A curious thing came popped into my Facebook news feed recently: Photos of women posing with the foods they craved while pregnant (usually with a bare belly hanging out because hey, why not).
I did some poking around and apparently this is a thing pregnant women do nowadays.
It's not a new trend (I found some blog posts from last year on it), but it made me pause and wonder if the Internet and social media is just encouraging us to share a little too much about our lives. Or perhaps it's a sign that we're just looking at life too often through a lens.
I recently passed the halfway mark of my pregnancy. While I haven't been overwhelmed with cravings that scream Oh-My-God-I-Must-Eat-BLANK-Or-Else-I-Will-Just-Die, my husband would likely say that I have had cravings (like the Big Mac I had for dinner, or the Dairy Queen I sent him out for in the rain). That doesn't mean enjoying those items means I want photographic evidence of the moment I dug into that Big Mac, or scraped the bottom of the ice cream container trying to get every last drop.
I look at these photos and ask myself why these women felt the need to document this side of pregnancy. To each their own, but some of these photos just strike me as a bit of Too Much Information, especially to put online. I also find some of the facial expressions in these photos to almost have a sexual look to them, which also feels odd.
Since the explosion of the Internet, blogging, and social media, it feels to me like we feel the need to document and post about every single part of our lives. And with the influx of photo sharing apps such as Instagram and Snapchat, along with the fact that posts on Facebook and Twitter “get more reach” with a photo attached, it just seems like much too much when it comes to selfies.
I admit, I’ve never been one to particularly like having my photo taken. It’s why if you scroll through my Instagram feed, you’ll likely see more photos taken from my point of view, rather than of me doing something (for example, I take photos of my dinners on the plate, not photos of me about to take a heaping bite).
It may seem odd to say this in post I'm writing as the YMC pregnancy blogger, but my husband and I have very clear limits on what we want to share about our baby online, especially when it comes to photos. For example, it's been a conscious decision not to post any of our ultrasound photos. We've shared the images in person with family and friends, on Skype, or in text messages, but they don't exist on Facebook.
While there can be a feeling to photograph and detail every part of one's pregnancy, there's also a lot of pregnancy that's not pleasant and, in my humble opinion, should remain private. Images of you surrounded by the food you're craving is one of those things. I really don't see a day your kid is actually going to want to see those pictures or enjoy seeing them.
So let's take a cue from our parents who had babies offline in a world without social media and keep some things just between us.
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