Hey internet, I guess I can clue you in as well. I’m pregnant. I’m 32 and carrying the first grandchild on both sides of the family. I finally announced it, officially, yesterday, because I love Halloween. My husband loves Halloween because it’s an excuse to watch horror movies all month. Not going to lie, I’ve really started to love that tradition of ours too. I had never seen all of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies or any of the Hellraiser movies before meeting him.
I’m sure there’s more, but I’m swamped in projects and – you know – pregnancy brain. That shit is real.
So all of the time we’ve been together, it’s just kind of been understood that we would stage this Aliens Chestburster-style scene with OMG PREGNANT, and if it was twins, both of us dead on a table with the caption OMG TWINS. Alien/Aliens are some of the husband’s favorite movies, ever, and I just really laugh at the basic representation that a tiny monster clawing its way out of a human relates to childbirth.
I’ll let you know if my feelings on the subject change in February.
Lately I’ve just been feeling like that was no longer appropriate. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve known women who’ve lost babies, had stillbirths, complicated pregnancies, or birth stories that included the line “in distress” – so out of respect, I thought we would just nix that idea overall.
Also I’m not really confident in my animation skills to superimpose a baby picture over a movie gif, and we’re keeping the gender a secret until our reveal on Saturday.
So the first idea yesterday was to remain in the aliens theme, but leave out the chestburster imagery and movement –
– although I’m not going to lie, this feeling is starting to become more prominent at 25 weeks – starting to actually see movement reflected in a little mexican jumping bean-esque for the first time in my life is both weird and cool.
Anyway, I suggested the following based on someone else’s idea (Sorry y’all, they beat me to it and are more creative). Husband nixed the idea. It wasn’t gory enough.
Also, I have never been on board with posting sonogram pictures for the world to see. I’ve always thought that was kind of weird – that you’re letting the world see the insides of your lady parts – especially since those 4D sonograms have come along. Don’t get me wrong, that is some amazing technology and wow has it come a long way in the last 30 years. But, man, you don’t have to post everything.
Except this picture. This picture owns. I was really hoping the baby was going to flip us off (my roommate from college has her first doing that, seriously funny).
BUT – a Gig’Em is JUST AS GOOD. Hopefully it’s a 5th generation Aggie 😀
The other idea we threw out was based on “A Nightmare on Elm Street 5”, which we both watched for the first time recently. My initial reaction was – great – let’s base it on the WORST one of the entire series – but, the entire movie is VERY pregnancy based. Everyone thinks it’s a mistake baby made by high schoolers, but then the movie suggests it’s also Freddy Kruegar’s baby, in which case – gross – so we were thinking of the following poster, and imposing our faces split side by side over Freddy’s.
Obviously there were problems with this – I’m not sure how many people have seen or heard of this movie if they weren’t into the franchise, and it would have been difficult to add two faces on top of Freddy’s in Photoshop, especially if husband’s face was on the left side where the ghosts and eyeballs are. Also he doesn’t like his face or name being online. So we threw that out.
As a compromise on the Aliens theme, I drew up the following in Illustrator (oh, did you know this is kind of what I do in my working life? This and websites and logos and sometimes online videos). It was a great compromise because:
- It was kind of adorable
- It was slightly gory
- Definitely Halloween appropriate
- Didn’t include any actual photos of my husband to spread around online.
