Nuchal Translucency and Facebook

We had our nuchal translucency scan this morning, and it went swimmingly. The neck measured at 1.something, which is good (they want to see less than 3, although the tech told us most Down’s babies measure closer to 6). We saw the nasal bone (also good because Down’s babies often don’t have a nasal bone at this point). The abdominal organs are almost all in the abdomen now, having migrated from the umbilical cord. The heart was beating at 161. We saw two hemispheres of the brain. Saw a genital nub, but it’s too early to tell if it will grow larger into a penis or shrink into a clitoris. We saw little webbed hands, and wee tiny feet that waved and kicked.

Because I’m still under 30, my risk of trisomies was low to begin with, but now it should be even lower with the reassuring scan.

**********

Most of us know how hard it is to be ambushed by Facebook announcements, especially as they seem to come in groups, just after your latest BFN or right around the due date of a miscarriage. Facebook has impeccably shitty timing.

For a long time I promised myself if I was ever lucky enough to get and stay pregnant, I would just skip the cutesy/smug Facebook brag. (And side note here, getting pregnant does not, at least for me, make me like the announcements any better. Seriously, y’all. You’re fecund. We get it. How marvelous for you, etc. Shut up with the beribboned, sparkly announcements)

But now I find myself trying to figure out how to let people know what’s going on in our world. We’ve told our families and close friends, but I do want some way to let less close friends know, many of whom are scattered around the world. I considered phoning (don’t have most people’s numbers, and hate talking on the phone) and email (ditto on not having many emails, and that seems kind of cold, no?) and have come full circle to Facebook. Dammit, Facebook is friggin convenient. How annoying.

But I need help figuring out what to say. I obviously want to be as sensitive as I can to those struggling, and I’d like to acknowledge our own struggle to get where we are. I’m considering the following, but would appreciate any insight, recommendations, edits, additions, etc.:

“Tammy and I are absolutely overjoyed to announce we are going to have a baby. We are so grateful to our doctors, nurses, and embryologist for helping us get this far. Below is a picture of our embryo at 5 days past fertilization, and our fetus at almost 13 weeks gestation. I am due in January, and we cannot wait to meet our little one.

And with the announcement, post a side by side picture of the day 5 blast with our most recent scan.

One final note, those friends/family members that I know would react to the announcement with complicated feelings have been told already, via the medium we thought would be easiest for them.

Thoughts? Skip the pictures? Or skip the embryo picture but include the fetal scan? What would you want to see, and not want to see if you were reading my page?

15 thoughts on “Nuchal Translucency and Facebook

  1. Maybe skip the fetal scan – that might be hard for some people to see. You could post the embie pic with your words (very well said, btw!). It’s so neat to think that a little embryo becomes a wailing baby 9 months later, but it is also a bit removed/doesn’t look like a baby, so less painful for those struggling. Just my thoughts!

  2. I like the wording a lot. Personally, I would skip the picture; it’s a lot easier to keep on trucking from a written status, for me, than from a picture. A couple of people on FB (whom I am not otherwise in touch with) expressed interest in belly pictures and so on last time around, so I posted a link to a relevant photo set on Flickr and said I wasn’t planning on posting them on FB, but click through if curious (only I said it better than that, I hope).

    Congratulations on a reassuring scan! Ours is in a little over a week, and I’m hoping we will likewise feel ready to “tell” afterwards. I have no idea what to say this time; last time I “confessed” that ours had been a shotgun wedding.

  3. Congratulations! All fantastic news!

    I think that’s really thoughtful that you’re thinking so hard about what to and not to say on FB. Like you, I still feel a pang of – something – when i see announcements, so it is important to be sensitive. Since you asked for my (our) two-cents, I guess I would say no pictures. The pictures are what always get to me. But, if you decide to go with them, I also believe that a pregnancy is worth celebrating and that you should feel ok doing so.

  4. I think the wording is great, but I don’t necessarily think the picture is a great idea. I think of it as posting a picture of your uterus on Facebook, which is pretty personal.

    Congrats!

  5. This is a tough question to answer. I think your wording is great and you need to share the pics you feel best about. This might just be me, but when I know that people have really wanted a baby, struggled, and planned and etc. etc. etc for a baby, the pictures and announcements aren’t painful for me.
    Whatever you post, know that there will be lots of people happy to see your news. More people know what it’s like to want and wait and lose than we want to believe.

  6. I LOVE that you make it clear in your language that it took a lot of planning and people to get where you are, which is a really important acknowledgement, I think. I think the embryo picture is adorable and so good for people to think about, the scan picture is more common and so potentially more triggering. That’s my two cents.

    In any case, thanks for being awesome and not pepetuating the FB baby cray cray.

  7. I hated when people posted pictures, but our initial NT scans were really stressful and blood tests for trisomy 13/18 kept coming back inconclusive because I’m on blood thinner — basically we didn’t announce anything on FB until after a successful and reassuring anatomy scan at 20 weeks. I ended up with the most beautiful sono pic of his profile, and I just couldn’t help myself. I got a lot of messages from not super close friends and acquaintances who were all very congratulatory and said that they’ve been having issues TTC and seeing our success gave them hope. So I know it’s tough for some people, but not necessarily for everyone. Just my two cents.

  8. I think if you word it in a way that speaks to your tough journey, it will be easier for some people to swallow if they’ve been trying. I know I felt that way with two friends who went through IVF and were pregnant. I was genuinely happy for them because I felt their struggle. Congrats on a great scan!

  9. Like most of us, I totally have a love/hate relationship with Facebook and all those freakin announcements. I’ve toyed with the idea of not posting an announcement when/if I ever get to that point. But ya know what? After all we’ve been through, we have earned that right to make an announcement!!! I’m not very open about our infertility struggles right now, but if I ever get there, I plan to make it very clear to the world that we’ve been through a nightmare to get there. Post all the pictures you want, in my opinion anyway, if you explain the battle it’s taken to get there, it should be easier for others who are struggling to see.

  10. So glad you got good news with the scan! Hearing that someone has struggled to conceive always makes their pregnancy news easier for me. It completely lifts the weight off, actually. I’ve never experienced a Facebook announcement that talked about any struggles though, so Facebook announcements always get to me. The pictures are hard– especially those who post pregnancy test photos. But I think if someone were to post what you plan to, I’d smile & be happy for them. Do what feels right to you.

  11. Popping out of lurkerdom to say, I’m in a similar position. We did do a Facebook announcement for the same reason. We simply said, “Our 8-celled embryo is due in xxx.” Those who are on a path of infertility will get it; those who aren’t might but probably won’t.

  12. Popping out of lurking to say I can see why oyu are in a tough position. But to think you don’t have the email, or phone number, of your ‘less close’ friends’? So why bother telling them? If FB crashed tomorrow…oh me, oh my…you wouldn’t have ANY way to communicate with said friends? That’s weird to me. FB is your ONLY means of communication. With a potential move coming up, you may want to I don’t know, try to form more meaningful relationships, than just ‘liking’ something here or there. Just my 2cents.

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