8 Rules For Sharing Ultrasound Pictures On Social Media, Because #PregnancyProblems
bySabrina Joy Stevens
Few things about pregnancy are more exciting, and terrible, than ultrasounds. After discovering that you’re becoming one of those "people who make people," and having your whole internal world turned inside out, ultrasounds give you a chance to actually look inside your body and witness the wondrous little being responsible for all that physical chaos. If you’re like any other good millennial, diligently sharing photos of every snap-worthy meal before you eat it, seeing photographic proof of your reproductive prowess certainly registers as a BFD, and something to share with friends and family via the internet. However, before you do, please consider a few rules for sharing ultrasound pictures on social media.
Make no mistake (and I mean this with nothing but sincerity) you should absolutely feel ridiculously, massively proud of the fact that you are making people. Yes, billions of other people have done it before you, but it’s a freaking miracle every single time it actually happens. The day we lose sight of the wonder of this process, is the day we lose touch with our humanity and with what it means to appreciate life itself. However, there's no denying that ultrasound pictures occupy this weird and emotionally fraught social space, where they’re actually still relatively new in the grand scheme of things so we’re not quite sure about who should and shouldn’t see them, and social media is definitely still pretty new in our social history so we’re still figuring out the norms around how we use it to communicate about major events. So already, that’s just a lot of new stuff colliding with a really important moment in your life, when you’re already prone to emotional (read: hormonal) fits and breakdowns. (Admit it, every third commercial on TV makes you cry now. I see you.)
So, if you’re going to post your ultrasound photo on social media, and I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t, make sure you edit off your name and medical facility, double (and triple) check your privacy settings, and then consider taking the following advice: