In the Hispanic culture when you find out you are pregnant, you are often recommended to keep the news to yourself until the second trimester. The reasoning behind this advice is outdated and silly really. “You don’t want to jinx the pregnancy and lose the baby.” Pretty bizarre isn’t it?

Honestly, that advice/mindset actually goes past the Hispanic culture. I remember being pregnant with my first baby and sharing the news with a group of coworkers/close friends from various cultural backgrounds. They were overjoyed with happiness for me, but did say “Well, just make sure to keep it to yourself for a little while longer since you’re just a couple weeks, because you don’t want to, you know..” Those comments raised my anxiety to a whole other level! What did they mean? What was going to happen?

No doubt pregnancy loss is very real and very heartbreaking, but why should we live in constant fear and not want to share we are expecting right away? Even if we were to lose our baby, our baby was OUR baby. Our baby existed and mattered! Whether our baby’s heart was beating for one day or one month, it is still a baby and should be remembered and celebrated. We need to be more open minded and talk about these kinds of things, for our well being and self care!

That being said, last year I rolled out personalized ornaments in my little crafting business page- Gifts by Lizzy and they were a hit! Why? Because Christmas is a time when we want to be with all of our loved ones, no matter if they are with us physically or not.

On the other side of the spectrum, there are times when we want to celebrate great news, but we don’t because we have feelings of guilt. For example, breastfeeding my first was a difficult journey but we did it and it was a 14 month old strong journey at that! I still felt guilt sharing our success with friends and other moms who weren’t able to breastfeed that long for whatever reason. However, the breastfeeding ornament I created for our tree was intimate and perfect to celebrate our journey