It has been so fun to be pregnant! No, really. I mean, I really hate not being in control of my own body, but I have felt awesome the entire time! My husband and I have been trying to make this baby for two and a half years and we have had a blast telling all of our friends and family the great news. I was most looking forward to sharing the news with my family at school. Telling my teacher friends has been really easy, but telling my kids has been a little more challenging. I told my closest friends when I was almost 12 weeks, but I waited and told my kiddos when I was 16 weeks. (Wasn’t ‘facebook official’ until 18 weeks) I wanted to share my news with the kids I love as soon as I found out! That was a secret keeping challenge!
Sharing a secret like this is hard when you teach middle school. I have 64 students but I see them in 7 separate hours. Since I teach Language Arts and we journal, this was the journal prompt for that day!
The journal entries for that day were HILARIOUS! They were so excited! But, then they had to contain their excitement for the rest of the day because they didn’t want to spoil the secret for the rest of the middle school students. They are good secret keepers. We got through the whole school day without one ruined surprise!
Every day after this was spent with, “Is it a boy or a girl? When will you know? Are you going to find out?”. At the time, I could only answer one of those questions. Yes, we were going to find out. Say what you want, but I am way too Type A to wait until delivery to find out the gender. Since 20 weeks landed us right in the middle of Christmas Vacation, I opted to wait until the first week of January to have “The Ultrasound”.
Fast Forward through an entire week of ABSOLUTELY OBNOXIOUS questioning from 64 kids! They even resorted to making cakes and trying to bribe the answer from me! My kids are animals.
But, I did tell them and of course they had to work for it a little bit. Here’s the story:
“Last week at inservice, Mr. Superintendent and Mrs. Principal decided that we need to start looking at ways to strengthen our spelling skills in grades 3-8. So, in order to do this, we needed to gather some baseline data in order to know where to begin. We are going to have a spelling “test” of 15 words that range from 3rd grade to 8th grade. This won’t be graded but it’s important that you do your very best so that we have a better idea of what we need to teach you. Ok, number your page 1-15. The first word is…”
The spelling test went on all the way through 15 words.
“Now, before I come around and pick this up, please go back and circle the word that you wrote for #9.”
*insert confused looks*
“What if I told you that story about needing information for teaching spelling was just a story and that I am actually telling you the gender of this baby?”
*insert awesome reactions of happiness and ‘what the heck did you just make us do, Ms. Story?*
Its a girl!
I think that overall, all 64 of my kids were very happy with the news. The only exception being a group of boys who I think were genuinely disappointed. They REALLY wanted a football player in the worst way.
Ray and I are so thankful and blessed to be on the path to parenthood and want to thank all of our friends and family for continuing to be so supportive and praying for us! God is good! ❤
Story Time 