While browsing through my F*book feed this morning, I was greeted by the oh-so-familiar F*book pregnancy announcement of a high school acquaintance (you know, the one you’re not even sure why you are “friends” with because you literally haven’t spoken to each other since like junior year of high school, but they added you and you didn’t want to be rude so you accepted?). Belly shot with a little tag hanging off saying “Do not open until (due date)”, an ultrasound image, and a pic of her hubby pretending to listen to her belly with a stethoscope. Cute right? (Nevermind she is only about 14 weeks along so he would not be able to hear anything but perhaps placenta gushing with that stethoscope…).
So why then did it bring back those old feelings of hurt, jealousy and longing? Even as I could feel the soft twinges of my own little one dancing around in my womb, it was like a part of my brain was shut off to the fact that, oh wait! I, too, am pregnant.
I still have a lot of unresolved feelings towards the idea of a F*book announcement. I know what it can do to those who are silently in the trenches. The ones who smile and hold back the tears in public when people talk about pregnancies or babies. The ones you would never know about. Which, let’s face it, is most of us who struggle with a disconnect between what our hearts want and our bodies are capable of.
Needless to say, I have yet to make a F*book announcement myself and I’m not really sure if I will. We are certainly “out” but most of our “announcing” was done face-to-face or over the phone, chat, or in one case email (a friend who I know is trying herself and was a bit worried before they started trying because she is a little bit older – I didn’t feel like it would be fair to tell her over the phone in case she needed time to process it).
The more I think about it, the more I lean towards not doing any sort of F*book announcement. I wonder, what would be the point? To get congratulations from a bunch of people who, in reality, I barely know? That’s exactly why I removed my birthday from F*book, because I don’t really care for that stuff. I’m perfectly fine with the ten or twenty friends and family who actually knew it was my birthday without F*book reminding them being the only ones posting on my wall as opposed to 50 or 60 people who will post that one “Happy Birthday” message to me once a year.
There is, however, apparently a timeline feature that allows you to enter in a due date onto your timeline if you are expecting. I’ve been kicking around the idea but am still hesitant for all the reasons listed above. It’s a bit more understated as opposed to the ultrasound picture or the giant belly shot but….
At the same time, if the Hawaii trip happens I would like to post the maternity shots we take over there and wouldn’t it be better to have at least some sort of little understated, oh by the way….message up so anyone who wants to hide me can? And am I completely over-thinking this (and that would be out of the norm, how?)???
Maybe it’s not that big of a deal. Maybe the world doesn’t revolve around me. Maybe the fact that I’m pregnant won’t cause anyone else distress because maybe everyone else is a bigger person than I apparently am. But I just can’t help but wonder, will I be inadvertently hurting someone who will never know just how much I actually have in common with them? I wish there was some sort of infertile (or pseudo-infertile, in my case) bat signal that I could put out along with any kind of “oh by the way, I’m pregnant” post to let them know that this wasn’t easy, that I get it, and that the last thing I want to do is upset anyone. And that if they want to talk, I’m here and I totally get it.
Seriously, the IF community needs to get working on that.
Conclusion to all this rambling? I think I will probably do the timeline thing at some point (maybe after 24 weeks) and in the meantime try to figure out how to alert any lurking IF-ers in my feed that my heart is still with them.