Spring can be a very busy time of year as the weather finally begins to warm up, you open up your windows and clean all the dirt that has gotten accumulated over the cold winter months as your family has been hunkered down.
Well here where I live the temperature has been going up and down like crazy, but we have had a few nice days this week and have spring pickup coming soon in our neighborhood, so we have been busy, which is why our posts this week have been running a little late. It was also a big week for us because we announced to everyone via social media that we are having another baby, a boy this time.
That brings me to the topic I want to share with you all, which is how social media has changed expectations with announcing baby updates.
For the Love of Babies
For the most part people love babies, and everyone wants to be in on the news, even if you barely know them. My husband has noticed at his work people that never talking to him want to hear about the baby, or come over when my daughter and I are visiting as if they ever talk to him any other time. But as our announcement was coming, people expect certain expectations from you, and it is crazy.
We did not tell people what day that we were going to have the gender reveal and certain people did not like that, continuing to nag us about it. I always try to have the most respect that I possibly can for people, and it is one of the main things that I live my life with, and I would not change that. Sometimes though, I feel like being respectful is letting people run me over.
Pregnancy Announcement Hubbub
When it comes to the pregnancy announcement in general, we did not have one because as I discovered last time I was pregnant, I do not like the attention. I do not even enjoy having my belly touched. Every woman is different, but to me while the baby is still in my womb it is an intimate time for myself, my husband and possibly my daughter, to be able to feel the touches and the movement of this baby while in the womb before everyone tries to take over when he becomes born.
We did not even tell a lot of close family until the 1st trimester was over, and as planned kept it off of social media until halfway at the gender reveal.
You Will Always Make Someone Mad
With any amount of secrecy you keep, you will always make someone mad. It bothers people. Because why? Because everyone wants to be involved even though it is not about them. When it came to the gender I wanted to make my own cute announcement, so I did, but that did not stop people from wanting to know as soon as we knew. But the thing is with the gender, it does not matter. It is a baby that I have planned for and will be loved regardless of what parts it has and I was not going to deal with grown people having tantrums because they did not find out 1st. This is not the pregnancy, it’s just a part on the baby! So we let people know on our terms when we were ready, when I wanted to make the announcement.
Social Media: The Bane of Any Pregnancy Announcement
Facebook and social media have changed things a lot. Everyone expects pregnancy, gender and birth announcements: all of these things that can be pretty private to some people.
Believe it or not, just because it is not on social media does not mean it did not happen!
Social media can be a great way of connecting, but all these expectations that come with it are ridiculous, and obviously as you can see through my article here, it does not just change through the internet but the way family acts as well.
Keeping People Out
I was told by someone recently there are zero pictures of their daughter on social media and they agreed early on and she is the same age as my daughter and to that I say “BRAVO!” Ignore these crazy social rules that have been brought on since social media became popular. It can be a great thing, but share what you want to share! It is a great thing to be respectful, but if you are not getting that respect back, stand up for yourself.
What is going on in your life is about you! So with all due respect do what makes you happy and makes you comfortable and do not conform to all of these rules if you do not want to. It is just crazy what has become of expectations in the past decade or so, and I believed something should be said to let everyone know that regardless of popular belief, what you put on or choose to share on social media should only be what you are comfortable with.
Join the Conversation!
Have you felt this pressure through family, friends, or social media? How did you handle it? I would always love to hear from you in the comments! As always thank you for being a reader, and join in on the conversation!
Hi,
Gosh. Your article hit home for me. My husband and I have suffered such criticism and backlash for wanting to keep our daughter and photographs of her off of social media. We have shared a couple of our own photographs but they do not show her face at all. We have even approached friends & family and asked them to remove photographs from social media that show our daughters face or ones we are not comfortable with. My husband’s sister has been the least understanding and has actually verbally attacked my husband and I for not doing certain things “according to social media rules” from our photographs we share, to keeping our lives private, choosing to keep pregnancy announcements off of Facebook & delayed etc. We told her we have our reasons for this decision and she doesn’t have to know the reasons. We have had family recently fall seriously ill and end up in hospital, we’ve had close family announce a pregnancy of their first baby, we have had another close family wedding, and we have friends who have recently suffered miscarriages or who have spent their last savings on IVF that has failed again and they have no other options. We have felt that announcing a pregnancy during these moments would seem extremely disrespectful and hurtful and so we delayed telling people. We also feel it is our news and we were so delayed in finding out ourselves and we’re so behind on the routine blood and scan tests and had to wait for those result, but our sister-in-law has literally turned the entire situation to be about her and has made herself out to be a victim. It is not only continuously frustrating for us to deal with her in this regard but we feel she is disrespectful to us & our wishes. Thank you for shedding light on what social changes and pressures social media has put on people and their privacy.