It’s Friday again, and this week I decided to skip ahead and embarrass myself with the story of how the 18-year-old me told my family they were going to have another grandchild.

I had every intention of inviting my mother out to eat at the hotel I worked at to tell her. At first, I just got too busy taking every shift my bosses would let me take in every part of the hotel to make money that I knew I’d need for my bundle of joy. Then it was getting too late and I figured by avoiding it this long, I would’ve made the situation worse for us. Not only would I have shamed them from getting in that position to begin with, I hid it from them for so long. I knew I had to do it, but we were all young and stupid once.

Originally my first son’s due date was on Christmas Day. Soon they realized he was a month older than they thought and gave him the due date of November 29th, the day after Thanksgiving that year. In my gut, and I told everyone, that my son was destined to be born on a holiday. I knew he’d be that “look at me I’m here” personality. (I’d like to say, 10 years later he still is that personality.) I didn’t think women had instincts that were right about that, so I agreed to Thanksgiving dinner with my family and since my huge stomach couldn’t be hid at that point, I realized I could just say “don’t hate me, it’s Thanksgiving” and be done with it. Of course, that’s never how things work out.

At 4am Thanksgiving morning, contractions came 5 minutes apart for 2 hrs. After being examined I wasn’t ready and I just walked around, running up and down stairs before realizing I had to make the call. Shortly after something I won’t mention happened, but a sign you’re about to pop a kid out, I called my parents and while the conversation does sound like something out of a sitcom, I assure you it’s 100% true. Everyone still laughs at me for it, but I’m me.

“Mom, I’m pregnant, I won’t make it to dinner.”

“Well we knew this would happen, just come by and we’ll talk about it.”

“No, mom…. I can’t, I need to go to the hospital. He’s coming.” I informed her where and went off to face the culmination of these last 40 weeks happen.

It wasn’t the blow out I expected. I realized I was stupid in not just saying something sooner, and my mother held my hand when my first-born son came into the world. Aside from my brother considering killing my son’s father, nothing eventful happened. 1  hour after the phone call, there was a new child in the world unaware of anything that happened before that point in time. Thankfully, we all realized that nothing before that really mattered. Everyone was happy, and while my family still never let’s me forget my stupidity, I think they let it slide now that my son is running around amusing them. Plus, I did tell them pretty much as soon as I found out I was expecting again. Maybe that gave me brownie points.

I don’t regret it. He made me learn a lot even before he could speak. I learned that I wasn’t the settling sort, and did everything I could to make him proud. I didn’t want him growing up in a studio apartment eating rice and whatever food I could get from the state. I wanted him to be proud. Next week, my epiphany and how my life changed from there.