Creative ways to announce a pregnancy that no one’s tried before.

12 truly creative ways to announce your pregnancy on mom-101

I think I am the sole human on this planet who is not totally enthralled with eunique, creative ways to announce a pregnancy. I read these articles (thanks Brian) and hear about all these clever ideas that took so much time and planning and love and puppies and are supposed to warm the cockles of my heart.

Alas, I feel no warmth. I feel no cockles. I feel kind of uncomfortable. And not just because of the word cockles.

Yes, I know, I’m the Grinch. I’m Scrooge. I’m Frank Cross. I’m the lone person missing the I Love Creative Baby Announcements gene and ruining it for everyone else. Which is odd because I’m not generally a super cynical person. Especially when it comes to excited new parents-to-be. Just ask Jessica Shyba how genuinely thrilled I was when I learned of her pregnancy accidentally, making her announce it prematurely to a table full of friends.

So…are you having wine, Jess, or are you pregnant again, hahahhaaa…uh…wait…what?….Oh my God….you ARE pregnant. Shit. I had no idea. Well, congratulations! Whoo! 

If you’re pregnant, tell me you’re pregnant. That’s all it takes for me to be wildly happy for you. I’d imagine the same goes for your husband. Or your partner. Or your in-laws. Or the postal carrier. I can’t be the only person who thinks it’s weird to learn you preserved your EPT stick in bronze and left it in your man’s cereal bowl at breakfast. Or that you spent 17 hours lining your front walk with chalk in the shape of newborn footprints which lead into the house, up the stairs, and into the bathroom where there were a forty baby bottles filled with pink and blue jelly beans, one for each week of the pregnancy.

Want to get creative? Seriously? I say, add some actual reality to your little surprise reveal. Because no one ever does that, not in any parenting article I’ve ever read, ever. These ideas aren’t just clever ways to make your big announcement, they have the added bonus of preparing you for the weeks and months ahead.

1. Hand out fortune cookies with your own fortunes written out. Not “we’re pregnant!” Come on, you can have more fun that that.

Fortune cookie to announce pregnancy

2. Set up the living room with toys all over the place, a minimum of three mysterious stains on the rug, baskets of dirty laundry. Then scribble on the wall 40 WEEKS FROM TODAY! Ideally in black Sharpie.

3. Secretly replace your spouse’s new Audi S4 Sedan’ with a big ass tan minivan. Leave it in the driveway. Surprise!

4. Fill in the squares of a calendar marking the ten or more months it will be until your partner can touch your boobs again.

Step away from the boobs, sir

 

6. Decorate cupcakes with fun little episiotomy stitches across the top. Your partner won’t be able to wait to call the rest of the family and share the news!

7. Leave a gift-wrapped box of diapers in your front entranceway, with a card that says A Present For You. Inside, place a single diaper filled with actual baby crap. May it be the first of many. Mazel tov.

8. Take all of your cute, expensive, regular-people sized clothes and donate them to Goodwill. Leave the tax receipt somewhere your honey can find it and wait for him to guess what it all means.

9. Smash your partner’s smartphone screen, and quietly slip it back into a jacket pocket with a cute little note.

Creative ways to announce your pregnancy on Mom-101.com
10. Place a pocket dictionary on your partner’s pillow before bed, with select words highlighted that will become essential to your vocabulary in the coming months: Placenta. Mucus Plug. Sciatica. Colostrum. Donuts.

11. Delete every single episode of Homeland, Game of Thrones and House of Cards on the DVR and replace them with episodes of Caillou. When your partner turns on the TV, it will be such a thrill!

12. Host a treasure hunt in which your friends and family have to search for the missing half of your brain.

 

Mazel tov, new moms! I’m here if you need more ideas.

 

iphone photo: smileham via compfight cc

{36 Comments}

36 thoughts on “Creative ways to announce a pregnancy that no one’s tried before.”

  1. Hilarious. And you are so not the only one. This also goes for people who need to make a huge deal of telling you the sex of the unborn baby. I actually care that you’re pregnant. I have practically no interest in whether it’s a boy or girl.

    1. I’m terrified that I’ll be invited to a gender reveal party some day and have to feign excitement. (Dodged that bullet so far.) I am so happy for pregnant women, truly. But I think they forget that learning the baby’s sex is monumental only for the parents, the grandparents, and probably the baby shower gifting industry which can start pushing gender-specific nursery decor on them now.

