Keeping Up the Charade

Today I got to tell a few more close relatives – Laurie and Jeff and Laurie and Shelly’s parents, my aunt and uncle – our exciting news. It was great to see all their reactions (including Laurie’s insistence that she’s known for weeks because she remembered that we get our periods at the same time and I didn’t say anything about being disappointed to get mine this month). It was also really nice to spend the afternoon with a whole room full of people who knew about the biggest thing going on in our lives right now.

Tonight, though, will be the opposite. One of the old gang is having a party tonight, and a lot of our friends that I always like seeing but who don’t get together in a big group too much anymore these days will be there. The challenge is that the theme of the party is drinking games — all those favorites we used to play back in the day like asshole, kings, canoe racing. It’s one thing to subtly hide that you’re not drinking at a casual gathering where everyone is wandering from conversation to conversation (easy enough to pour a few “drinks” of beer out every so often). But when everyone’s sitting around a table watching you pound that beer, it’s a different story.

My first strategy was that I could empty a beer bottle and fill it with water. But they’re getting a keg and might wonder why I have bottles. Also, I hate to buy a six pack and just dump it! I still could go with that plan, though, and just say I wanted different beer than they’re having in the keg. Another obvious choice is to drink club soda and say it’s a vodka tonic or something, but I usually do beer with this crowd so it seems like that would be obvious. Plus if I’m pounding those and not getting drunk, that will be suspicious.

Of course there’s the excuse that I’m the DD, but in that situation I’d probably be able to have a beer or two and still drive home hours later, so not having a drop again looks suspicious. The option I’ll probably go with is some combination of being the driver and saying I’m getting over a cold and still on antibiotics. The other problem is that I’m so tired today, I’m not sure how long we’ll stay anyway. It’s too bad because I know in normal times I’d really be looking forward to tonight. But I don’t mean that to sound like a complaint – I’ll gladly take this situation! I’m just looking forward to a month from now when we can really spread the word and enjoy being pregnant no matter who we’re around. I’m just so bad at keeping secrets!

It’s All About the Cocktails

So it seems to me that if you’re not regularly a drinker at all or if you don’t often have occasions where you’re expected to drink socially, then hiding a pregnancy would be no big deal if you weren’t feeling a ton of symptoms. But for the rest of us, it seems like every few days there comes a situation where it seems awkward and obvious to be the only one not having a drink.

Tonight Andy and I are meeting up with some old friends of his who he hasn’t seen in ages and recently reconnected with on Facebook, of all things. I like the idea of meeting some new people, especially old friends of his, but I know that if it were the other way around and we were meeting a couple and she wasn’t drinking, I’d probably at least wonder if she was pregnant.

Now, these are people we won’t likely be seeing a ton of in the near future and who don’t really talk regularly to any of our other friends, so it really doesn’t matter what they think. But we’re likely to run into all sorts of these situations between now and Christmas, when we plan to tell our friends and extended families.

And again, the oddity of me not drinking will keep coming up at work events. For example, I was invited to a beer-and-chocolate pairing event that’s coming up that Anheuser-Busch is holding at one of these chocolate boutiques that seem to be cropping up everywhere. If my boss wants me to go and schmooze, I’ll have to say I can’t make it and see if one of the other girls can do it instead, because who goes to that kind of thing and doesn’t try the beer and chocolate? Then one of my PR contacts who recently moved here from LA invited me for drinks so we could finally meet in person, but wouldn’t it be weird to meet for drinks and have a club soda?

I’m not really complaining; I don’t mean it to sound that way. I just think it’s interesting and definitely challenging. I know it’s something everyone goes through, and they all seem to figure it out just fine. It’s one of the best of all possible problems to have, after all