“A friend shared my pregnancy news and I don’t know what to do”
Announcing your pregnancy to the world is a hugely exciting moment, so what happens when someone else spills your baby beans?
It began with a nine week scan
A dismayed mum-to-be took to Mumsnet to share her experience of this very thing, revealing that she was expecting twins but that a friend broke the news to the world.
“I’m about 9 weeks pregnant and had an early scan yesterday as husband can’t make the 12 week due to work and we wanted him to see baby first. At the scan we found out it was twins,” she told readers on the forum, explaining she and her husband “are of course extremely excited.”
The excited mum-to-be happened to be at a party the night before she posted her story, and of course, she wasn’t drinking alcohol. Because pregnant.
Next minute …
She knew two of her closest buddies – who were also at the party – would start asking questions about her tee-totalling, so she preempted this by quietly sharing her baby news.
“I did this but made it clear I wasn’t sharing the news as I hadn’t even told my family who were away yesterday,” she says. “I left the party early (exhausted) but woke up this morning to find that one of these ‘close’ friends had shared the news with others.”
To say she was upset by this turn of events would be putting it mildly.
“I’m absolutely furious,” the mum-to-be writes, “and really just want to cut this friend out of my life now. It clearly isn’t her news to share and she did so as soon as I left, she has no excuses and talked about me for the rest of the night.”
What now?
She explains that she and the secret-spiller have been friends since they were tiny and that they’d kept each other’s first pregnancy secrets.
“She has a party this weekend for her birthday and I don’t want to attend,” the mum writes before asking how she should move forward from what she sees as a betrayal.
Some had experienced similar and advised others to tread carefully with secrets:
“This happened to me, my best friend had told people after I left a party, woke up to lots of ‘congratulations’ messages and I’d not even told my grandparents yet. She was very remorseful, blamed it on having a few too many wines but to this day I’ve never fully got my trust back in her and that was over 5 years ago.
I think the best thing to do is just be mindful of who you’re sharing things with (which is a shame, I know).”
“No wonder you’re angry”
Some were as angry as the mum-to-be herself:
“That’s awful, no wonder you’re angry. It’s done now so I suppose all you can do is decide if you still want her as a friend. You need to tell her how angry you are and I certainly wouldn’t be trusting her with any more secrets.”
But others thought that this mum should have been a little more careful about when and where she confided in her friends:
“The thing is, as soon as you share a secret, you lose control of the secret. And while I can understand why you are upset, you did choose to tell 2 people at a party, presumably they were drinking? Maybe they were just excited and your news and paired with being drunk, mentioned it to someone else. Is this really worth losing a lifelong friendship over?”
It’s a great question, and it probably depends on the intention behind the secret-spilling. If it was accidental tipsy sharing of gorgeous news, friendship is likely to remain intact. But if it was an attempt to usurp the mum-to-be’s excitement? That’s another kettle of fish.
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