The Importance of Being Honest,

I would say I'm sorry about the play on words for the title, but I'm not because I love things like that. 

Since the start of this pregnancy, one of the things I have really tried to do is be honest, with myself, with my partner and with family and friends around me. That might make it sound like my general approach is deception, which it's not, but I know a lot of people struggle with the instruction or suggestion of not telling people outside of your immediate circle until you are twelve weeks pregnant. It's a balance of risk thing and the first trimester is considered the riskiest for miscarriage because losses happen at that stage for seemingly no reason, and very often it's difficult or impossible to know why. I've known people who've had recurrent miscarriages and it's both horrific to experience but also to not have answers of why this happened, particularly when the process of trying to get pregnant has not been easy.

We didn't really talk to anyone about the fact we were trying, partly because it is a bit of a strange conversation to have, but also because we didn't feel the need to invite outside commentary of whether it was too soon, or anything like that, but when we actually got pregnant, we shared the news with our parents very early on. I think can't remember if we told my partners close friends before or after we got engaged, but it was a decision we made because we saw them regularly to go out for food and an activity, and I was concerned that they wouldn't understand my increasing fussiness around food or might get a bit annoyed by it, so it was easier to say, hey guys, I'm struggling around food because I'm pregnant and morning sickness sucks.

We've shared with friends and family the highs and lows of buying the new house and going through this process whilst also being pregnant, how stressful it's been, how frustrating it's been, but also how having the baby made us more sure we chose the right house. Even before we knew that he was a boy we knew that the ability to play in the garden, to have the wild animals around and to hopefully be getting some birds again in a couple of years (maybe chickens, probably ducks, maybe geese) and raising our child to understand where their food comes from and things about eco systems and looking after the land and the trees and the river, all of those things were important to us as people and as parents so this really was the house and the dream if it could just all come together.

When we found out we were pregnant, there was no question around whether we were having a gender reveal (it was a no!) but we wanted to share that we were having a boy, because although we didn't want to have a big party to reveal it, we didn't see a reason to hide it from anyone, because we had the certainty that he was a boy. (Granted, at my first growth scan I had a bit of anxiety about that, but they were soon able to set that right!) I should point out that I hate that they're called gender reveals because it's not gender, it's the baby's sex, so I guess I should say we know he's going to be born with a penis as opposed to we know he's a boy.

The only thing we've not shared with anyone really, or not many people, has been his name, and that's for a couple of reasons. 

Firstly, I don't want to hear what people have to say about it. I know most people say nice things or try to, but there's a lot of people who have a lot of opinions about names, whether they're unique names, classic names, Irish names or names spelt in the Irish way, or whatever. I am one of those people, and I'm glad that most of the time I see name announcements on Facebook because I am not good at controlling my facial expressions. At the end of the day, I can think what I want about people's name for their child and they can think what they like about my son's name, but it doesn't mean I want to hear it, and generally people will be more vocal before the birth because they see it as they have time to change your mind.

Secondly, I reserve the right to change my mind, or should I say, we reserve the right to change our minds. We've discussed his name many times, and we check in with each other that we're both still happy with what we've picked, and we're still muddling through trying to choose the right middle name, but when he comes out, it's possible that we look at him and go, oh, no, that's not right at all, or we think, he looks like a _____ instead of what we've chosen. I don't want to be stuck in a situation where we've told a lot of people the name, and then when he's here they're like, oh little X_____, and we're like, oh no, we actually decided to call him Y_____.

Lastly, and this is sort of connected to number two, but also sort of not... I don't really want things that are personalised to say X____ on them. Part of that is because we might want to change our minds, you never know, but another part of it is that babies are in things for such short spaces of time, they're growing and developing so fast that most things are going to be lasting them weeks or months, not years and whilst some of those items are going to be sentimental, we don't have the space to keep a load of items just because they have his name on them, and I would much rather either store them to be used for future siblings or pass them on to another parent who can make use of them, both of which can be slightly ruined by having a name or an initial marked or sewn in. It's personal preference, but I prefer things to be plainer, and some of the things we've chosen ourselves have been deliberately unisex, partly because we didn't know he was a he and partly because we know that we intend to have another one at some stage, and we don't know until that happens who or what they are going to be.