      1. Thank goodness I’ve never been invited to one, but I was held captive in a relative’s living room recently while the couple discussed at length whether or not to tell us the gender, and then how to tell us. I just wanted to scream “I DON’T CARE!!!” but somehow held it in. Barely.

          1. I find this discussion so interesting compared to my experience. I am currently pregnant and although we know the sex of our baby we aren’t sharing because we want to focus to be on a healthy baby and at the end the sex doesn’t matter to us. Plus, I am not a pink/blue type of girl. People are constantly trying to find out from us. Plus it is the first question that seems to be asked when I let people know that I am expecting. I am starting to think that it is the most important thing to them. It’s weird.

            1. Just another perspective Caroline–I think when you are pregnant, people just want to be nice and be involved and curious and make conversation. “So…do you know what you are having?” is a pretty basic place to start. Kind of like “what’s your major?” in college.

              Also, better than,” so are your nipples totally HUGE or what?”

  2. I’m totally with you (although I actually consider myself to be a fairly cynical person). I don’t get it, the urge to be super cute and creative from the moment you are pregnant. And it continues once the baby is born when there’s pressure to make cute birthday treats, and treats for every holiday to bring in to school, etc. Maybe it’s just that I’m not a creative person and have no idea how to do these things, but I don’t get the urge. It’s really all I can do to buy a pumpkin and carve something resembling a face into it (and that doesn’t always work).

    1. The last thing I was when I was pregnant was super cute. I did paint each of the drawer pulls on our white baby dresser a different neon shade, somehow thinking that would be really cool and crafty. Total fail. If Instagram were around then, you’d agree.

      Pumpkin Hint: Sharpies. Have at it!

      1. I’ve been on the sharpie pumpkin wagon for years. My son is 8 and isn’t buying it anymore. He wants the real deal. I’ve even offered glue and googly eyes and glitter and whatever else the craft store has to offer. He wants me to hack away at a pumpkin with a giant knife and come up with a (very specific-looking) design. So I do the best I can on that front.

        I think your neon baby dresser sounds awesome. Way craftier than me. When I was pregnant, I “decorated” our white dresser by leaving a scented oil air freshener on top of it (I had torn it from the outlet because it made me nauseous) and ruined the finish. The finish remains ruined, with a nice tray on top of it.

  3. I love this list…and let me show you how much by over-producing my sign of appreciation. Ha!

    I think this over-the-top ridiculousness is seeping into everything. It started for me with fancy party things like goodie bags making their way to kid parties…which I hate. And have you seen high school invitations to homecoming and prom? They have signs, gifts and elaborate treasure hunts….taking more time to orchestrate than most marriage propsals. Honestly, I blame social media, youtube and pinterest. Even 10 years ago when I was pregnant with my eldest, facebook was brand new, there was no twitter, no snapchat, no pinterest…no keeping up with the joneses. I actually called the most important people in my life to tell them we were having a baby…on a phone…a phone with a cord. ☺ We emailed some close friends later. That was it…no fanfare. Our circle was small. Its not the same for the now 30somethings who were probably on myspace in college, dont remember life before email and have never worked for a company that didnt have a website. Their social circles are huge. And while its fun, I see a lot of competition….to have the best, the fanciest. There’s a new normal. And from the looks of it, its exhausting.

    1. I still remember MTV’s My Sweet 16 show – way before social media – that made me realize whoa, the world has changed. Girls were showing up at school in limos, carried by shirtless dudes, passing out invitations publicly so it was very clear who got one and didn’t get one. It was nauseating. So I guess I could blame it on a celebrity-obsessed culture, and it started with reality TV before social media.

      But then again, I remember in college going to Bar Mitzvas that were so over the top, they were like second weddings. (Me, I had a DJ in my small living room and a 20-foot hero. Done.) I’m not really sure when this all started to happen either. All the extravagance over one’s personal milestones. But you’re right, it’s all part of the same problem.

  4. My cousin had a gender reveal party last month. It seemed as big as their wedding. I am thrilled for her that said baby is a gender, but a huge party for such a thing? I don’t see the point.

  5. Here was mine: Go to the Guggenheim with your partner. Walk home. Walk so uncharacteristically slowly that your partner asks what the hell is wrong with you, are you pregnant? Take test the next morning and answer, Yep.

  6. Here was mine: After fertility drugs for my first two pregnancies, and then an open bar wedding 6 weeks after my 2nd was born…I peed on a stick at work and for the first time EVER, it turned positive. Called my husband sobbing so uncontrollably he thought I had gotten into a car accident. So yes, our 2nd and 3rd sons are exactly 12-1/2 months apart. Fun times.

