Some women go to great lengths to hide their pregnancies

When you’re in the early stages of pregnancy, and not quite ready to tell the world you’ve got a teeny tiny bub in your (first-time) teeny tiny belly (or your subsequent-times not so teeny tiny belly), you sometimes go to great lengths to hide the fact that you’re pregnant.

And by ‘you’ (and ‘some women’), I of course mean me. But I’m sure that others have similar tales to tell.

Regular readers will know that I’m quite partial to chocolate. Okay, really partial. Okay, I’m addicted. I’m typing this with my right hand because there is a Freddo Frog in my left hand. Well, half a Freddo Frog. The other half is in my mouth. And there are only nine remaining from the packet of 20.

So, I like chocolate. Something anyone who knows me knows. Something my family knows. My friends.

My colleagues.

Just before I became pregnant with Ashleigh, I was involved in a brainstorming session for an internal promotion. The organisation I was working for was launching a new service, and wanted staff to embrace the new service and become advocates for it.

I suggested a promotion centring on the idea of ‘Boosting your savings’. And what goes with ‘Boosting your savings?’

A Boost, of course! Source

I would like to stress that my brainwave had nothing to do with my love of chocolate and everything to do with believing that the promotional product, message and service were perfectly aligned.

And it certainly had nothing, I repeat NOTHING, to do with my plan to order extras ‘just in case’ and eventually eat them all. Nothing at all.

Brainstormer extraordinaire that I am, my idea was approved and actioned. A short time later, the Boosts arrived. We received almost double the number we required. I should have been in heaven.

I was in hell.

Between coming up with the idea and receiving the chocolate, I discovered I was pregnant and morning sickness struck upon me with violent force. In my case, morning sickness was all day non-stop vomiting machine sickness.

But I wasn’t ready to tell anyone. It was very early in the pregnancy, I hadn’t even told family yet, and I’d only recently started this particular job. ‘Fessing up to having a baby on board wasn’t an option.

So I did what I had to do. I pretended to go Boost mad. I hoarded them. I worshipped them. I even, occasionally, when pressed, ate them.

And I posed with them.

Even now, when I’ve made it through morning sickness the second time around and am again embracing chocolate, this photo makes me feel ill. At least posing with them got me out of eating any for a day or two.


To what lengths have you gone in order to hide a pregnancy?