How to create the perfect pregnancy announcement

First, let's just get this out of the way: I'm pregnant again. I announced it on Facebook with the help of this horrendously shitty infographic I made using MS Paint (of course):

Cool. Now that we've gotten through that part, we can get back to the point of this post.


Putting together a good pregnancy announcement is like asking someone to the prom: you'd f***ing better do a good job or else everyone will secretly be really disappointed in you. They'll be like, "yeah, I'm happy for her, but couldn't she at least have made some sort of clever pie chart showing how her free time spent sleeping off hangovers was about to go way down or something? I mean, I could slap something like that together in Excel in like two minutes!"

So with that in mind, here are a few popular categories for pregnancy announcements, and how they can go wrong:


The incredibly subtle announcement

This one can go wrong with ease. I mean, you're relying on your Facebook friends to notice something subtle. Has that EVER been a good idea?

For example, everyone knows that pregnant women can't drink alcohol. So maybe a picture of all that non-alcoholic beer and wine you just bought will tip people off?

I took this picture during a Total Wine shopping trip, and in case you're curious, the Beck's non-alcoholic is the best of the beers and the wine is almost universally grape juice in a fancy bottle.

Here's how it usually turns out in real life:

If you want to be subtle, just remember that most people are idiots. It's not their fault. They were born that way.

And then they drank a lot, and did drugs, and dyed their hair in the bathroom with the door closed and the exhaust fan turned off.



The picture of you looking pregnant

Oh nelly. I hate this one. It usually goes something like this:

If you're pregnant, please don't do this one. We spend so much time and effort conditioning everyone NOT to say anything if they suspect that someone is pregnant:

And now you wanna undo all that hard work in a second? Please don't! It's like asking someone how much they think you weigh or how old you look: it's only gonna end poorly for everyone.

Unless you've waited 8.5 months to finally make your announcement. Then you'll probably get a good reaction out of people.

Then again, at that point, you might as well wait until the baby is born. REALLY throw people off.

Bless you, Mike, for boldly saying what we've all been thinking.

The announcement that involves the existing children

These can be great if they're done well:

Haaaaaa get it? Because the youngest is getting replaced as youngest and he's pissed about it? Tell me you're not laughing. You can't -- you'd be lying.

The problem is, sometimes the kiddos refuse to cooperate.

Take Audrey, for example. The other day, we were rearranging some things in my closet and I came across a newborn size sleeper suit. It was so tiny compared to how huge Audrey is, so for a moment I thought "this could make a great pregnancy announcement: have Audrey hold the tiny sleeper suit and make some joke about how it doesn't fit her anymore, but we liked it so much we made a new person to wear it instead."

But instead of holding it up, Audrey kept trying to put it on her head like a hat. Over and over again, trying to put the tiny sleeper suit over her giant melon.

That would not have made a good pregnancy announcement at all.

"Look how dumb my kid is! Also, I'm pregnant."

The ultrasound picture

Some people have problems with these. They think they're "too boring" (because they all look the same) or "too personal" (since it is technically a photo of the inside of your body). 

I have no objection to ultrasound pictures except for the fact that they really don't look like anything at first. I mean, check out this picture of Audrey when she was a 10-week-old fetus:

WTF even is that.

This time around, I got a comparatively good first photo:

Or at least, it was good once I aliened it up a little:

I feel like if you're gonna do it, at least make a sweet "deal with it" GIF:

"I'm pregnant -- DEAL WITH IT." 

I love it! Puts everyone on the defensive. Makes them kind of afraid to congratulate you. "I don't want her to yell at me any more."

DEAL WITH IT.

The positive pregnancy test photo

This one also gets a lot of hate, mostly because, well ... we all know how pregnancy tests work. You don't stick it in your mouth, know what I mean?

I guess at least make sure you clean all the pee off it before taking the picture??

The "guy laughs at girl's misery"

This one was kind of "in" for a while recently: a picture of a girl hanging over the toilet looking miserable while the guy grins in the foreground and gives a big "thumbs up!" to the camera.

For this one to work, the woman has to be suffering from pregnancy symptoms that are at least slightly photogenic. Hanging over the toilet is funny. Eating a big plate of steak and ice cream is funny.

However, for those of us who have pretty symptom-free pregnancies, how would this work exactly? A picture of Jesse grinning as I sit on the toilet peeing at 3 in the morning yet again? A picture of Jesse grinning while I stand in front of the fridge trying to decide what snacks to eat?

... a picture of me struggling to overcome constipation?

No. No, no, no. This one simply won't work for us. But if it works for you, I salute you.


The pun

Come on. You're better than this. 


So, in conclusion, there's no right way to announce a pregnancy. Just a bunch of wrong ones. If you really want to play it straight, you could always just announce it outright without trying to be cute at all. I mean, what could possibly go wrong there??

Sigh. You know what? Maybe just stick with the pee-covered pregnancy test after all. At least it's foolproof.