Who Needs To Know She’s Pregnant?

You just found out your wife is pregnant. You told her that you love her, and that you’ll be there for her. But now what? Who do you tell next?

Who else needs to know you’re expecting a baby? When should you share the good news?

While this is an extremely personal decision that all couples need to make for themselves, I’d like to offer some advice and tips based on my own experiences:

Family

When you tell your family is going to be based on your own preferences. In my case, my wife and I decided to call our parents the same day we found out Shan was pregnant. We were so excited to share the good news that we just couldn’t wait. Then we shared the good news with all of our siblings later that week.

My advice here is to make sure and compromise. If you feel like waiting awhile, but your wife wants to tell them immediately, just know that it’s not worth fighting over. They’ll find out eventually anyway.

Friends

This one is a little more tricky. We all have friends that we love and trust, but you just know that once you tell them, the whole world is going to know you’re pregnant. (You do have friends like that, right?)

In our case, we decided to keep the pregnancy private until after the first trimester. It was tough to keep the secret, but it was also something fun between my wife and I. We ended up enjoying the secret and then the thrill of announcing it to everyone.

On the other hand, we’ve had friends who told everyone about their pregnancy almost as soon as they found out. Their rational was if something happened, they’d want their friends support anyway, so why not just tell them right away.

My advice is the same as it was with telling your family. Make sure to compromise, and it’s not worth a fight.

Work

There’s no reason you need to inform your employer that your wife is pregnant until you need to start missing work for doctor’s visits. You may also need to inform them if you need to make special arrangements well in advance for taking time off of work when the baby’s born, etc.

In our case, my wife and I told our employers she was pregnant when we told our friends. There weren’t many doctor appointments before that, and we weren’t required to explain them, so it wasn’t an issue.

Unless you want to share the good news with your co-workers, my advice is to not tell your employer until you need to.

Health Insurance

This will vary based on your policy. In our case, we are required to inform our health insurance about any pregnancy prior to the second trimester. Failure to do so results in a reduction in benefits.

In our case, once my wife notified them she was enrolled into a special prenatal health program. I suppose the insurance company wants to ensure pregnancies go as smoothly as possible, in order to reduce costs. Since we obviously wanted the pregnancy to go as smoothly as possible too, we had no objections to this.

My advice is to contact your insurance provider as soon as you find out that you’re pregnant, and ask them what their requirements are regarding pregnancies. You want to make sure you follow their rules to prevent problems with coverage later on.

Daycare Provider

If you find out that your wife is pregnant today, you need to start searching for a daycare provider tomorrow. Seriously, in some communities it’s extremely hard to find good daycare. So if you’re going to need daycare, then you’ll want to get a jump on this as soon as possible.

We began seeking out a good daycare provider the same week we discovered Shan was pregnant, and we still ended up only finding one good provider who had an opening for Olivia. Later we found out that over a dozen people called within a few weeks after us, so if we hadn’t called when we did, we wouldn’t have gotten the spot.

I consider this the most important advice I’ll give in this entire post… start your daycare provider search immediately!