Telling Family I'm Pregnant, Part III

We're lucky that we live close enough to Chuk's family that we were able to tell them we were expecting in person...the only people we told in person. We had already planned on going down to them for a visit because we were participating in a suicide awareness walk.

Because I am the best daughter-in-law in the world, I continued my habit of making Chuk's dad a cheesecake. We all ate dinner as a family and when we had finished Chuk grabbed the cheesecake, which had been covered since we arrived a couple of hours earlier, and put it in front of his dad and said, "We made you a sweet, little treat."

His dad gave us a weird look, probably thinking we made him something gross, and slowly peeked under the cover and saw that we had written "A BABY". Then he got a huge smile on his face and put the cover right back down. Chuk's sister was like, "What? What? What is it?" and then their dad took the cover off really fast with a flourish. My sister-in-law read the cake and screamed and then got all teary eyed and kept saying, "Really? Congratulations!"

There were lots of hugs and questions and my poor little niece was as confused as could be. So I sat her on the chair in front of me and said, "There's a baby in my tummy." Without hesitating, she lifted up my shirt and then gave me a look far beyond her 22 months, a look that said "You're full of $h!t." I don't know how to explain these things to babies, so I simply said, "It's hiding inside so you can't see it until you're two." She spent the rest of the evening kissing my tummy (which we all failed to get a picture of) not because she understood what was happening, but because we would all clap for her after she did it and that is a girl who appreciates applause from her fans. I can only hope our baby is just like her.

It was our least elaborate announcement, unless you count the email we sent to our friends, but it was so special to get to see the reactions with our own eyes. I only wish I could have seen my families' faces, but I have pretty good idea of how they looked.