Looking back, it's funny. Sometimes people can't remember how they used to feel before something momentous happened to them. But I remember exactly how I felt before recurrent pregnancy loss: I always thought Facebook pregnancy announcements were weird. Don't get me wrong, I planned to announce my own pregnancy anyway. I hadn't been personally introduced into the world of infertility yet, and I didn't have any infertile friends (that I knew of), so I didn't realize pregnancy announcements were hurtful. Just weird. Like "I just wanted you all to know that my husband and I have been having sex!" Or "Here's a picture of my uterus, everyone!" So instead - not kidding - my plan was to wait out the allotted 12 weeks and then just write: "So... I have one of those awkward Facebook announcements that everyone makes." Everyone would draw the obvious conclusion... goodness knows they jump to that conclusion at the drop of a hat anyway. (Last year, when my sister was coming to visit me, I wrote on FB that I was excited about sisterohkay's arrival tomorrow, tagged her in the post, and yet someone still managed to conclude that I was announcing the birth of my child.)
Now that we're adopting, I'm a little perplexed about how and when to announce the adoption. Most of our family and close friends know already, but many others don't. Adoption is trickier because I don't have a set number of weeks to wait until a baby arrives. "mrohkay and I are expecting a 0-4 year old in 14-18 months!" would lead to some pretty bizarre questions, I suspect.* Like on my blog, I'm limited by the agency about what I can say on FB too. "We're pleased to be adopting! Now please refrain from asking any questions unless you know me well enough to call me (but if you really knew me well enough to call, you'd already know we are adopting)." Then there are the contingencies... so should we educate people as to the risks of international adoption? "We're adopting! Fingers crossed for no coups!"
*I'm not actually blogging our real stats here, since that might be forbidden.
We're thinking we'll announce after we get a referral, which under the country we chose is still many months before the baby's arrival. Maybe too many months, in fact. mrohkay told one of his relatives the other day that we were adopting from Africa and that it was probably a year away. The very next day, the relative saw a picture of mrohkay holding my (white) niece captioned "uncle" and she asked if the baby was ours. I can only be grateful our baby won't have that person's genetics!
So what do you think? When and how do we announce this?
