Right from the start, we knew we wanted to tell our families our big news in person. We live far away from everyone, and opportunities to celebrate in person are few and far between. The good news? We knew we’d have our families together on back-to-back weekends. The bad news? Those weekends were not until weeks 15 and 16 of my pregnancy. Even though waiting that long was not ideal, and certainly not for everyone, we felt firmly that it was the right decision for us.

Especially since we’d waited so long, we wanted to make the announcements a little more special when they finally came, so we planned something different for each set. John’s family was up first! We were all gathered in New York City for Natalie and Joe’s baby shower, and went to brunch the next day with the whole Thomas clan. N+J opened a few more gifts, and one was ours. I ordered custom onesies from Zazzle with “Michigan 2016” for each of the three cousins in the sizes they’ll be next summer. We already have a family trip on the books, so it was a perfect opportunity on which to piggyback!

The reaction? TOTAL surprise. I think I could have knocked my brother-in-law over with a feather! Natalie and Joe provided great cover for us, I think, since everyone was focused on their impending arrival!

Next up was my family! Since my Dad’s birthday was later in the week, we wrapped up a package for him and handed it over once we were all gathered, saying it was something he’d want to enjoy for the rest of vacation. Inside was a faux North Carolina postcard that I’d made, and we taped our first ultrasound to the back.

The reaction? Not surprised at all! Actually, we were kind of like, do you guys understand what’s happening?! I’m not sure how they guessed, but they were nevertheless also excited :)

In addition to our families, we did share the news with a few dear couple friends in special ways. Nancy and Will were two of our most trusted confidantes as we walked together toward parenthood. When we went to visit Milly for the first time, we wrapped up half of a (cheesy) BFF necklace. It took them a few seconds to figure out what it meant, until I held up the other half!

Finally, we had to share the news with our friends Sam and Graham. Sweet Sam was one of my favorite people for the last year or so, because she asked us literally every time we got together when we were thinking of having kids. Some people might have found this annoying, but as I explained, I craved it. Earlier this year I did some graphic design work for them in trade for a photo session, and ever since, they’ve been urging us to redeem our half of the bargain. I, of course, had big plans for this session, but wasn’t about to say anything! When we were ready to tell them, I made up this little collection of some of their newborn images with a note at the bottom: are you free January 2016? :)

So keep an eye out for those beauties in a few months – grateful!

Since we had kept the news quiet for so long, it was definitely a little nervewracking, and kind of strange, to finally let the cat out of the bag. But, sharing the news with our loved ones in person and in special ways was totally worth it. And as a bonus (I guess?), it certainly has made the pregnancy zip along – seemingly right after the news became public, we reached the halfway mark, at twenty weeks!

I’m so curious: if you’ve ever shared the news about a pregnancy, when did you do it? I know twelve weeks is the standard, but I’ve heard of people shouting it from the rooftops at six weeks, and some not sharing until six months!

One of my September goals is to start our baby registry, and I think we’re going to tackle it this weekend! The plan is to use a universal service like MyRegistry, Babylist, or Amazon (we used Amazon for our wedding registry) so we can add things from places like West Elm, The Land of Nod, or Etsy. We’ve already had a preliminary outing to look at strollers, but there are lots of other things we’d like to touch and feel, so research trips to Target and/or Buy Buy Baby are part of this weekend’s game plan.

20 weeks!

Other preparations? I have about a bajillion (that’s an approximation) registry guides pinned (here, here, here, here, and here to start). We took a guided tour through the baby section of Target with our new parent friends. We’ve watched other friends and siblings use, complain about, and praise everything from wraps to high chairs for several years.

We’ve got some good background, but before we head out, I would love to turn to y’all for any advice you might like to offer, too! If you could recommend just three products for our registry, what would they be? Or, if you’ve used one of the registries we’re considering (Babylist, Amazon, MyRegistry), would you recommend it? I know not all of my readers are in the parenting stage (my impression is about half of you are!), so even if your glowing recommendation comes secondhand (maybe from something your sister-in-law raves about), that’s okay with me. Can’t wait to hear from you, and wish us luck!!

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The weather has been just a tad bit cooler here the past few days, which has me thinking ahead to my fall wardrobe! Normally I wouldn’t switch things up too much, but I think I’ll need some different pieces due to a changing shape over the next few months. For right now, the plan is to supplement with drape-y, longer tops that can be worn over leggings (not something I currently have a lot of). I also bought a belly band and wore it for the first time today, so hopefully that will stay me for awhile with my current pants. Here are a few of the pieces that have caught my eye:

First row: heather gray hi-lo tee ($17), striped cardigan sweater ($25), and tab sleeve tunic ($42)

Second row: Monaco blouse ($69) and lace-trim top ($31)

Third row: striped sweater dress ($54), Poet blouse ($25), and high/low cardigan ($54)

Any recommendations along this line, friends? I’m all ears!

I have never been a baby person. It’s fairly well known among family and friends that I “don’t like babies,” as I mentioned in our announcement post. I’ll never be the one offering to hold your baby, and I don’t even think all babies are that cute. I even had a pact with a dear (baby loving) friend in high school that she would take any of my future babies from ages 0-2 and I would take hers from 14-16.

Rather than a cold, cold heart, I think this stems from a general uncomfortableness with the littlest among us, since I was never much around babies growing up. I did babysit, but only for kids out of diapers! Babies just seemed very fragile, and they can’t use words to tell you what they need (and I like words).

