Laurie has been really excited to tell Ebony about the pregnancy right from the start. I was a little more reserved, just because of the risk of miscarriage. I can’t imagine how heartbreaking it must be to have to tell your child something like that. In the end though, mostly because I was meant to be going for cocktails with my family to celebrate my sister’s birthday, we decided we would sort of have to start telling people early.
On Saturday morning, Ebony was up early, me and Laurie were still trying to catch a little bit of extra sleep. This happens every morning, we are terrible parents. She’d been downstairs drawing a picture of her family and then brought it up to show us. Laurie had a giant face, I had a lot of hair (mostly on my chin), Ebony had lots of hair (totally unrealistic) and our cat, Bear, had four legs and two arms. She brought it up to show us and explained who everyone was.
It seemed like as good a moment as any, so I told her there was a baby in my tummy. I can’t really explain the expression on her face but she looked close to crying tears of joy. She had a huge smile and kept asking, “Is there really? You’re not joking?” She just looked so happy, it was lovely. She wanted to see my tummy, and I explained that the baby was really really small at the moment but that it would grow lots before being born. Ebony said, “Yeah, and your tummy will get bigger and bigger, and then the baby will blurp out of your vagina!” I’m not sure that blurp is the scientific term, certainly it’s not one I’ve come across during my years as a pregnancy writer, but I actually quite like it.
She told me about how it could be a boy or girl depending on who it’s sat next to (the Usborne book we found in the charity shop may have confused her a little bit), and then exclaimed, “Oooh, I wonder what I’m going to call it!” Apparently, the name Ebony is high on her list, followed closely by Sarah. I’m trying to gently break it to her before August that there’s no way in hell I’m letting a four year old name my baby.
She was so excited when we told her, and she’s told a couple of her friends since then, as well as announcing it to my family at my sister’s birthday dinner. We’re trying not to talk about it too much, so are leaving it to her to bring it up. She’s been talking about it a lot though, always telling me things she’ll probably do when she’s a big sister. She will be teaching the baby lots of things, apparently, like how to do cartwheels, so that’s something she needs to learn to do before the baby arrives.
Today is her last day at nursery before Christmas, and after her bath yesterday she said, “I’m excited about the holidays because it will just be daddy, you, me and the baby all the time!”
