By the time I was pregnant for the third time, not only were we afraid to celebrate, but I think our family and friends were, too. Nobody really knew if they were "allowed". We started out our third pregnancy with a subchorionic hemorrhage (basically, I bled at the beginning of my pregnancy - no welcome sign after having two miscarriages for sure!) and then during the anatomy scan we discovered a choroid plexus cyst on baby's brain (which usually is nothing and goes away, but again, really not welcome news after two miscarriages). There was no rest in nerves for us throughout the whole pregnancy except our ultimate hope in the faithfulness and goodness of God regardless of circumstances.
Meanwhile, I have a wonderful friend from college who was pregnant at the same time and due just a couple weeks after I was. It was so different reading her blog documenting her story. When she found out she was pregnant she made a special and fun way to tell her husband, and then they had a special way to tell their family and friends. Their whole journey was filled with excitement. They had a gender reveal party and a bunch of other fun things that we never rejoiced in due to caution and fear. It was like witnessing an alternate reality!
Nine months passed, and were blessed to welcome my beloved daughter into the world, hold her in our arms, and squish her. Sleepless nights only made me rejoice - I was never sure I would ever have a chance at them! Fast forward a little bit, and we are now expecting a second little one to join our family! We told our our families at Thanksgiving, and they were excited but asked us to let them know when they were really allowed to get excited. That sort of made me sad. In our fear while pregnant with my daughter, we missed out on a lot of rejoicing. I do not want to make that mistake again. Even if I never get to hold this child in my arms, I want to make sure I have fully rejoiced over every minute I spend with my child in my womb. It is such a blessing, honor, and joy!
So because of that, we decided to celebrate with a little gender reveal party for our families - that way we could all rejoice together. I always have these crazy ideas and schemes but am rarely successful at pulling them off. This was no exception, haha. I barely have any pictures, I was still making food after our families had arrived, we didn't even decide exactly how we were going to "reveal" until that morning, we didn't get to play the games I wanted to play, I didn't finish decorating, etc. But that's my style - our families are used to it, hehe. Oh well! So I'll share with you what we did accomplish and what we didn't (in case you are better at execution and want to use any of my incomplete ideas). :)
THE SETUP:
- Color theme: silver/grey, white, & lime green
- Actual Decor: homemade tissue paper pom poms (tutorial to be posted on the blog soon), lime green table cloth, white serving platters, fun napkins with little animals on them
- Non-Executed (but planned) Decor: paper circle garland, paper bunting, sonogram picture bunting, food labels (I can post how tos on the blog in the future for these as well)
- Actual Special Touches: I bought a 99cent box of straws at Target and then cut out a bunch of lips and mustaches, hole punched the lips and mustaches in the middle, and set them on the table to represent people's guesses! I also made a little paper in the theme colors where people would sign their names in the boy column or girl column for baby's memory album later.
THE MENU (lunch party):
- Chicken salad sandwiches (recipe to be posted soon)
- Cucumber sandwiches (recipe to be posted soon)
- Deviled eggs (recipe to be posted soon)
- Ruffles and Ranch dip
- Fruit platter
- White cake with strawberry preserves and buttercream frosting (recipe to be posted soon) in the color typically tied with baby's gender
- Cake ball party favors (recipe to be posted soon - also, I totally forgot to hand these out... sigh) with the cake the color typically tied with baby's gender
- Frozen sorbet (recipe to be posted soon) in the color typically tied with baby's gender
- Water (meant to be citrus water, but I ran out of time)
- Sweet tea (recipe to be posted soon)
OTHER (non-executed... again, sigh) IDEAS:
- I had wanted to have a pregnancy craving/habit printout game where the guests would guess whether this pregnancy made me crave salty or sweet, crave healthy or non-healthy foods, sleep a ton or have total insomnia, etc. Had this been executed, I would have had a small prize for the winner or perhaps we would have let this person go in the other room and eat their cake ball party favors early to know the gender just before everyone else found out!
- I also had hope to do a little name suggestion idea I saw online somewhere (probably pinterest) where guests suggest boy and girl names - not because we were necessarily looking for name suggestions from others, but I hear the results are often fun and hilarious!
THE REVEAL:
- We wanted it to be fun for our daughter, so we put helium balloons in the color usually tied to the gender of the baby in a giant box along with little tissue paper pom poms in that color and a pic of the sonogram for proof! Again, if I were good at execution, the box would have been decorated all fun. But alas, I'm just not that put together, and I'm quite okay with that. :D
Hope my story, executed ideas, and non-executed ideas have inspired you to rejoice in the moments at hand! Here's a quick story board of about the only pics I managed to snap that day during the actual reveal and a family shot:
...and just for fun. Here's a pic of my brother sporting one of the paper mustaches I made at our little nerd style after party with him, my sister-in-law, and niece. I think it becomes him very well, haha! The board game we were playing is Citadels.
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