How did you hide your pregnancy until you were ready to tell?

Hello everyone,

I am trying to think of a good way to hide my very new (6 weeks) pregnancy from inquisitive colleagues. I've had to take several days off work this week and have told people that I have had a mysterious "stomach bug". Also, last time I went out with friends and didn't drink (a dead give away!) I used the excuse of period pain, but I can't maintain these excuses for 6 more weeks! Already at work apparently there are jokes that I am pg, but I want to maintain my privacy for a bit longer. I really don't want to lie to anyone, but I will if I have to, and of course I will come clean when the time comes to tell. At this stage I'm not trying to cover a baby bulge, just to cover up some symptoms and absence from work.
Has anyone got any good excuses or ideas for keeping this secret?

Thank you!
C

Well, there is a really good gastro bug going around at the moment that makes you feel yuk so hopefully some at work will get it and 'end of story' they will stop asking questions.
I had a similar thing and had to take days off work, I just said I was unwell and going to see the Dr in a week for tests. The tests 'results' took awhile to come back so they stopped asking questions.
Not much you can do as the more you say 'no' the more they don't believe you
All the best on the rest of your pregnancy.

On a health kick, doing a new 6 week challenge, a detox program, can't have alcohol, have to eat healthy, and drink lots of water etc. You could say it's a Belated New Years resolution??

TMI but depending on whoyou have to tell at work, you could say part of the detox diet makes you unwell as it cleasnes your system, so you have random days where you can't be at work due to vomitting/runs??
HTH

I tried a similar scenario when preg with DS, but they picked something was up with me at 6 weeks, I was running off to vomit every 5 mins! Dead giveaway for me in an office of girls!

I was so thankful that my morning sickness was generally gone by the time I started work at 9am! I did take a couple of days off, but not enough to make anyone suspicious, although I had quite a few doctor's appointments I went to in a fairly short period of time and my supervisor asked me if everything was ok...I was going to tell her that day I was pg anyway, but she (and my co-workers) thought something was horribly wrong with me health-wise!

I "hid" it from pretty much everyone else at work until about a month/6 weeks ago, it's only in the last few weeks that my tummy has popped out, so until then apart from a couple of very observant ladies, no one had any idea. They were all so surprised to find out I'm pg, and that I'm 6 months! LOL

Vitamin B in the mornings (I use vegemite on toast or saladas) for the ickies. Then my excuse for not drinking is usually "I hate hangovers - and no, I fail at stopping myself".

I told my boss and my assistant because it will possibly affect them (me needing time off work/being unwell etc). Thankfully I haven't had any morning sickness, but have been tired a lot, and while I'm probably not officially showing, my shape has changed. I feel like I'm just lazy and fat because nobody knows the reason (altho there is a rumour going around). Because we wear a uniform I can't get away with wearing belly hiding clothes. I don't know how to go about hiding it. I can't wait to be able to tell people, just so they understand what's going on. 4.5 weeks to go.

I'm a teacher and unfortunately my attempts not to tell anyone failled miserably due to thefact that I had to throw up all day in the staff toilets (adjacent to the lunch room) and I am not a quite vomiter. Added to this was the fact that I had to tell my principal and teaching partner so they could cover my class if I had to leave in a hurry. After the second time someone walked in on me being sick the word was out but I just explained that it was very early and that I would appreciate them keeping quite until we get to 12wks and everyone was very understanding. We "announced" the pg at 12 wks to the staff and community.

I usually have a pretty good baby radar so am one of those pesky workmates who is hard to hide things from. I knew at 8 weeks when a girl I worked with was preggas - she'd had a miscarriage the first time round so when she started going to the loo all the time I knew she was checking - and the look of horror and about face she did one day when the girl was cleaning the chook cooking oven with the most deadly oven spray - that gave it away totally.


So, some people are just very hard to keep things from no matter how hard you try -woman especially - most men probably wouldn't notice if you had a 100cm belly sticking out!

Thanks to everyone for sharing their stories and advice.

Hopefully colleagues will respect my privacy enough to not ask me directly about being pg so there's no need to make up excuses. I also can't wait for the 12 wk mark, it's going to be such a relief to be able to tell everyone!

