Help! How to hide pregnancy in Covid times

[KurtRussel]

Hello everyone, I'm early days at 5 weeks and I have my husbands birthday pub crawl soon that I have arrange with load sof friends. I tend to be the life and soul and love a drink so I know people will notice if I'm not drinking and I'm not ready for anyone to know yet. I have loads of ideas how to disguise alcohol drinks with non alcoholic drinks BUT my problem is because of Covid it will be table service at pubs so I just can't see a way around it. Any ideas?

If they are close friends can’t you just tell them? You could say you don’t want congratulations as it is early days and you don’t want to talk about it. I think we could all be more open about pregnancy and loss.

Self isolate due to being in contact with a positive case

Say you're on a health kick. Dry May! Detoxes are fashionable at the moment and won't draw you into a web of lies you'll have difficulty keeping up.

I would order a real drink for the first 1 or 2 and get DP to take sneaky gulps of it (order similar to him), then when others start to get drunk they won't notice

I would have thought it fairly obvious if you're a big drinker who's the life and soul after a few that you're sober as a judge this year?
I think whatever your excuse, friends will probably guess. Hopefully they are all tactful and considerate enough not to make a huge hoo ha over it or ask you directly.

Oh and congratulations!

Could you give the bar man a couple of bottles of something non-alcoholic and ask him to serve you that whenever you order? I had to do it for a woman on a hen do I organised. She wasn't ready to tell anyone but told me in a panic (I barely knew her, poor thing). While we were drinking Prosecco, she was drinking Shloer. Nobody noticed at all.

If the place is smaller you could always call ahead and tell them that you’ll be ordering alcoholic drinks but you’d like them to serve you non-alcoholic. I had many women ask me to do the same when I worked in a restaurant. Once you’ve sat down, pop to the toilet and tell the bar your table number on the way back That will only work if there’s only one or two bar staff though.

I went to a wedding at 7 weeks and DID NOT want the bride to find out I was pregnant.

I drove, best excuse as no one encourages you to drink drive.

Then I took a glass of champers for the toast. I put it to my mouth but didn't drink.

If you don't want to drive, get a wine or two and pretend to drink. DH can take a sip now and again.

By everyone's second or third drink they'll no longer notice that you're not drinking.

It's a pub crawl though, I don't think the swapping drinks subterfuge would work. It all sounds like a hell of an effort when you could just say you're on anti biotics.

I would drink pints of soda and lime that "had a double vodka in it" . I just never needed one when someone offered.

Say you’re going to the loo after you’ve ordered, go to the bar and change your order, and for later rounds just say same again?

Sparkling water with a slice of lime in a highball glass, say it's a vodka soda or a gin and tonic. I made it through a boozy wedding that way. You only need to pretend until everyone else gets hammered.

Tell the bartender that you need all your drinks to be virgin.

I don't think anyone else is that bothered either way.

You could say that somebody's bet you can't go x number of days without drinking, and you've accepted the challenge.
Designated driver's always a go to.
Not feeling it because of a bug or something similar.
Have fun!

I used the antibiotics line but I have also had chronic wisdom tooth issues so have been on antibiotics for them probably 3-4 times in the past year; if you use it enough times without ever actually announcing a pregnancy people will stop questioning it! Helped that my DH also had one a few months back and no-one thought he was pregnant...

When I was pg at a sit down work do I nipped tonspeakntonour waiter, explained the situation to him then when he came over all night i ordered "vodka" tonic/coke etc.

Say you have an alcohol problem and are trying to drink less.

I said I’d realised I had developed a drink problem and had stopped with support from AA. It was so awkward no one asked any questions!!!

Oh my god, all this tap dancing! Tell them you don't want to that night. If they ask why, say none of your business. They can suspect what they like but they can't know anything for sure if you don't want to tell them, and you wouldn't have any explaining to do to anyone if the worst happened. If they keep pushing, that's disrespectful af and I'd think about getting some new (more mature) friends!

All this tap dancing I have to agree!

Pretending you're a recovering alcoholic? Whatever next, wouldn't that kill the mood of a drunken pub crawl? It also seems a bit risky and absurd to approach every bartender on a pub crawl asking them to pretend to serve you vodka whilst expecting them to cunningly swap it for tonic water. What a palava.

Just use the secret code of most pregnant women who don't want to discuss it or make it public- I'm on antibiotics.

Could you speak to the pub staff and let them know. That way they can give you non alcoholic instead without anybody else knowing.

If you drive say you volunteered to drive the birthday boy home as you’re not comfortable getting in a taxi yet because of Covid.

Or get there pretend you’re phone is ringing and make a show of answering it out the way. Pretend something has happened which gives you a really early start and then insist on not drinking or you’ll never be up on time.

Tell them that you don’t want a drink but happy to buy them one.
If I was out with friends and one of them didn’t want to drink nothing else would be said.
Hate the pressure to drink.

Whatever you do everyone is probably going to guess you are pregnant if you normally drink...just bend the truth and say you going to try for a baby and want to be healthy.
My mindset when l was early pregnancy was would l want support if l had a miscarriage..so all my close friends as soon as l did

Knew as soon as l did