The conventional wisdom states that you shouldn’t tell anyone about a pregnancy (aside from an internet full of strangers, of course) until around the time the first trimester is over. Specific timings seem to vary a bit – some say 12 weeks, some say after the 12 week scan, some say 13 – but generally, it seems to be some variant of between when the placenta has kicked in and before it’s bleeding obvious.

It’s taken me a while to work out exactly why this might be – but my recent experience has produced several hypotheses:

1. For everyone else’s comfort. Even for parent who is pretty open and honest about their health, and has no qualms about sharing gory details, it’s pretty disconcerting to have a casual acquaintance say they were pregnant and now they aren’t anymore. The whole likelihood of miscarriage thing seems to play into it pretty strongly.

2. To give the mother as long as possible before people start treating her like a child again. I actually had someone physically snatch a Coke Zero from my hand (bearing in mind I’d cleared this one small nod to my former life with my doctor) and tried to confiscate the anti-morning sickness medicine prescribed by my OBGYN when she found out I was pregnant. Cuz, you know, I had a lobotomy as well as getting impregnated, and can no longer make a basic risk assessment for myself.

3. To give the parents time to buy (and assemble) extra furniture to store the huge volumes of second-hand baby paraphernalia that will be thrust upon them by generous relatives when they find out. We now have a dresser full of extremely good quality second hand baby clothes thanks to my unbelievably kind sister in law. (I’m actually not being sarcastic in the slightest – it’s freaking awesome as it’s one less thing I now have to worry about!)

4. So that the expectant mum can tell people without having to run to the toilet and vomit in the middle of the sentence. In my case, this is purely theoretical, as (lucky me) it looks like I’m one of those women whose morning sickness extends beyond the first trimester.

What do you think?