Best of luck to all for happy and healthy pregnancies!

While some people are good at picking up on these things others are blissfully unaware.

The girl in the office next to me is 19wks preg, no one has noticed anything as far as i know. Infact i didn't either. She wasn't sick so that helped and when she had appt etc I just assumed she was out visiting clients etc.

It usually helps to tell one person i.e. your supierior so they know why you are out/away. I have recently had a lot of time off due to my mum breaking her hip. Many of these are long lunch to take her to appts etc. When we moved dh & i had lots of appts at the new house cause we had phone issues etc. While they sound suss to you appts are part of life and people don't take too much notice if you just say i have to do x.

Other than the person i told no one knew i was preg and it was over the christmas period as well. I attended the christmas party and other functions. Not to mention i suddenly had the urge to eat vegimite & cheese crackers all morning. m/s was usually over by the time i got to work but i wasn't much of a talker until i'd eaten again at work. I annouced my preg at 15wks, granted we'd just come back from 3 wks holidays but even before i left no one asked about my 3hr lunch when the ob appt ran late etc.

I just told everyone that I had been sick and was on antibiotics!
We found out I was 7 weeks 2 days before we were due to fly out for BIL engagement party. No one suspected a thing, or those that did - pretty much believed my story! Then at work functions etc I just told everyone I was on a diet - so alcohol free! ;)
Was pretty good at hiding my sickness. Altho I was sick at work I just told workmates the same thing, that I had a stomach bug - they forgot about it after a few weeks.

if you have been TTC u can say that your on a healthy diet/no drinking cause your TTC...
otherwise tell people youre not feeling well, as someone suggested the tests thing cause then they will feel bad for asking you and hopefully leave u alone
GL

I was lucky to not have morning sickness but my tummy popped out earlier than I'd hoped. I was also fortunate to be flat out at work at the tricky time of 6-8 weeks so i was in my office continuously and looking rather stressed out....and then I played on it too so that people would leave me alone. My trouble was hiding the tummy but I worked around it by not wearing my tight clothes as much and when i did surface from my office, i kind of sucked in my tummy until i was able to get away from colleagues. Some people suspected but then that always happens. I guess stomach bugs, flu, and other excuses helps with the time off work factor, as does taking medication for the lack of alcohol intake. Like others have said the excuse that you are having some tests done by the doctor is also a good way to get people off your back, you just have to be dead serious about it and try and look a little concerned and not give out too much...people sometimes suspect the worst in those cases - perhaps mentioning you have a constant pain in the stomach area might give people a steer in the wrong direction.

Even if people do suspect, it'd be nice if they kept their thoughts to themselves until you are ready to make your announcement. On the day we announced to family, one of my sister inlaws was almost about to call the other sister in law aside and see if she thought i was pregnant cause my boobs were bigger and i looked rounder....i couldn't believe she actually said that to my face - and she's not that interested in me any other time...what a nosey parker - goes to show that sometimes family is worse than work colleagues!

We did it with great difficulty but still managed to hide it until about 13 wks :) My DH went on a health kick that had "bets" with each other and I couldn't let him win, and people accepted that cos he was going without also.

As for MS it was really hard, I found that blackmores morning sickness tablets were good and if i woke up anytime after midnight i would take one so it eased the morning. Also Accupressure travel bands definately helped curb the nausea and sickness!!

Hope that you don't have too much trouble hiding it - all the best for a happy and healthy pregnancy!

I'm really struggling at the moment. I am 8 weeks and haven't (luckily) had any MS, but am already begining to show a bit -- that's really early isn't it, I was going to start another thread and ask when people started to show. It's worrying me a bit. Anyway, TWO girls at work asked me if I was pregnant today, and another asked our colleague if I was (colleague knows and played dumb for me - thankfully). My aim is to get to at least 10 weeks without letting it go public, but it's getting harder and harder. I'm not sure how I'm going to go keeping it a secret till 12!

I never lied to people I just came up with other sayings that would make them take a step back like "Oh thanks, Do I look that fat?" would catch them off guard and have them saying sorry. I said it laughing at the end though so it wasn't rude :)