Keeping My Damn Mouth Shut

In my opinion, part of the reason we have the “Mommy Wars” in the first place is because we’re all so freaking insecure about our parenting choices (the main reason is the patriarchy but I do not have time to delve into the patriarchy, plus it’s Friday and I’m all worn out from wanting to scream and vomit from reading the NotAllMen blah blah BULLSHIT and I’m tired so I’m focusing on this).

They actually are kinda my thing but I’m sparing you today

In the short time that I’ve been a parent, I’ve been offered a ton of advice, most of it astonishingly bad. I’m not trying to say that I’m some paradigm of wisdom or anything but I do my best to stay on top of recent research and pediatrician recommendations, etc. I get that some people had their babies, like, 30 years ago, but still. No I will not be putting my child down with a fuzzy blanket draped over her. No I will not be having her cry it out at one month old. No I will not feed her solids at two months.

Not really though.

I have to bite my tongue a lot, which does NOT come naturally to me. And I shouldn’t misrepresent that I follow all of the guidelines to a T. We probably did cry it out a wee bit early (almost 4 months, rather than 4 months or later). I do (gasp!) use powder on Ellie’s bum when I’m diapering her for the night. I did place her on her stomach, laying on my chest during the first weeks and fell asleep with her there. And I’m comfortable with all of these things, obviously, or I wouldn’t do them. So I try to remember that MY things are going to be different from someone ELSE’S things, and keep my mouth shut accordingly.

However.

There’s a woman who I’m Facebook friends with who had a baby a week after me. I’m not actually friends with her – she’s the wife of a former co-worker of Tammy’s – and I find her insufferable. I posted a few times before we did sleep training, lamenting Ellie’s poor sleep. She commented a few times with things like “you’ll have to have baby [her son’s name] over for a play date so he can teach your daughter how to sleep! LOL!” And she posts status with the hours her child sleeps. “Baby [name] slept 10:30-8:15 last night! Love my little man!” “Baby [name] slept 9:00-4:30 last night! My lil man is such a good sleeper!”

Yes I will.

So is it wrong that I get a strong superiority complex when I look at her postings on sleep training (that she did when her son was three weeks old) or his first time eating purees (when he was three months old)? And did I mention that this woman is a doctor? No, she’s not a pediatrician (she’s doing her residency in psychiatry), but wouldn’t a doctor listen to the recommendations of other doctors? And don’t they do some kind of rotation or learn some kind of basics of general medicine, which would include pediatrics?

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.

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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?