Obviously, there are risks with whether or not you share things or how much you share as you go along. Losses happen and then people have to go back and say, loss has happened, and that can be really hard to share. Errors can happen, so the girl or boy you celebrated and planned for can turn out to be the opposite at birth, and then it's explaining to people that whilst you thought you were having something, reality had a different thought, and people can change their minds about names for all sorts of reasons, whether it be positive or negative experiences with a person of that name, or someone close to you choosing the same or similar, but we all have to make our own choices based on what we're comfortable with, and sometimes we just need to accept that that might be something different than what we thought it might be. 

Antisocial Media,

 Truth time: I don't remember if I wrote about why I turned my Instagram private, so I'm going to do that here and if I'm repeating myself, well shit, it happens and I'm sure we can all get over it. 

As a volunteer with [I'm not actually going to put the name of the organisation because they would not thank me for swearing] I work with youngsters and the age range we as an organisation work with is vast. I haven't worked across the full span of the age range, but I'm only short by two years and that's youngsters so small I'm not sure I wouldn't trip over them. As these lovely young people grow up, they get social media accounts and they sometimes like to find stuff out about the people they interact with - it's fine, we all do it - but there are photos on my Instagram of university nights out, utter rubbish I posted years ago and never deleted because who scrolls back that far anyway (trust me, they do) and there are photos of me at Rocky Horror Picture Show. It is a photo I'm proud of, do not get me wrong, but it's not something I would share with them, it's not an outfit I would even consider wearing around them and the God's honest truth is I forgot it was there until someone said, oh, they found your Instagram and were sharing screenshots between themselves of different photos on there. And it was like alarm bells going off in my head, and the only thing I could think to do was shut it straight onto private mode. 

In some ways, getting rid of my public profile of Instagram was actually really positive, because I didn't feel the need to post on there, and I wasn't concerned about the idea of 'if you want to be a writer you're going to have to get better at promoting your own books' and I didn't have to think about content production or all of those things that I was starting to think, hey, if you actually want to do this writing thing as more than just a venting to yourself thing, or just a written version of a Sims game, effectively, you're going to have to get better (not even better, get less shit at) using social media. I know the theory of it, but I'm not good at consistency, I don't want to spend hours on it because it's not the bit I'm good at or that I like doing and honestly, although I knew it was going to affect things like readership to the blog I had already kind of fallen out with writing and started the mental health episode that I had (though it was only bubbling under the surface at that stage). 

At present, I have a Facebook page I rarely use, I use my Twitter (and hate it), glance at my Blue Sky (not yet loving it) and that's about it. I had to learn how to embed links into stories on Facebook - post it from Instagram - so that I could get the blog out to my friends lists and hope that made some impact (and it clearly worked, though I'm sure the Google Analytics for the blog are broken given that it recorded a ludicrous number of views from Singapore over a few days this year (though having looked at it, I originally thought it was 2 days, and then it turned out it was over quite a few more days than that, so who knows?) I'm not necessarily thinking I want to try and build the readership of this blog massively, because that would be insane pressure to actually consistently write something worth reading, but I know I will have to go back to having more of a public social media presence, however uncomfortable that might feel, if I'm going to think about publishing anything this year, and I would like that to be the plan, but will have to see how I get on. 

I go through fits and starts of using stories, but I think they're going to have to be a bit more of a feature of my life so that I can actually put the links to these blogs out, and then hopefully, eventually, announce a date for the Fairies sequel and a couple of other things I have been working on, but I will be honest, it's doubtful if either of them will make an appearance this year, let alone both.