When is the perfect time to announce a pregnancy?

To tell, or not to tell, before 3 months….

When is the right time to announce a pregnancy?

Do you wait until the 12-week scan confirms all is well in utero or do you share the good news earlier? Yesterday Youtube bloggers Sam & Nia announced to their 370,000 followers that they are expecting – Nia is 8 weeks pregnant.

While very few couples anywhere announce a pregnancy – at 8 weeks or later – on Youtube – the question of when to reveal to family/friends/work is one that every expectant couple faces. And it’s complicated. It depends on how well or sick you are, how quickly your body changes, how many questions you’re fielding, if it’s a complete surprise or planned …. there are a number of factors that influence when a pregnant woman decides to tell.

Traditional wisdom dictates waiting until 12 weeks to announce a pregnancy, because doing so earlier is precarious. 80% of miscarriages occur in the first 12 weeks so revealing the good news before then, means there is an increased likelihood that you will have to reveal some sad news too. But that’s exactly why many women do choose to tell people around them what’s happening before the so-called  ‘all clear’.

In the words of US writer Jody Pratt, ‘the only thing worse than losing something that meant the world to you is pretending that you lost nothing’.

Merely experiencing a miscarriage is fraught enough, but enduring that loss without anyone in the world knowing what you’re going through is worse still. Last week English journalist Jude Rogers wrote about how the invisibility of miscarriage compounds the pain.

“I’m saying these things because I found the silence surrounding miscarriage suffocating and isolating. Yes, some of us find it helpful to grieve quietly and privately, but others don’t,” she wrote for The Pool.

She said ‘a weird mystique’ still surrounds miscarriage. She said women aren’t supposed to tell people they’re pregnant until 12 weeks gone because miscarriage involves ‘blood and stuff. And no, it’s not nice’. But that’s exactly why talking about it matters.

“I’ve found that even the most sensible women can feel the loss of a baby like failure, of one’s female physiology, of one’s purpose as a woman. This is horseshit, of course, but our minds do things like this to us when we’re feeling at our weakest. Sharing the load reminds us of the truth, and that we’re not on our own.

When I started speaking, I was amazed by how many women nodded back, including some friends who had miscarried but kept the fact under wraps.” .

Miscarriage is still shrouded in secrecy and this is, in part, because many couples wait until the 12-week mark, or later, to make their news public. If we don’t hear about a pregnancy before 12 weeks, chances are we also don’t hear about the one in 4 pregnancies that end in miscarriage before 12 weeks

For plenty of men and women this is welcome as it provides sought-after privacy when it’s needed most. It’s a rare couple whom have endured miscarriage or several rounds of IVF who seek out people to tell. The experience is harrowing, heartbreaking and tumultuous as it is, without having any of it publicly known at the time.

After the fact, women, or couples, might open up, but during it, privacy is understandably clung to.

Earlier this year Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that he and his wife are expecting a baby girl. In the long post he explained that they’d had 3 miscarriages before getting to a point far enough along in this pregnancy that they felt comfortable to announce it.

Zuckerberg makes a couple of powerful points. First, that miscarriage is far more common than people think. But because this isn’t known, it’s isolating to experience. And finally, even couples who want to change that and talk about it, are unlikely to engage in that conversation in the midst of their loss. Which is perfectly understandable.

When it comes to announcing that you’re pregnant, there is public and there’s public. Personally, I told my family and a few friends about each of my pregnancies before the 12 week mark for lots of reasons. Mostly I wanted to be able to share the ups and downs – however they materialised – of the first trimester. That was public enough for me.

When did you tell people that you were pregnant? Did you hold out until 12 weeks or reveal earlier?