The Day We Announced that We Were Pregnant Again

My oldest son was a year old when I got pregnant with my second child. We were thrilled at the thought of becoming parents again. We waited to announce the pregnancy because we wanted to make sure that everything was going fine with the pregnancy. I was twelve weeks pregnant at Christmastime, so we picked Christmas day to tell our families that we were going to have a second child.

We wanted to include our fifteen month old son in the pregnancy announcement. Our idea was to keep it low key. Since our son could not talk in complete sentences yet, we decided to let his Christmas outfit announce the coming of our new addition.

For Christmas, I bought our son a red, long-sleeved onesie to wear. I painted a picture of a snowman decorating a Christmas tree on the shirt. In gold letters at the top and the bottom of the picture I painted, "I'm gonna be a big brother." We figured it would take our family a little while to actually take the time to read his shirt.

We were wrong. As soon as we took off his coat, my sister-in-law read the shirt loud enough for the entire group to hear. After a few seconds of confusion, the questions started rolling in.

One of my other sister-in-laws made the statement "I didn't think that organization used kids who were that young." We soon realized that she was talking about the Big Brother, Big Sister volunteer program. No, that organization does require its volunteers to be able to drink out of a big boy cup.

In the excitement a very loving Aunt of mine asked "Well how do you know it's going to be a boy?" With a straight face my husband replied "We don't know. He will still be a big brother whether the baby is a boy or a girl."

Our family still laughs about the confusion that surrounded our pregnancy announcement. Too bad our oldest son does not remember the day that his shirt confused a bunch of adults.