a secret all our own
Having a baby is somewhat like graduating high school or completing basic training in the military. Hundreds of thousands, millions, billions of people have done it before us and the same number plus will be doing it long after I've been laid to rest and forgotten. It is one of those things about which a big deal gets made when there does not seem (to me) to be a big deal to begin.
The first thing we needed to decide was whether or not we were going to tell anyone.
One of Nat's compelling reasons for not delaying children any longer was to have children while they could still know her mother, LaRayne. Nat came along twelve years after her closest sibling and I'm continually surprised when I'm reminded LaRayne has entered her seventies -- she neither looks nor acts like seventy anything to me. If it were possible to tell LaRayne and then to keep it a secret from the rest of the world, I think that I would have had no reservations with Nat telling her mom. As things are, telling LaRayne (or anyone else in her family) is the same as telling everyone in her family.
As I contemplated the potential expansion to our family between the EPT test and the blood work, I became enamored of the idea of having a secret that was Nat's and mine alone. At some point, reality intervenes and prevents you from keeping this type of secret, but I thought it would be fun as long as it lasted. As LaRayne is the only of our parental figures on whom we feel like we can rely, I was torn between telling her and keeping our secret. I finally left it up to Nat, with my marginal preference leaning towards the secret option.
For the present, it is our secret.