Grace’s next pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, and during her third pregnancy, the laws in her politically “purple” home state in the US changed twice. “Suddenly, my body is this battleground and my safety and autonomy is not guaranteed,” she says. “Do I want there to be evidence online that I’m pregnant? God forbid something goes wrong, I don’t want it documented.”
Kristy Ihle, 26, announced she was expecting another baby by posting a photo of her daughter holding a “Big Sister” sign. But somewhere between her second and third pregnancies, Ihle started to wonder: did the people she knew only peripherally and kept in vague touch with through social media need to know?
She began to think about the privacy of children online around the time she was pregnant with her third child, and so she culled her social presence. “I deleted a tonne of people and stopped sharing as much,” she says. “I wanted my pregnancy with him to be our own little special thing.”
When Ihle’s son was born, she posted a photo from the hospital. “I got a lot of messages from people that were like, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t even know you were pregnant!’ I was like, ‘That’s the point.’”
On Etsy, there are seemingly countless digital files for parents-to-be to buy and personalise to make their social media pregnancy announcement perfect. Would you prefer holiday-themed or more centred around religion? Do you want people to know your child was the result of in vitro fertilisation or a total surprise? Do you know the baby’s gender already or are you having a personalised gender reveal down the line? Because those are all options.
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Alyssa Slatton, 24, didn’t choose any of the above. “My number one fear was announcing I was pregnant and then losing the baby and having to announce that,” she says. “I was high-risk from the get-go.”
Her Instagram grid didn’t feature any photos starring her baby bump. Pregnancy brought with it a fierce feeling of protection: she wanted to keep her unborn baby to herself and her husband for as long as possible. It all felt so intimate, Slatton says, and being more incognito meant she and her husband could delight in their changing family privately.
When their son was finally born, they decided to share the news. But not with the whole world. They posted a photo to Slatton’s private Facebook account.
Washington Post