  7. Hmmm, the first time, my husband and I watched for the little pink lines together. The second time, I woke up, felt queasy, and told him I was pregnant again. He made me take the test to confirm, but I knew I was right. I get a very specific sort of queasy feeling and keep it for roughly 7 months, at which point I replace it with abject exhaustion. Or at least that’s how it went for the two pregnancies I’ve had. I’m not going for a third data point.

    I can see how someone might want to make more of a deal about the announcement if they had a harder time getting pregnant, though. I am blessed with ridiculous fertility (at least I know all the money I’ve spent on birth control hasn’t been wasted!) so getting pregnant didn’t feel like much of an accomplishment to me. We tried for two months the first time and one month the second. I am so terrified of this fertility record that I think I’ll be on birth control until I’m 80.

    But for some of my friends, it was a much, much bigger deal, and I can understand how that might translate into wanting to make the announcement a bigger deal. I’m with you- all you have to do is tell me you’re pregnant and I’ll be thrilled for you! But if someone wants to do something cutesy, I guess I could go along. This has not been tested in real life yet.

    We didn’t do a gender reveal thing, either, mostly because the gender wasn’t revealed until birth.

    1. Clo? What they heck. CLOUD. My fake name is CLOUD. I’m going to blame a sticky keyboard for that.

  8. Very funny post!! And yes, the current obsession with making every milestone “an event” is often cringe-worthy. How’s this for a pregnancy reveal- woman over 40 getting divorced and having a few amorous adventures discovers she’s pregnant and then has to tell the gents involved that she’s expecting and guess what!?….they might be the father.
    Not exactly newsworthy, but happens more often than you think!

  9. Gigantic sister-in-scroogeness here. I feel about this the same way I feel about most of Pinterest. Just… why?

    (ps – told my husband via gchat. how’s that for unromantic?)

  10. Liz.
    I’m pregnant!
    That’s true, btw. Not pulling your leg.
    It’s boy #4. Surprise!!!!!!!!! At 38!!!!!!!!! When we were told we couldn’t have anymore!!!!!!!!

    We found out this time because the older three are 10,8,6, and they’re desperate to know. I was desperate to NOT, knowing that everyone wishes I’d have a girl. Alas.

    We (my husband and boys) did all cut a cake together that was blue on the inside so we could all find out together. My oldest cried. He wants a sister, not another knucklehead.

    When I asked my friend to make us the cake, she said “Are you having a party? If so, I’m not coming.” Which sums up my, and your, apparently, sentiment as well.

    I really love your list. Much more legit.

  11. I love this post so much that I would like to mention you in my blog. (I write about a lot of things, and sometimes about ‘Mom Stuff’) Would like your permission, of course, before I do. If you’d like to check me out first, to make sure you won’t be suffering Guilt By Association or feeling like you’re a member of Fellow-Travelers-with-Weirdos, you might like to read this post: http://alicewhitmoresblog.com/2014/08/gone-baby-gone/

  12. I baked cupcakes and stuck little flags in announcing my pregnancy to my family. It was simple and sweet and felt like such an accomplishment given the overwhelming morning sickness. More than anyone’s reactions the thing I really remember is being proud I didn’t throw up all over the cupcakes.

  13. You should do another list like this, only for “gender reveal” ideas. Maybe it’s because I’m a little older, but I find the whole concept just ridiculous (and really, the whole purpose of these hyper-engineered pregnancy announcements is so you can post it on Facebook for “likes”).

  14. All the indulgence over one’s close to home turning points. In any case you’re correct, its all piece of the same issue. I recall in school going to bar Mitzvas that were so outrageous. They were similar to second weddings. I’m not so much beyond any doubt when this all began to happen either. All the indulgence over one’s close to home turning points. In any case you are correct..its all piece of the same issue.

  15. #2 and #9 are my absolute favorites! 🙂 Having never been pregnant myself, I didn’t have to figure out a creative way to make an announcement, but when Snuggle Bug was due to be born, we just told our family and then cautioned them we wouldn’t be parents for sure until relinquishment paperwork was signed. No creativity there, just reality.

    Thanks for making me smile with your list of ideas.

  16. When I told my husband I recorded my voice in a card that said “You’re going to be a daddy” He just looked at me. Took about 10 solid minutes to settle in and even then he didn’t get it LOL That was about the extent of my creativity. But I’ve had friends to full photo shoots with announcements as if it’s a celebrity event. And like you I don’t need all of that to be happy that they are having a baby. But I guess it’s their moment so rock it how they choose.

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