Keep Your Pregnancy Off Facebook

[Boozy]

i know i totally hate it when i go on facebook and all my friends want to talk about is the important things going on in their lives! what do they think this is, a social network or something?

I find that my friends with children talk about absolutely nothing else on Facebook, and I find that annoying sometimes because I don't have kids and can't relate.

But what can they do? They have nothing else going on in their lives to discuss right now. Children take over their parents' lives, especially for the first few years. Pregnancy is even worse for that. The child has taken over the woman's body. You can hardly blame her for being a bit focussed on it, at the exclusion of other things.

We're going to Europe next spring, and plan to upload tons of pictures to Facebook, since I have many friends who have seen my travel plans and have asked to be kept updated. I suppose that my friends with restricted freedom due to young children at home might be a bit annoyed by those pictures. But I haven't said anything about their pregnancy photos, so I don't expect they'll say anything about my virtual postcards.

[Rapscallion]

Oooh! Where in Yurp?

Rapscallion

[Boozy]

Belgium and Northern France... Mr. Boozy's interested in First World War history, and that's where the Canadian forces were most active.

We're considering taking a ferry across the channel into England, but that may become it's own trip. I could spend three days in the British Museum in London alone.

I'll let you know.

[LadyBarbossa]

if that's the case, then my mistake, but her post followed one in which she specifically stated she didn't want to see ultrasounds that show the baby's "junk."

I think what's being addressed here is the sort of stuff you see on STFU, Parents. An ultrasound pic is innocent enough (although we don't need 40 screencaptures), but some people feel the need to point out or circle the penis in photoshop and then point out "It's DEFINITELY a boy!" Or "Der her, look, he takes after his Daddy, it's HUGE!".

A friend of mine literally posted a picture of her daughter sitting naked on the toilet, the seat of which was splattered with pee. Sorry, but you just don't do that, both for the sake of the poor kid and the people who probably could have gone without seeing something like that.

[AdminAssistant]

An ultrasound pic is innocent enough (although we don't need 40 screencaptures), but some people feel the need to point out or circle the penis in photoshop and then point out "It's DEFINITELY a boy!" Or "Der her, look, he takes after his Daddy, it's HUGE!".

Nailed it on the head...that's exactly what I mean. Just....ew. I don't want to know anything about your baby's genitalia, okay?

[guywithashovel]

There are several parents on my Facebook list, and they often post things about their kids, though they rarely if ever cross into STFU Parents territory.

My sister and brother-in-law have ultrasound pics on their Facebook pages. They even have ultrasound pics of their son who died at birth. On their living room wall, they have one of the pictures the hospital took of him after he was pronounced dead. Some people might take issue with that, but that was a very tragic ordeal for them. If having those pics helps them, then so be it.

[Peppergirl]

Ultrasound pics don't really bother me per se.

The thing that bothers me is people who seem to lose their identity when they become parents and ONLY post about their kids. I like kids and I am semi-intrested in things they do, but I mourn for the lost personalities of some of my girlfriends who actually had interests outside their kids years ago.

Makes me sad.

[fireheart17]

Sub-genre of the pregnancy pics: TMI baby statuses.

Status one: "MASSIVE vom!! D:" (and in the comments, "another one lucky it was in the same spot")
Status two: "<baby> just poood on me eewwwwwwww!"
Status three: "After almost a week... <baby> finally did a poo!!! and i was right. biig explosion. lol"

Status four (not same person): "Little man was smiling at me....turns out he was pooing."

I don't mind hearing the cutesy stuff. I don't mind hearing the stuff about bubs not feeding, settling etc. but seriously, why do you feel the need to share bubs's bowel/ stomach movements with the rest of the world?!


I don't mind the ultrasound pics so much. Ditto for the baby bump photos. In one case, the person with the three TMI statuses above did week-by-week shots semi-professionally (a friend of hers was a photographer and did some AMAZING photos for her portfolio-it consisted of week-by-week shots and then later on of some bump shots, with her boobs and waist covered up and only showing her belly) and they were GOOD.

The only real TMI pic I saw was of another girl who now has a 2-year-old son and decided that the few shots of him getting checked out on the warming tray were facebook-worthy.

>.>

[AdminAssistant]

Ooof, yeah, a friend of mine just got a new baby nephew, which is exciting, of course. But I really didn't need to see the pics of him just out of the womb, not cleaned up, with the exhausted, barely covered mother in the background. I mean, some people are eating when they look at their FB feed, is all I'm saying.

(This is why, if I have kids, I'm not allowing recording devices of ANY kind during the delivery. You can take pictures after they wash the baby and I can run a comb through my hair.)

[anakhouri]

I post funny things Khan does, and ask for advice. I never post stuff like that because no one cares and it might embarrass him someday; nothing dies on the Internet.

We have pics of naked Khan on the scale, and of the doctor holding him up, bloody and screaming. We didn't put THOSE on Facebook, though. They're just for us.

[guywithashovel]

One time, someone on my Facebook list posted "Nothing beats Mindy peeing on the bathroom floor an hour after I mopped!" That might have been TMI by some people's standards. I just wrote back with "At least it wasn't number 2."

Like others have said, social networking has convinced some people that everyone needs to be informed of the gory details of their daily lives. I have one Facebook friend who has recently broken up with a boyfriend that she has been with for approximately 10 years. She has been keeping the news feed filled with all sorts of "woe as me" updates, many of which are some rendition of "I wish I was special" or "I wish I was worthy of being loved." Then, of course, all of us are supposed to comment "Oh, but you ARE special!" or "There is SO much to LOVE about YOU!" And really, people need to hear that every now and then, but you should only need to say it every now and then.

I also have a cousin who tends to post depressing statuses. Most of the time, if her status isn't some "woe as me" whinge it's some pathetic male bashing remark. My aunt observed this, too, and we just figure that whenever she and the boyfriend she lives with get into a fight, she gets on Facebook and posts something like that.

[PepperElf]

Status four (not same person): "Little man was smiling at me....turns out he was pooing."

this made me laugh.

I can imagine a parent going "oh look my baby is smiling at me, how cut.... *GAG* O GOD, STINKY BABY!" lol

[fireheart17]

this made me laugh.

I can imagine a parent going "oh look my baby is smiling at me, how cut.... *GAG* O GOD, STINKY BABY!" lol

they all weren't 100% accurate because I didn't want someone to plug these into google and have Fratching come up.

My comment was "The first time you can take the expression "shit-eating grin" literally."

[Nyoibo]

If you don't want to see the pictures, don't look at them.
Block them from your news feed.

Seems simple to me.

The only problem with that is you have to block the person, you can't just block certain things.

Or "Der her, look, he takes after his Daddy, it's HUGE!".

"No hon, that's an arm"

[Lace Neil Singer]

Yeah; I have to agree that with baby pictures, there's a line that's crossed. For example; I wouldn't mind seeing an ultrasound or a cute (clothed) baby pic in my feed; however, I do not want to see a photo of "baby's first blowout" depicting a pooey nappy, or naked child photos, or of a vomit splattered floor. I think a good rule about what to post is "Does it involve bodily fluids? If so, then don't post it", whether you're posting about the funny bits of carrot in your toilet after you threw up, or about the weird green colour your baby's shit was after eating peas. No-one wants, or needs, to know about that. Especially if accompanied by visuals; that to me would be a good reason to permanently defriend someone.