them or not will not affect your pregnancy, so why not be considerate and wait until you are further along to tell certain people, they might have gotten pregnant by then too. It’s not like you are putting your life on hold, yours is going on and your baby is still growing inside of you. If you have mutual friends let them know your reasons for keeping mum from certain people.

 

As for me, I’m not lying when people are asking, I evaded early on, changed the subject or gave them outdated information (so I stretched it a little), but now that I’m at 11 weeks I’m more open about it. Same as when I had my gastric bypass, I evaded a lot of questions about why I was out for 2 weeks, but as time went on and my body changed so dramatically I’d give honest answers on how it happened, but its not like I ran around telling everyone who would listen. It was my body and my right to disclose the information about it as I saw fit. No one has any right to take those decisions from me, and I would hope that every woman realizes that for herself as well and doesn’t let herself get bullied into disclosing more information than she is comfortable with.