Why I Decided to Keep My Pregnancy Off Social Media and Don't Regret It
It seems like every social media platform is filled with pictures of babies, pregnant bellies, and family photoshoots, but it doesn’t mean you have to participate. To say having a baby is a big life event is an understatement. It’s life-changing and world-rocking, and you get to lay the groundwork for this unique journey.
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Your body will be changing physically and emotionally. Whether you’ve been pregnant before or not, you will experience things you’ve never experienced before. Everything you do and feel will occur through the lens of being pregnant. You can’t control all of what is happening to your body on a pregnancy journey, but you can control how you share it with the world. You also get to control who has access to the innermost workings of your pregnancy.
Maybe you are currently feeling like you want to share every aspect of your pregnancy with the world on social media, and that is totally fine because it’s all about what YOU want. If you’re feeling like you might want to follow in the footsteps of some celebrities’ recent pregnancies and not share your experience on social media, here is some food for thought.
Self Care
Kylie Jenner was one of the celebrities who shocked the world with the announcement of the birth of her baby. She went from being a celebrity who seemed to share her whole life on social media to simply announcing her pregnancy after having never said a word about the fact that she was pregnant. Her decision to do so seemed almost entirely based on self care.
Social media can be an outlet for expression, but it can also create unneeded stress. It is far too easy to get sucked into comparing our pregnancy with someone else’s, to wonder why our body doesn’t look like a friend’s, or to fall down the rabbit hole of mindlessly scrolling. Taking a step back from social media can provide much needed space. Time that would normally be spent on creating posts for social media could be spent on healthy outlets that simply focus on you like journaling, meditation, or actually talking about your feelings in person with a friend or family member.
The Content Creation Pressure
Sharing your pregnancy on social media can also create pressure when it comes to content creation. You may feel like a glowing goddess one minute and feel like you could post about that, but then a few minutes later, you could be overtaken by exhaustion or anxiety. No one likes to feel disingenuous, and trying to keep up with the emotional ups and downs of pregnancy while trying to share a genuine pregnancy journey on social media might have you feeling the need to post and update at lightning speed.
There will always be a better angle, a prettier filter, a more creative pregnancy announcement being shared by the second on social media. Consider forgoing that pressure and simply letting yourself experience pregnancy on your own terms without having to capture or define it for others. If there was ever a time to cut down on the stressors in your life, this would certainly be one of them.
Pregnancy Changes Things
Life feels different when you are suddenly feeling responsible for another human being. Emotions and attitudes towards life and everything in it can feel amazingly unique when you’re suddenly consumed with unconditional love for a helpless being. Sometimes we slow down and change perspective. Other times, we seek directed action and activities of preparation. No matter which way you go with your pregnancy emotions, the one thing you can count on is that there is nothing you can count on when it comes to predicting your feelings throughout pregnancy.
Allowing these changes to have space and privacy can give you the opportunity to explore all of these new feelings more deeply without the fear of judgment. Since social media can often feel like a mirror up to our lives, providing ourselves with freedom from that mirror can also help us escape the crushing box of trying to live up to something or someone we believe we need to be.
How you choose to share your pregnancy is always your prerogative. The most important part of this decision is simply allowing yourself the opportunity to make a decision about it. You are not required to share your journey. You don’t owe it to anyone. You are a mother now, and the only people that you need to consider in this choice are yourself and your baby on the way. Follow those motherly instincts, and embrace the fact that you can make this journey whatever you want it to be.
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