Source: BabyMed
A good friend of mine found out she was pregnant in late 2011 and announced her little bundle of joy by posting a picture of her urine-soaked pregnancy test on Facebook for all to see. “We’re expecting!!!” she wrote joyously.
I was one of the first well-wishers on her wall. “Congratulations! Very excited for you!”
I realized then that we are in a very different era, one where every single aspect of motherhood is Instagrammed, Facebooked, tweeted or YouTubed. I’ve seen it all—from ultrasound photos as profile pictures, to weekly belly pictures to show how much the baby (and mama) is growing each week, to blogging about what cravings they’ve been having lately.
And even though my kids are 6 and 4 and social media wasn’t nearly as pervasive back then, I still remember using social media to keep the people in my life informed about the babies in my belly. But even then, I remember waiting until I got home from the hospital to post baby’s first photo to Facebook.
Now there’s live-tweeting the birth. Several of my friends have done it. The hourly updates of progress took me off guard at first.
“Nurse says I’m 2 centimeters dilated! Time to get this party started!”
“4 centimeters…hanging in there!”
“Whew! That last contraction was a doozy…breathe in, breathe out.”
“Just got an epidural….Ahhh.”
“Getting ready to push! This is it guys!”
And then, usually about an hour or so after baby has entered the world, there it is: Baby’s photo has made it’s debut on social media.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with posting during your labor in the broadest sense. But let me tell you—they’ve made me feel like a chump because there was no way I was picking up a phone or sliding over to my laptop to update anybody on anything during my Pitocin-fueled march to motherhood. No, ma’am.
Read the rest of the post over at MommyNoire and tell me:
Is live-tweeting your labor a do or a don’t?
Once experienced someone who posted entire birth on an online board and included pictures within seconds of it happening. I’m an online ‘sharer’ but that seemed like a lot to me. If she liked it I loved it but that moment is super duper sacred to me and all I want to be focused on is the family. I posted pictures and details of my first pregnancy on Facebook but no one knew I was in labor (all 25 hours of it) except people that mattered most to me. So I guess I am a picky online sharer – I don’t know….
I agree 100000%. I say this all of the time. Nothing is sacred anymore lol.
Im guilty … I didn’t get to tweet/text/update during my C section because they wouldn’t let me but the moment my daughter was out, wiped off, weighed, measured and wrapped up a picture had been mass texted to families and posted on facebook ….. I personally opted to do it that way because I had gone in unexpectedly to an emergency c section 8 weeks early and honestly social media made it easy to let everyone quickly know she was well and here. Pictures continued and still do almost 5 years later – – i’m a FB junkie …. LOL!
Please don’t do this. For birth you need to be very present and in your “animal mind,” and continuously connecting takes you out of both. You and your baby both deserve your own undivided attention during that amazing process.