Cute Ways to Announce Your Pregnancy to Your Husband

Compose a fake "arrival announcement" directly from "Baby" to put in your mailbox. Use fancy lettering and pretty stationery, and let your husband sift through the mail to find it. For example: Dear Daddy Smith, I would like to announce my impending long-term stay in your home. Although my anticipated arrival date is October 4, my actual arrival may be unannounced, so please get ready for my visit ahead of time by preparing a suitable guest room with all the amenities, including rattles, diapers and blankets. I look forward to being delivered on the expected date. Yours truly, Baby Smith Watch your husband's face as the news sinks in. Afterward, save the announcement in a scrapbook.

If your husband enjoys a practical joke and you have a home Internet connection, then try this sneaky move. Tell your husband you're trying to fill out a form online to receive a free offer in the mail, and you need his credit card number. If he's half as skeptical as most people, he'll insist right away on looking at this "free offer" for himself. But he won't see any free offer. No, what he'll see is "I'm Pregnant!" emblazoned all over the screen. If he doesn't take that bait, then this one will work for sure. Sit at the computer--ideally, your husband's own computer, if he has one--and tell him you think a strange virus has attacked the computer. When he looks for himself, he'll see your pregnancy announcement all over the screen. To do the announcement, simply create a word-processing document with letters in a very large font announcing that you're pregnant. Use landscape orientation to give the document more room, and call it up as the active window on the screen. Or, create an image file of the announcement using image editing software, then set it as your computer desktop background.

Here's one that's great if you're giddy with silliness at the news of your pregnancy. Rewrite the lyrics of your husband's favorite song into a pregnancy announcement. Dim the lights, clear a space on the floor and tell him you're practicing for karaoke night---or don't explain and just let him stare at you as if you've lost your marbles. Grab a baby toy to substitute as a microphone and begin belting out the lyrics to announce your pregnancy. Watch your husband's wince as you mangle his favorite song change to stunned astonishment as he begins to hear what you're singing.

Brainstorm other "stealth" ways to announce your pregnancy by focusing on routine activities you do together. The next time you go shopping with your husband, sneak a rattle into the shopping bags and then ask him to unpack the shopping. If your husband likes the game Scrabble, stash some extra letters you borrowed from a friend's copy of the game and play lots of words like "baby" and "pregnant" and "delivery." Eventually your husband will get the idea. Or cut out in separate sticky notes the letters in "pregnant" and attach them to the pages of the document, book or magazine he's been reading, in order--just make sure you're around when he's reading it.

Don't announce your pregnancy to your husband when he's driving, eating grapes or handling dangerous equipment. To minimize the chance of getting a disappointing reaction to your news, avoid announcing your pregnancy to your husband while he's watching his favorite TV show, gaming, texting his boss or when he's just gotten up from a nap.