Pregnancy Announcements for Gamers

This might be ironic coming from someone who has a blog, but I consider myself to be a fairly private person. My personal social media pages are locked down to friends only, and even so I rarely share details. I don’t list my employer. I don’t share photos from vacations until I’m back. I posted about getting engaged my husband and I were already married. I definitely go a bit overboard with the whole privacy thing.

So, much to my surprise, when I found out I was pregnant I couldn’t wait to do a pregnancy announcement.

As we all know, the first pregnancy announcement was in 8,000 BC on a cave wall in France. Ha, kidding. But, maybe? I might not know when the very first pregnancy announcement happened, I do know that the internet is full of them now. And the internet has also drastically changed the experience of being pregnant. When my mom had me, there was no easy way to find answer to the daily “is this normal?” questions that pop up during pregnancy. She didn’t have a network of moms to turn to at any time. In the early 1980s, ultrasounds were just becoming commonplace and were nearly impossible to decipher if you weren’t a radiologist. When I was born, she sent a post card out to some family with a taped-on photo.

Now, we have the online world with all its pros and cons. We have the answers to pregnancy and baby questions available to us 24/7. But we also have misinformation spreading like wildfire. We have creative pregnancy announcements, bump progress photos, 3D ultrasounds, themed gender reveals, Pintrest perfect baby showers, and gorgeous photo shoots from the delivery room. But we also have the pressure of keeping up with all of that, when some of us are just not that type of person. And I am definitely not that type of person- the 7 bump photos I managed to take during my pregnancy prove that.

All of this is to say that I was really surprised that I couldn’t wait to do a public pregnancy announcement. Because of our struggles to start a family, my husband and I felt more comfortable sharing our baby news after the first trimester when the odds of a successful pregnancy were higher. So, wait I did. We told close friends and family individually, and then I waited the requisite 3 months to put out a bigger announcement for our larger circle of friends, coworkers, and acquaintances.

My husband is a musician, so we went with a music theme (my bump wearing headphones), but I definitely considered a gamer-themed one. My husband and I bonded on our first date playing arcade games and gaming together is still one of our favorite evening activities.

Below are a collection of my favorite pregnancy announcement ideas.

Announcement 1:

Dad, mom, and baby sneakers… cute
Player 3 loading bar… so cute
The fact that they own 3 PS4 controllers… that’s next level!

Clearly this is a family that appreciates gaming because either they had three controllers for all the game time they had or they went out and bought a third when they found out they were pregnant. Any way you slice it, these are the gamer parents we all wish we were. Plus, the announcement would be fairly easy to recreate using your favorite shoes/games/controllers.

Announcement 2:

Scott Pilgrim was a graphic novel turned movie turned video game, which was released almost a decade ago. I’m a big fan, of all of its forms, so I squealed when I saw this one. It’s the character select menu modified to include a loading bar and a countdown. Greg is playing as Scott Pilgrim, Sarah is Ramona Flowers, and the new player (male or female, tba) is preparing to join. I’m not sure how easy it would be to recreate something like this but it was too good not to share.

Announcement 3:

This mom used her switch to display the ultrasound picture, which is just damn cool. Plus, she tells the story of spending a bunch of time using a DNS to navigate to the image, only to wind up using photoshop in the end. I feel like that’s a great lesson to learn early. Kids will never cooperate in photos. Just fix it in editing.

Announcement 4:

I made this one! In Stardew Valley (and the Harvest Moon games it was inspired by), you can couple up with your favorite NPC and start a little NPC family. I snagged the screenshot of one of the characters announcing her pregnancy and added a date at the bottom. Pretty simple, and I think pretty cute. If you’ve done a Stardew Valley announcement, share it!

Announcement 5:

The Legend of Zygote is a minute long game clip based on the original Legend of Zelda game for NES. I grabbed a screenshot of the moment when Link and Zelda enter the cave and instead of receiving a sword, they start their adventure as parents to a little girl. It’s remarkable well done and probably impossible easily replicate if you don’t have some video game coding experience.

Announcement 6:

The series of photos here used to announce the pregnancy are based on Portal 2 which is one of the best games to play with a significant other, in my opinion. My husband and I really enjoyed working together and solving the puzzles. This couple is really selling it with their Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, companion cube, Aperture t-shirt, and mini portal gun and onesie. I’m making a note here, huge success.

Announcement 7:

“Our Life in Mario” is a pregnancy announcement game based on the iconic Super Mario Bros on NES. Josh and Joanna added their own exciting elements to the game including a new title screen, a power up that turns them into high school band members, a heart when they fall in love, a wedding 5 years later, and a pregnancy mushroom that leads to a spring to the finish line. The whole thing is next level incredible and again probably not something you can fully recreate without some intense coding/game dev experience.

Announcement 8:

Another Moms with Game original. I was trying to think of games that featured babies but more adorable than Nihilanth in Half-Life and Shadow Mitsuo in Persona 4. I remembered the Big Baby boss in Zombies Ate My Neighbors, one of the hardest games I played growing up. I slapped a little announcement at the bottom. You could add a tagline, like “Stomping into our lives” or “Warning: A Boss Approaches.”

Hope you’ve enjoyed these as much as I did! Did you do a video game inspired pregnancy announcement? Drop a link below so we can check it out!

And, if you’re expecting, check out my post with games to keep you entertained during those late, late nights: Top Ten Mobile Games to Play While Breastfeeding