The FB effect

First a quick update: I have made it through 11 weeks of pregnancy!  I still look pretty much the same as I did 6 weeks ago, although sometimes my gassy bloat makes me look like I'm showing... the way it did at the wedding I was at a week or so ago, and all my friends were rubbing my tummy...  Yeah, that's not weird at all.  I just let them think it was a miracle they were carressing, and not the burrito I had for lunch.  The morning sickness never got too terrible and I think it may be fading at this point.  I'm still really tired though, and I managed to catch a cold somehow so that's not helping matters.  And now it's like 178 degrees outside today, so I'm holed up in the coolest room in the house with the lights off drinking ice water.  This does not bode well for my productivity factor.

Okay, on with the show.

Over the past few weeks I've found out that like eight other people I know are pregnant.  Holy crap, everyone must have read Fifty Shades of Grey over the summer because I haven't seen a baby boom like this in years.  (And yes, I too read those books this summer.  Not that I attribute my condition to them, but they could have had a hand in it, who knows?)  As is the norm of late, many of these women have made announcements via Facebook.  Which is what brings me here today.

I always said I would never announce a pregnancy on Facebook.  My reason for that is solely because of my history with infertility.  Getting blindsided with pregnancy announcements as I casually scrolled through my newfeed always hurt.  And actually, it still does sting.  But I've given it a lot of thought lately, and I've noticed that it stings regardless of the way the information is conveyed - on FB, in person, via email or text... It's all the same.  For me I think it hurts because I figure those people don't ever have to consider what it might be like to always be on the receiving end of those announcements and never be able to make their own.  They always seem so carefree, almost flippant (especially those ultra-cheesy ones, like when there's an accompanying photo of a jar of pasta sauce).  So because those announcements have always stung me, I swore I wouldn't make an announcement that would sting anyone else.

There are a couple of problems with that promise, though.  For one, I didn't realize how excruciatingly tempting it would be, especially when so many others are doing it and you've waited so long to get your turn to do it too.  Getting - and staying - pregnant is a big deal, especially for infertiles.  Hell it's the one thing most of us want more than anything in the world, and lots of times the one thing we least expect will ever happen.  So doesn't that give us at least as much right as anyone else to shout it from the rooftops when it does happen?  I think so.  Absolutely.  But for many of us, the journey to that point has made us very sensitive to our audience.  And for those who didn't become so sensitive (I'm sure I'm not the only one who's seen an infertile post a pregnancy announcement to FB mere minutes after getting a positive pee test), us sensitive IFers can sometimes be not very forgiving.  *Ahem*  I am referring to myself, and the comments I've made to Hubs and others about how tacky and stupid it is to announce so soon when one should know better.

Another problem is how damn convenient a FB blast is.  Although most of my friends and all of my immediate family know I'm pg, I have a huge list of extended family members, a few other friends, and yeah, some acquaintances too, that I would like to tell.  This list is apparently too long for one email, as FB cuts you off from adding more names once you get to #65 or so.  Plus, if you try to go alphabetically, rather than typing in the whole name of a person you want to send a message to, it won't necessarily bring up everyone's names.  I think it goes by the people you communicate with the most.  And frankly, I can't remember each individual person who I want to tell off the top of my head!  My next thought was to create a list of friends who I thought might not appreciate seeing yet another pregnancy announcement in their feed (and any subsequent pregnancy-related updates), posting a status update announcement and hiding it from that list.  But 1. That just seemed wrong; maybe some of them actually would want to know, and maybe some others that weren't in the list wouldn't.  And 2. Most of those people already know that I'm pregnant anyway.

Is this making any sense at all?  I guess what it comes down to now is that there's no way for me to predict who will be happy vs. hurt by any announcement I made.  Even if I sent an email to only my family members, there might be someone who gets stung.  Even if I never made any announcement and just let the word spread, someone might get stung.  And even if I told everyone who already knows to keep it to themselves until the baby was born, eventually everyone would know I had a kid, and that could sting for someone too.

So what am I gonna do?  I still don't know.  Feel free to comment with your opinions on the subject.