When do you tell people?
Most couples wait until after the 12-week scan, because the risk of miscarriage drops substantially after the first trimester and because telling people means telling them again if something goes wrong. There is no rule though — some tell close family immediately precisely so they'd have support if it did.
The three questions to settle first
- Who's first? Whose parents hear before whose. Get this wrong and it's remembered for a decade.
- Who's told in person, who by phone, who finds out on social media? Being in the last group when you expected to be in the first is the actual injury.
- Does anything go online, and who posts it? Agree it explicitly. This causes more arguments than the timing does.
Work is a separate decision
You don't have to tell work when you tell family. She may want to tell hers early for protections or for practical reasons like sickness or scan appointments; you may want to wait. Whatever your local rules are, there'll be a deadline for notifying an employer to secure leave — find yours and diarise it rather than trusting you'll remember.
If you tell early and something goes wrong
Roughly one in five to one in eight known pregnancies ends in early miscarriage, and most happen in the first trimester. Couples who told people early consistently say the hardest part was the un-telling — and also that having people who already knew was the thing that got them through it. Both are true; that's why this is a values decision, not a right answer.
Quick answers
Is 12 weeks a medical rule?
No. It's a convention that lines up with the dating scan and with the sharp fall in miscarriage risk after the first trimester.
Can we ask people not to post about it?
Yes, and you should say it explicitly when you tell them. Assuming people will infer it does not work.
Sources
Every figure on this page links to its primary source. If one is out of date, tell us and we'll fix it.