Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Help Needed: The Three Month Rule

Well, one of my friends asked me today if I believed in the three month rule. “Would you let me know if you were really pregnant” she said.

“Well, I… I dunno…” I was planning on telling her but when she asked me, I started to think, am I being naive?

Frankly, it is way too early for me to even thinking about testing yet. I mean, I have at least 192 hours before I would even consider testing, but who’s counting?

But, do you believe in the three month rule? Is there a superstition about telling folks too soon?

For those of you have dealt with this issue before and for those of you who are hoping to deal with this issue, would you let your friends know if you were pregnant. Obviously, the first three months are really risky so it makes sense to wait, but what if I don’t tell the folks at work and I have really bad morning sickness won't they figure it out? Can I hide that? What do folks normally do in these situations?

Like I said, I have no idea if I am pregnant, but in the interest of watching the eggs fall through the hour glass during the TTW, I thought I would ask you: how have you handled it or how do you plan on handling it? who would you tell, if anyone about your pregnancy in the first trimester? What would you recommend? What have your friends done?

Thanks in advance!

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

The worst case scenario is that you tell lots of people, and then you miscarry, and you have to keep telling people about that. The other thing that happens when you tell people is that they are always asking you if you are feeling ok. And do you think it is a boy or girl? All the time.

Personally, I think I will probably tell the people closest to me. This is only because I cannot keep my mouth shut and I like to complain when I am uncomfortable. I will only tell the people next door to me at work, so they will watch my class when I go on many bathroom trips.

Anonymous said...

I think I probably will tell lots of people well before 3 months are up. Although I'm quite a private person, I think if I were unfortunate enough to miscarry, I'd want the support of people around me.

Also of course, there's the fact that I can't keep my mouth shut and I HATE feeling sick with a passion, so I'd need to feel free to complain and garner as much sympathy as I could muster!!

Anonymous said...

I plan on calling the friends that know I am trying. They've put up with me for years and are pretty invested.
Believe it or not there are actually people in my life that have no idea that I am trying. For that group they get an e-mail, or not.
And of course I plan on blabbling it all on the internet :)
I am pretty needy in a solitary environment- I figure the more people that are in the know the better.

Anonymous said...

We told some close friends that knew we were trying, our attitude was celebrate the pg even if it was short lived...

Anonymous said...

We made the rule that we would only tell people we would be comfortable talking to about a miscarriage-people we would get 100% support from and people who would know to give us space and time to be sad and not be insensitive or over-bearing. So that meant we didn't tell work people and we didn't tell relatives who weren't supportive.
Although given that trying for #2 has become a significantly longer story than #1 i might just change the message on my voice mail to "hello we are pregnant and we are so so so so so happy"!!!!!!

Eva said...

Wow, this is really helpful. thanks for sharing. I guess, we will tell close friends because I think I will need the support eiher way. It is scarey, though...Anyway, time will tell.

Anonymous said...

Yeah. If it works, we'd tell those who were along for the ride, everyone else after 3 months or so.

Anonymous said...

The first pregnancy (first try) told everyone after the first (low in retrospect) beta. Imagine the joy of telling them nevermind after the lower second beta. That felt dumb. Felt even dumber a few months later when relative-strangers asked how things were going, and we couldn't even remember what they were asking about until we dredged up the sadness AGAIN.

The second pregnancy, we told only the people that we would call right away in the event of a miscarriage. And that one would have been fine to shout from the rooftops. We were a little too cautious and ended up hurting a SIL's feelings. Oops, other extreme.

You'll know the right thing to do. Good luck.

Bree

None said...

Lo and I were both raised to be superstitious about this stuff. My grandmother suffered many miscarriages and she raised me to not count chickens before they hatch. Lo and I waited to tell most people. We are not going to have a baby shower for Flipper, for similar superstitious reasons.

I am just giving you background so you know why we didn't tell most people in our lives that I was pg until the beginning of the 2nd trimester... 14 weeks. That was also after we'd gotten promising Nuchal translucency screening results. I am also giving the background because as with all this TTC stuff, it's a very personal decision. Everyone has to decide what's right for them-- known donor or frozen, unmedicated or medicated, at home vs. R.E.... the same goes for once you're pg. I think women who decide to tell everyone right away should do what feels right to them.

Lo and I told the whole frigging blogosphere. But as for real life folks, we told only our closest friends and Lo's immediate family. (I was a little scared to tell my family.) We really wanted to avoid having to un-tell lots of people we didn't feel particularly close to if G-d forbid, a miscarriage happened. We also only wanted people we felt would support us if that happened, not people who might be inclined to say hurtful stuff ("Oh well, try, try again" for example).

I hope you and Nadia will have to make such a decision for yourselves in a few weeks. Fingers so crossed for you.

Whozat said...

I started out thinking that I didn't want to tell anyone til we made it through the 3 month mark.

Then I started blogging about it all, thinking that would be a good outlet, since I didn't want to tell "real life" people.

The I started sending real life people to the blog.

Now (10 hours after our 2nd IUI) I'm giving just about everyone one we know the minute-by-minute details, so I guess we won't have a choice but to tell them.

On the other hand, after having had a chemical pregnancy on our first cycle (negative hpt, then very low beta, followed by a negative beta, so we never actually thought we were pregnant, or announced such) even when we do get a strongly positive beta, we will be very cautious about spreading the news.

Not so much about who we tell, but about how. We suspect that will look at it as "it looks promising" rather than "we're having a baby" for quite some time.

PS - I just discovered your blog, so I'm playing catch-up. I'm so sorry to read that things didn't work out for you this cycle - and wishing you the best of luck with your next try!