I know a lot of people who don’t tell anyone their pregnant until their past the first trimester, and I totally understand why. The beginning stages are always a bit rough because the possibility for miscarriage is great and there are a lot of women that have them. Approximately 15-20% of healthy women miscarry. That stat alone makes me sad but is also somehow comforting because there would be a huge support group if that was an experience we had.

We decided to tell our friends and family the day after we found out – at which point I was approx. 6 weeks along. This decision was an easy one for us. Brice and I have chosen to live our lives like an open book. Sometimes this makes people uncomfortable because it’s not the norm. but we’re OK with that. We choose to live life openly so we can be as raw and truthful with people as possible. We want our friends, family, and strangers to know that neither one of us are perfect. In fact – we are far from it. We are broken individuals that have made a commitment to one another for life and we’re only 7.5 years in to that commitment!

Thankfully, we both believe in a God that is good, right, and perfect and know that He created our world, in the beginning, that was good, right, and perfect. Because of sin, we live in a broken world now (as evident in current events) and are broken people. We believe that when we acknowledge that we are fallen and broken from the initial perfection of creation, we are able, through Christ, to be redeemed and restored to perfection. This takes work but is definitely possible. By allowing people into our lives, our problems, and our love, we are able to share our journey of restoration. Hopefully through this, our friends are able to see that God doesn’t only love and care for the perfect people with hardly any issues – He loves all of us and anyone has the option to begin the restoration process through Him… Even those as broken and Brice & I.

That being said – we wanted to tell everyone because 1. we were terrified and 2. so if something did go wrong and I became one of the 15-20% that we would be able to share that grief and have the support and love of those around us.

How we told our East Coast family:

We made as many FaceTime calls as we could! Our method of telling each family member was a little bit different. I loved each and every way we told. Here are the variations we went through –

• I was taking some new vitamins and asked if they had heard of them before. Then we held up my giant bottle of prenatal vitamins 🙂
• We said we had a cooking question: if we wanted to bake our own bread and buns, how long would it need to cook in the oven?
  • These responses were awesome!!! Some realized immediately what was up and replied with a quick…. 9 MONTHS!!!
  • Other response: ‘Well, it depends on what type of yeast you use. Also, what kind of bun are you looking to make. The variance of oven temperature will contribute…’ this convo kept going for about 10 mins until I had to say – “Hey, I really just wanted to tell you that your big sister is knocked up!!”
  • Other response: “What type of bread do you want to make? If you start from scratch it could take a while. What type of yeast do you have….” Which continued until Brice said “Grandma – have you heard the phrase there’s a bun in the oven?” to which she replied “Yes.” *followed by a high squeal and what I can only imagine was a large smile with a three fingered hand placed over her mouth”
• Talking to our nieces & nephews –  we started asking them to list off some of their cousins. They did, and then Brice asked – is that all of the cousins you have? Would you like one more?? Then we said – there’s a baby in Aunt Beka’s belly! Their young, innocent faces lit up with a joy so pure it almost took away all fear of having our own little nugget… Almost.

How we told our West Coast family:

This was pretty fun because we were going to see everyone for Halloween at our place. Weeks before I found out I was pregnant, we were talking about a couples costume and I had said – wouldn’t it be funny if I found out I was pregnant? Then we could just dress up like bags of ice and then point to my stomach and say “Ice, Ice, Baby”. Which since I’ve known Brice we’ve always joked with the song and said “Brice Brice Baby!” Well.. turns out it happened and being Halloween we decided that’d be a great way to tell everyone!

Since I have absolutely no artistic bones in my body, I enlisted a co-worker to draw the “Ice bags” for me. As people started showing up to our house for dinner we stood next to each other and got a variety of responses. Then, it being a Monday Night, we headed to Parkway Tavern. Our costumes were subtle enough that unless Brice & I stood next to each other, no one got our pun 🙂 See below for our friends responses:

• The first response was EXACTLY  what I was hoping for.. We came out and they read the bags.. “Ice, Ice, where’s the baby?” then I pointed to my belly and woohoo!
• We got a lot of “two bags of ice, cool.” Then we said, “No, read it out loud!” Try it – as soon as you say “Ice, Ice” out loud you automatically add “Baby” behind it!
• A few people looked at us standing side by side, then squealed and said – “You’re pregnant!”
• One of my favs was I was standing by myself and I friend came up. He looked at my costume and said, “Cool, you’re a bag of ice.” I said, “No wait, my costume makes more sense if I’m standing next to Brice.” I went and grabbed Brice, we stood side by side, to which our friend replied, “Cool, you’re two bags of ice.” It took about a minute of pausing then he got it 😉

Telling people we were bringing another human in to the world was oddly comforting. It made me realize that we are supported in so many ways and have tons of people on our side, cheering us on and willing to help how they can. Knowing we are far away from blood family is tough as we want our babe to know his/her roots and feel the family love. Knowing that we have a chosen family here in WA rooting us on, encouraging us by telling us our strong personal features and that we will be great parents, and giving advice where they can is an amazing feeling! While we were sad we couldn’t tell our family in person, have no fear – our Washington pseudo family showered us with plenty of hugs and high fives to cover everyone!