This is my second pregnancy (no living children, first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage at the beginning of my second trimester). I am cautiously optimistic because I now know how precarious pregnancy can be.

Long story extremely short, I am generally very close with my immediate family, but my first pregnancy caused a huge shift in my relationship with my parents, siblings, and aunts. My entire family felt entitled to ALL updates and information in my first pregnancy, basically told me my symptoms were in my head based on the gestational age of the babies, fished for information from my husband when I wouldn’t share (at this point it was showing signs of heading towards miscarriage and I didn’t want to talk about it), and then didn’t respect my wishes in asking for space to process my loss in the immediate 48 hours following the ultrasound. My family is also generally very cold, and fought with me to the point of tears a lot more than was necessary in those weeks.

Edit to add- My reluctance to share every update and desire for space in the loss was communicated to all of my family. They continued to push and disregard my feelings anyways. If I didn’t answer, they went to my husband. If he didn’t answer, they kept asking. Then it became fights that “I’m pushing my family away” when I just really didn’t want to repeat that I was probably losing my baby over and over again.

That being said, we just found out we’re pregnant again. It’s super duper early, just four weeks on. We’ve already agreed on keeping it between us until we get confirmation it’s viable, but I can’t help but hate the idea of my family knowing again. I basically want to hide it until I’m unmistakably showing, but I know it will cause a huge fight when it comes out and I’ll be the bad guy. But I know all the unnecessary and added stress wasn’t good the first time around, and I really need to keep it down for baby. Losing my first pregnancy absolutely broke my heart and there is nothing more that my husband and I want than to be parents.