Making the Big Announcement

I haven't quite gotten over Alyson P's comment on this post regarding a most terrible and downright yucky way to announce a pregnancy (sliding a positive pee-stick pregnancy test into someone's drinking glass--to make matters worse the "someone" had been struggling with getting pregnant themselves). To try to bring balance back into the world, I have to share a really awesome way someone in my family made the announcement not too long ago.

Our family has a MyFamily website where we all share and try to keep track of each other. With 80 of us, it's about the best we can do. There have been numerous "announcements" (mine among them) made on the website, most including a scan of a recent ultrasound. Nothing "special", but it gets the word out. And with 3-4 babies born in our family each year, we're far beyond the "first grandchild excitement".

This all changed a couple months ago when a member of the family cleverly changed their username on the site to "Guess Who" and put up a poll called "Guess who's Pregnant". With almost 20 "eligible" women to pick from in our family (some of whom are already grandparents and some of whom are quite recently married), chaos ensued. People started making their sure guesses, phone calls were made, doubts came up. DH and I started to take this game very seriously. We needed to start weeding some people out. Who has had hysterectomies? Who's already gone through menopause? I know these are personal questions, but we had to know. More phone calls. More detective work on MyFamily sorting through fake accounts and a trail of "member invites". I finally made a phone call to my sister where I told her it had to be her son and daughter-in-law. We were sure of it. She said she thought the same thing and had already left them a serious phone message that they had better tell their mother first.

More detective work on the website was done by dh and he called to say it has to be your sister, Lea. He was sure of it. I worked up the guts to call her and make the accusation knowing full well that she had suffered a painful miscarriage a number of years back and to the best of my knowledge had come to terms with the fact that her family was complete (and with her youngest turning 8, I think most people thought the same thing).

She had no idea what I was talking about. She hadn't even been on MyFamily that day to take part in the family uproar over the mystery pregnancy.

I felt terrible. Nothing like a surprise call from your sister to open up an old wound and rub salt in it.

I told Dh he was wrong and need to keeping searching for clues. He responded that it had to be them, or a really smart computer hacker. Well, the problem is, we have a few smart computer hackers in our family. One person that actually makes her living from computer hacking. I immediately made the accusatory call which ended with "you'd better not be lying to me". No dice.

About a half hour later dh called back to say he found more evidence and the fake member accounts all pointed back to Lea's husband. It just had to be them.

So once again, I gathered all my guts together and decided to make the call. I can't believe I did. But this time, when my sister answered I immediately asked to talk to her husband. I knew I couldn't face her again. I laid out all the evidence and eventually he broke. It was them. They were pregnant.

They promised to make the announcement later that night on the website and I promised them my secrecy. Over the next few hours, the family was still going nuts. Phones were ringing off the hooks. At one point my jokester brother's family claimed the pregnancy (their youngest is 11). People actually believe them. And then a series of pictures of different women in the family (pregnant, nursing and non-pregnant alike) chugging from wine-looking bottles appeared on the website (don't ask what that was about, but you can be impressed that we all had such quick access to wine-looking bottles). Finally, my sister Lea posted her ultrasound and really claimed the pregnancy at the end of the night (which half my family missed because they actually believed my brother and went to bed).

Now that's a way to make an announcement! How did you make yours? Did it involve deception, computer hacking and making your sister feel terrible just to hide your secret?