Perhaps because of this, even coming up on our third anniversary, John and I were never on the receiving end of the stereotypical pressure to have kids. I’m sure I probably would have hated it if we had been, but at some point, I actually started to get paranoid – do people think we aren’t fit to be parents?? This obvious (to me) conversational hole was especially ironic, because that very topic was in almost constant rotation between the two of us and our closest friends.

18 weeks!

Thinking back, we began having serious conversations about the future of our family at the beginning of 2014. This was my starting point: I can’t really vocalize why, and I’m certainly not convinced that I’m going to love the baby stage, but when I picture my life, there are treasured children in it. For me, that was enough to move forward. I also knew I wanted to be a younger mom, having my first child before 30.

My hunch is that John started from a similar position, but unlike me, he was not willing to move forward without being able to vocalize a more concrete and rational reason that we should do so. To gather ideas, we embarked on a yearlong quest to answer the question, “Why do people have children?”, hoping to find answers that would resonate with us. We posed this question to each other countless times. We did the same to friends with and without kids, those who knew they wanted them and those who were undecided. We researched online. We read books and blog posts. We listened to sermons and podcasts. We prayed.

The problem is this: all of the “negatives” about having children are very real and concrete: they cost a ton of money. They restrict your freedom. They can derail your financial progress and goals. They complicate your schedule. They complicate your travel. They’re messy. They’re needy. They keep you up at night. They don’t know how to use the bathroom.

On the other hand, the positives are generally intangible, and, almost by definition, unable to be understood or experienced before actually having children of your own.

While an interesting exercise and good conversation fodder, this seemingly unending quest was at times frustrating to me – it seemed like there was no possible answer that would convince John, and all I wanted was to move forward since I believed we were ultimately on the same page and kind of just wasting time. Just recently, though, I read something that really helped me understand why this wasn’t possible for him. It’s from his results from the scarily-accurate, Myers-Briggs based 16 Personalities quiz:

INTJs will strive to remain rational no matter how attractive the end goal may be, and every idea, whether generated internally or soaked in from the outside world, must pass the ruthless and ever-present “Is this going to work?” filter. This mechanism is applied at all times, to all things, and all people.

Apply it we did. We heard many perspectives from many people, and generated several ourselves, as to why people might have children. Ultimately, these were the most convincing to us:

Children will crack open a part of your heart that can’t be opened any other way. Not a new idea, but I would say the way Darren Whitehead in particular described this was extremely moving and heartfelt. I don’t want to miss out on an opportunity to learn about love.

Your relationship with your children will teach you more than anything else can about your relationship with God the father. This totally makes sense to me. I know what being a child is like, but even just being pregnant, I can already tell that experiencing the parent half of the equation will be truly eyeopening. I’m so looking forward to this.

You get to rediscover the world as you teach and walk alongside your child. This is the most obviously fun one! Though the magnitude of shepherding a child is not lost on me, I’m also so excited for all of the people, places, things, and ideas I’ll get to introduce our little one to – and experience anew alongside him or her!

Having children is the greatest expression of hope humans can participate in. We believe the best is yet to come. We are not cynical people. Deciding to have children is tantamount to saying we believe the world they will grow up in will be bright and beautiful, and that’s a statement of faith we want to make.

One more reason on my list: my husband is so precious to me — truly one of the best people I know — that it’s hard for me to even imagine getting to parent someone who was made from him, alongside him. Just thinking about that kind of makes me feel like my heart might explode.

By the end of 2014, we were convinced that children were in our future. However, even armed with that knowledge, we still felt hesitant about jumping in! With our backgrounds, I don’t think either of us would ever have stated that we felt 100% prepared or ready (financially, emotionally, or otherwise) to have a baby. But that’s the beauty of the system – you don’t just decide one day that you’re ready to have a kid, and one arrives on your doorstep the next day.

Once we flipped the switch and actively started trying to get pregnant, it’s kind of crazy how quickly my feelings of hesitation turned to impatience and even anxiety – I wanted to be pregnant immediately! There are so many (really hard and sad) stories of infertility and miscarriage in my circles, and despite the fact that there was no indication in our families or my medical history that either would be a problem, my mind instantly went there. So when we did see PREGNANT show up on the test after just a couple of months, there was relief and joy. No tears :)

We waited a full five weeks to take it, and agreed to look at it together after waiting the obligatory three minutes — but he peeked and saw it first! I know many people find a clever way to share the news with their husbands, but I can’t imagine finding out without John by my side. That didn’t stop us, however, from coming up with creative ways to tell our families and friends – more on that in my next post!

To conclude, one of my biggest fears was that by lingering on The Question for so long, as well as all of the potential negatives of adding a baby to the family, we’d never get out from under them — that even once I was pregnant, John still wouldn’t be excited. However, I needn’t have worried, as that couldn’t be further from our reality now. He is SO excited — probably more excited than me — and clearly already loves this baby so much. (Another gem from 16 Personalities that helps explain this: INTJs trust their rationalism above all else, so when they come to a conclusion, they have no reason to doubt their findings.) People ask us if we’re nervous, and the answer is no – I think we thought through all of our nerves already, and now only joy and peace are left!

Friends, I’d love to hear: have you always felt clearly about having (or not having) children? If you have children or know you want to have them, why? Do any of the conclusions we came to resonate with you?