Why this woman hid her pregnancy for 8 months

EDITOR'S NOTE: Vanessa Scavone, 31, is a wedding photographer who lives in Freehold, N.J., with her husband, Rob Adams, and their six-month-old daughter, Felicity. She explains why she hid her pregnancy for eight months. Scavone and Adams were married in 2009 in Lakewood.

I've been married for five years and have more than six years of stable business ownership. You'd think getting pregnant would've been no big deal — but it was for me.

As fate would have it, I wrote an article before I was pregnant called "Why I was Convinced Pregnancy Would Ruin My Life," and it was published in the Asbury Park Press just a few weeks after I found out I was expecting. The article addressed my career and how even the remote possibility of my having children negatively affected my business well before I was even thinking about it. I had seen horrible behavior not only toward me, but also toward other wedding colleagues who dared to start a family. It wasn't anything I wanted to experience.

However, God has always had a way of going through with his plans for my life, despite my resisting them at times, and in April 2014, I found out I was pregnant. My husband and I were thrilled to be bringing a baby girl into the world. However, our decisions on how to handle the announcement were a bit off the beaten path.

Here are six reasons I hid my pregnancy for eight months:

1. I wasn't ready for pregnancy.

Most women have been conditioned via mainstream media that if they're married and find out they're pregnant, they should be jumping up and down holding positive tests in their excited fists. After looking down at mine, and first cursing the engineer who designed it because I thought it was a mistake, I couldn't understand why I wasn't doing the same happy dance I had seen in so many movies. In fact, I sat there with my mouth agape until I had the ability to cover it with my hand and then squeak out an "Oh my God."

Why wasn't I ecstatic? We had been planning this for a few months so it shouldn't have been that much of a shock. But it was — so I thought there was something wrong with me.

I continued to feel that way until opening up to a few friends who let me know they felt the exact same way. Unfortunately, I lost a few friends in the process who berated me for not understanding right away that every child is a gift.

I later found out I had prepartum depression – something I didn't even know existed but is quite common.

Needless to say, I was certainly not going to open myself up to more attacks if I was going to be honest about how I was feeling, or task myself with the chore of wearing a phony smile to fake the "pregnancy glow."

2. I was aggravated with people viewing me as handicapped.

I have always been a strong woman, loving to dive into tasks and get my hands dirty. You won't find me waiting for AAA to come change my flat tire.

When I did start to tell people in person that I was pregnant, I somehow became a porcelain doll to a lot of them. There'd be gasps if I picked up a couple books or decided to climb on a step-stool to reach something. I constantly had to remind people that I was "pregnant, not disabled" and that I was in perfect control of my own body and knew what my limits were.

From that, I knew that the last thing I needed was for my clients to start viewing me as physically unable to do things that I was perfectly able to do. Which brings me to point #3.

3. I didn't feel the need to worry my clients.

As professional photographers, we should have in our contracts that if we're unable to appear at an event, we will find a replacement photographer or issue a refund. This is usually reserved for being severely sick or having an accident of some kind, but it 100% pertains to giving birth as well. Contractually and for having a replacement photographer on deck, I was more than covered in case I couldn't work a wedding. This safety net trumped the advice I got from some that thought I should tell my clients "in case something happened." This clause was exactly for that "just in case" and didn't warrant me divulging my personal life to my clients if I didn't want to.

My last wedding was a good six weeks before my due date. I am a very healthy individual and wasn't having a single pregnancy complication, not even morning sickness. Why on earth would I put the fear in my brides' heads that there is a slight possibility that I might miss their wedding? I viewed it as unprofessional to worry my brides. I simply showed up at the weddings and told my brides that I brought a "+1" when they saw me — and I made sure they saw me as a happy, smiling ball of creative energy, and fully capable to do what they hired me to do.

4. I didn't want clients to think I was about to have other priorities.

I love what I do and resented the disillusion that other people (and I, too) had about moms: that baby brain takes over, you fall in love with your child and forget and/or don't care about everything else. The last thing I wanted was to give my clients, especially potential clients, the idea that I was about to have a child and drop my high standards of customer service and productivity. That would not help build the trust and credibility that I've worked so hard with which to align my brand.

Anyone who knows how I run my business knows that I define success in it by the amount of free time that I have, not by how busy I am. I've done a pretty good job at making my wedding photography business run smoothly by outsourcing and delegating parts of it.

Did I fall in love with my daughter and have moments where I don't want to do anything else but hold her? Yes. Do I make sure that I spend quality time with her and not work my life away? Absolutely. And I've been structuring my business to run like a well-oiled machine while I do just that.

5. I grew to like telling people in person.

Social media has been accused of killing people's social skills for quite some time. I have discovered that it's also sucking the sheer joy out of life's milestones. Telling people face-to-face and getting a genuine smile, hug and congratulations was so much more fun then getting a like or comment on Facebook.

I grew to enjoy telling people I was pregnant in person and seeing their real reaction to it. It also helped me distinguish my closer friends and family in life by not even texting the news to people, but only telling those I saw in person.

6. I could, so I did.

Lastly, the truth of it is that no one could tell I was pregnant anyway. For one reason or another, despite having a perfectly sized baby according to ultrasounds, I could easily hide I was pregnant until I reached about 7.5 months. Not to mention, I'm a photographer, so I knew how to pose in pictures that could be posted on social media without looking like I had recently had a glutinous night of beer and hamburgers. I could keep my personal life personal for a while, so I chose to do that as long as I could.

I'm quite pleased with those nine months and how everything unfolded as a result of these decisions. I've learned a lot about myself, my friends, my marriage and ultimately what I want motherhood to look like while running a full time business (or two).

These decisions are yours to make, and you don't owe anyone anything in making them — not even an explanation like this one.