The Big Reveal Dinner

Saturday, September 4th we had planned a traditional swedish crayfish party at my parents' cabin by the sea and invited my closest family. Our ulterior motive to eating lots of red shellfish, drinking a few schnapps and singing some obnoxious drinking songs, was of course to reveal our "little" secret.

As I struggled to decide what to wear Diver Dude kept laughing and pointing out how obvious my bump was becoming and that my family would know as soon as they saw me. After three or four changes I decided on an outfit including a big colorful scarf to distract and hide the bump and went inside to help Mamma with the finishing touches to the meal. She looked at me, smiled, rubbed my belly and said "good try Princess".

Around five they started arriving. Cousin Emil, his partner and their twin boys, cousin Ida with partner and two boys, my uncle Anton and his partner, and finally my Sister, Mr Sister and Nephew. The cabin was a warm chaos of hugs, happy voices and laughter. I was almost immediately cornered by Cousin Emil's partner who asked me with a wink if we were home for something other than just family time and before I had a chance to answer continued telling me a story about a friend of hers who switched fertility clinics and got pregnant with twins. I caught a few glances aimed at my mid-section but thankfully nobody dared to ask or comment about my mysterious one-point weight gain.

Everybody arrived hungry and we all sat down around the table before I had another chance to put a foot in my mouth. Diver Dude tapped his glass to get everyone's attention, cleared his voice and began saying the words we had rehearsed earlier: "First of all I'd like to say how happy we are that you all could make it here tonight, so I don't have to drink all the schnapps by myself. I think you all know the reason for us to come home this time was to do our second round of IVF. But when we talked to the doctor she told us that Circus Princess is not allowed to take the medication." Here he paused and we both looked around the room at the rows of raised eyebrows and open mouths before he continued: "And the reason for that is..." I stood up, lifted up my shirt to reveal the words Baby Bump embroidered on my maternity jeans, and said: "I'm already pregnant."

The noise on the porch drowned out the sound of the crashing waves. The symphony of laughter and words like what?, how? and when? made my heart so full of joy and gratitude I could hardly breathe. We were attacked with swarms of hugs as we tried to tell the story of our miracle, how we don't have any answers to how it happened, that we're still completely overwhelmed with happiness and that we just hope everything will turn out OK.

When everybody had settled and the noise died down a little my Sister quietly stood up and said: "Well, I might as well take this opportunity to tell you that we're expecting a baby too". This was followed by a second wave of loud congratulations and big hugs before we could finally dig in to our shellfish feast. And let me tell you, crayfish has never tasted so good.