My first two kids were born overseas in 2008 and 2010, so we were super grateful to have Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family. After their births, my husband would leave the hospital with our digital camera, go home, shower and upload a picture or two to announce the birth of, first, our son, then next, our daughter.
Easy, simple, fun. We loved the immediate response of love, support and everyone’s sheer joy.
Our family was grateful for social media, because it meant they found out quickly. There weren’t a million phone calls to make, they didn’t have to wait for baby announcements in the mail. They got to see a few pictures and be excited with us.
But apparently some people’s excitement gets a little out of control, breaking baby announcement protocol. Case in point, this post that recently popped up in my Facebook feed:
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Why in the world would someone else think it appropriate to announce the birth of someone else’s child?
So much for promoting family bonding, birth plans and privacy!
Parents-to-be are too busy in the hospital to be monitoring their Facebook timelines. They may not even know what is being posted. Even the best security settings can’t stop someone from mentioning your news, including when they don’t tag you. In fact, I discovered almost two months after the birth of our third child that this had happened to me. I had no idea and it didn’t affect our announcement, and the person who crossed this sacred line and I don’t share a lot of mutual friends. Still. And not everyone is that lucky.
The sting of not being the one to announce a pregnancy, gender reveal or the birth sticks with some moms. Postpartum hormones are strong and unpredictable. Something like this can really set it off.
Bottom line: If it’s not your baby, don’t say a word
There are absolutely no exceptions here. None. Ever.
My husband and I debated announcing our third pregnancy on Facebook at all. When we hit 20 weeks and knew the gender, we made it “Facebook official.” It was fun. We loved that moment. People we had told individually were excited, and those who didn’t know also congratulated us and added to the euphoria.
After the kids came to see their baby brother, we took some pictures, they held him. Then they went on home, where they helped announce the arrival of the newest member of our family. The proud big siblings were able to take part in the announcement of their baby brother, complete with his name and his first Facebook photo. We loved having that family time before the world came creeping in.
Those are moments and memories that were just for us, ones we were allowed to enjoy. Those moments were just for the five of us to relish in, partly because we opted not to wait and post our wonderful news on Facebook.
