I’ve never been a great secret keeper. I can’t help it. In my family keeping secrets was a great idea, but it was never seen in real life. I often tried to tell my sisters secrets. They would promise not to tell, and then secretly they would tell just one other person, who would tell another and another, and after five minutes, everyone knew all of the details and the secret was out in the open.
Coming from that type of environment, it’s a wonder I can keep anything a secret for long, but, for the last four and a half months, I have told only a select few individuals about my future plans to have another baby. I guess future plans could be a little misleading. By that I mean that I will most definitely have another child, and I expect it to arrive in August of this year.
Since it is supposed to be bad luck to let this kind of secret out of the bag for at least the first three months, I was determined to keep quiet and not inform my coworkers or friends of the news until that timeline had passed. I knew it would be a difficult task, but after all, I wanted to keep luck on my side.
My plans failed miserably. Unfortunately the downside to working with a room full of reporters is that they are observant and ask a lot of questions. One day after I myself found out the news, the clever and observant Melissa Stagnaro noticed a change in my beverage consumption and the questions began to fly. Not just from Melissa, but from the entire staff. “What are you pregnant or something?” Melissa asked one day at lunch. From the look on her face and the tone of her voice, I could tell she thought she was kidding, but my response gave it all away. Since I thought it would be weeks or even months before anyone caught on, I was caught just the slightest bit off guard. I’m fairly certain she was too as I struggled to find the right words to respond. I think my exact answer was, “what ... I ...um... why would you ask that?” Then I took a big sip of my water to give myself some time to think of a clever retort. It never came.
Apparently my clever response was not convincing enough to fool my coworkers, probably because my ability to keep a secret is amazing compared to my ability to lie.
A similar incident occurred a few days later while I was at dinner at my dad’s house. My oldest sister, though not a reporter, also tends to be observant of those small changes, and when I didn’t have a cup of coffee with dessert, she looked at me expectantly for an explanation. While my sister didn’t ask me directly, she did make a point to call my husband the very next day and ask what was going on. Apparently he’s not much better at keeping a secret than I am. His answer, “I can’t say anything. You really need to talk to Jessie. She’ll be home at four.”
So now, four and a half months in, I can’t bear to keep it a secret any longer, mostly because the notorious baby bump is starting to appear.