Strouse House Baby Series Kickoff & Announcing | Strouse House Baby
Today we start a new Tuesday series titled Strouse House Baby where we plan to blog about the joys, craziness, and sometimes even the tough parts of pregnancy. In case you missed it, we announced last week that our little "third shooter" will be arriving next April!
Keeping secrets is hard and keeping the secret of your first pregnancy from your friends and family is like torture. We'd been trying to get pregnant for a few months so there was no magical surprise pregnancy test reveal in this story. When that little thing said "pregnant" we both stared at each other and said out loud, "could this be right?!". We scheduled a doctor's appointment for a few weeks later and spent the next days dodging our friends and family's requests to hang out at all costs. Brad is a fan of good beer and Allie enjoys a nice glass of red wine, so we knew the jig would be up if Allie was ordering water at things like, "Sips N Strokes" or sipping ginger ale at ladies night. We used every excuse in the book like "I have to work late", "We have to pack for our trip", or "Too busy with photo work". Sorry friends/family! We love you, but you know us too well!!
We arrived at the doctor's office and within a few minutes she told us "there's definitely a baby in there!". We laughed nervously and she explained what we were looking at. What looked like a kidney bean to us, was a growing baby with a head, a butt, a tail, and an arm nub! We immediately fell in love and were so proud of that arm nub sprouting peanut. The next day we left for our Europe vacation with the ultrasound photo tucked safely in our luggage.
Throughout OUR EUROPE TRIP we took selfies, Allie/Brad/SHB (STROUSE HOUSE BABY), with the photo in front of monuments like Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace.
We had planned on calling our parents from Ireland to tell them the good news, but our hotel had horrible wifi and we could barely get a text out. We had planned in advance to break the news on Grandparents Day, which would be the day we came home, but knew it would be a late night for our parents because of our crazy travel schedule. As soon as we landed we texted Allie's parents to say "We have a present from our trip we want to drop off" and Brad's parents "Can you all stay up a bit longer? We want to check in and tell you about our trip". Luckily, both agreed to wait up...
We arrived at Allie's parent's house and went into a rehearsed spiel, "We don't have a physical present from Europe, but we did want to wish you a happy Grandparent's Day!" while handing them the ultrasound. Allie's Dad immediately lit up with happiness and a few moments later Allie's mom said "Oh Yay!" and gave us a big hug. After filling them in on the morning sickness details and the "joys" of traveling when newly pregnant, we headed up stairs to Facetime with Brad's parents. They were sitting side by side on the couch and after the normal introductory questions like "How was the trip", we launched into our "We wanted to call tonight because it's a very special day and we wanted to make sure to wish you a Happy Grandparents Day!" while holding up the picture to the camera. Brad's Dad quickly got it and looked at Brad's stunned and confused mom to clue her in. They were so happy and overwhelmed with more big news in the Strouse house (Brad's brother had just proposed to his girlfriend a few days earlier).
We Facetimed both of our brothers & (soon-to-be and present) sister-in-kaws to let them know they should prepare to take on the title of Uncle & Aunt. Allie's brother was asleep and groggily answered our call. When we told him the good news he immediately perked up and let us know how extremely excited he and his wife were! Brad's brother was hanging with his bride-to-be and when we filled him in he immediately started running around, jumping up and down, and yelling "I'm going to be an uncle!". He and his fiance immediately started making plans for our little "nugget" (ahem, Strouse House Baby).
We systematically started wishing our grandparents a late "Great Grandparents day" and truly enjoyed the varied reactions. There were tears, surprised expressions, and lots of happiness. It was a bit of a relief to have our families in the know, but always a challenge asking people in our modern society to keep things off of social media. Everyone was obedient and no one leaked our secret before the big announcement last week!
Stay tuned next week for our thoughts on traveling internationally in the early stages of pregnancy. See you then!
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