To Post or Not to Post, That is the Question

It’s been months since I considered writing a blog about social media pregnancy announcements. It’s been since June 12th, Maliyah’s due date, and the date we announced her existence (past tense) to the world. We did not make the decision to post about her lightly. In fact, months and months of discussions went into that post. If I’m completely honest, the conversation goes even further back, to October 2022 when we first found out I was pregnant.

Should we post, or should we not post?

If you are in your 20’s or 30’s, or if you have an Instagram or Facebook account, or if you just plain don’t live under a rock, you’ve probably been inundated with pregnancy announcements, gender reveals, birth announcements, or in some cases the hat trick – all three.

I am no stranger to social media, I have two TikToks, 4 Instagrams and 2 Facebooks. I used to post almost all of my meals to my stories. But with my pregnancy, I was terrified. This goes back to my post about superstitions, I was far too nervous to say anything on social media about my pregnancy at all and I didn’t want to hurt anyone. What if something went wrong? What if someone was struggling with fertility and my post made them cry? I posted exactly nothing about a pregnancy. In fact, I posted a blog in November where I talked about how my bucket list would need to go on hold “if” I got pregnant… but I already knew I was. I didn’t want to say anything and jinx it. I didn’t know what I would do about posting photos as I started showing, but I had already taken a step back from posting on my blog – that bucket list post was my ONLY post between October 2022 and July 2023. I figured I would do the same thing with Instagram and take a step back, or not post photos of myself. I posted a carousel of photos on Instagram from a wedding in mid-February where I was sort of visibly pregnant, but you could also have assume it was an unflattering angle or cut of the dress. I never said anything explicitly about it.

So, how do you announce your baby died, when you never announced she existed? Isn’t that crazy? Also, who wants to read about such a horrific loss? For some reason I felt like I wanted to tell people, but I couldn’t figure out why.

I had only one example to look to. I had a friend who had a pregnancy loss while I was pregnant. She posted about it as part of a larger social media post celebrating an anniversary. I was obsessed with that post. I read it 100 times. Eventually I asked her about it. I said, “how did you come to the decision to post this? And how did you decide when was the right time? What did your husband think of it?”

I asked that last question because Chris and I were not in agreement. He keeps things close to the chest. He doesn’t share anything about his personal life on the internet, and he certainly doesn’t share about such monumental and private things as this. I knew we disagreed, and we continued to have conversations about it.

I asked on multiple support groups what other people had done. Why did they tell people? Why didn’t they? When did they say something? Was it too late?

Some people said they needed to unannounce because they had already announced they were pregnant. We didn’t have this issue, since we never announced.

Some people said they announced to avoid questions about when/if they were going to have children. This was an interesting point I hadn’t considered.

Some people said they announced because they didn’t want people to assume their next pregnancy was a first pregnancy.

Some said they felt they needed to share about their loss because it was far too heavy of a burden to carry alone. This resonated deeply with me. As the days kept coming and going, it felt like the lead bricks on my chest were growing and it was too much for one person to handle.

But had we missed our window? She died two weeks prior. Four weeks prior. Two months prior. Would people even care? Should I share about her on our one-year anniversary, when I thought we’d have a growing family? Should I share about her on my birthday, when she was the only thing I could think about as my biological clock was ticking forward at a furious pace?

Here’s the thing: there’s no good time to tell the world about your dead baby.

I agonized over this constantly. Why did I feel such a fierce urge to share about her? I decided I needed to answer that question before I answered the timing question. I also needed to decide what I wanted the world to know.

I considered posting as a cautionary tale. I felt a sort of obligation to warn people. I had been healthy, I had a textbook, sickness-free pregnancy, I had no symptoms, and yet I almost died! I needed to tell people! I wanted to scream “CHECK YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE AND INSIST ON PERIODIC BLOODWORK” from the rooftops. Eventually, I decided that what I wanted to share had nothing to do with me. Yes, I think more education is needed, but I didn’t feel an obligation or responsibility at that point in my depths of depression.

What I wanted was a place in the world for Maliyah. I needed her to have a tiny corner of the internet that knew she existed. I needed people to know we loved her and would continue to love her. I needed people to see her tiny footprints and to understand she was a person. This was not just something that happened to me, this was a person who existed, and now she was gone. I wanted people to understand that Chris and I were not the same people anymore because the most important person in our world was no longer in this world.

For all of those reasons, I decided to post on her due date, the day that was supposed to be her birthday. I needed there to be a post only about her – a reserved spot just for her, on a day that was already reserved in my brain for her.

When I finally posted on Instagram and Facebook, I was relieved. She had a spot. Losing a child is so lonely. It feels like nobody in the entire world understands, or cares as much as you, and they never will. Even if only for one second of one day, I knew by posting on social media, people would see her name, know how much we cared about her, and perhaps pause for a moment and think about her. For Chris and me, those moments were all day every day, but for a brief moment in time, she would be on someone else’s mind.

But unlike when you post something amazing on Instagram and you sit there waiting to watch the likes and comments roll in, I couldn’t face the comments. I clicked “post” and immediately went to the gym where I locked my phone in a locker for 75 minutes. I was fearful of the pity. It wasn’t about me, after all. My therapist advised that “pity” could be reframed as “empathy” and perhaps people cared about me and that’s why they would extend sympathies. Maybe that was true, but I assumed as soon as I pressed “post,” there would be a game of telephone that started with, “OMG did you hear what happened to Emily?”  

Overall, I was happy I posted about her on social media.

Meanwhile, I continued to see an onslaught of pregnancy and birth announcements on Instagram. People had so much hope and surety they would have alive babies. It seemed like there were ultrasound photos or onesies or bump pics every time I clicked on the Instagram app. I knew every permutation of these announcements:

  • A. The collection of onesies with the parents’ hobbies/sports teams/funny puns laid out on the floor.
  • B. The ultrasound photo
  • C. The letterboard announcing Baby Smith and a date (with certainty!) of when they would be born.
  • D. The family pet with a personalized bandana.
  • E. The living child wearing a “going to be a big brother!” shirt.
  • F. All of the above.

My gut-reaction every time I saw these was disgust and anger. How could the world keep spinning? How could people get pregnant so easily? How could people just… be sure their babies would be born alive? Didn’t they know what could happen??? How dare they have such confidence.

I started to think about this all the time and I realized the anger was just jealousy. Not jealousy about their babies or their pregnancies, I didn’t want their kids, I wanted mine! The one that was dead. I would scroll through the comments and see the hundreds of “congratulations” the “you’re going to be such great parents!” the “I can’t wait to meet them!” the “this is so exciting!” the “I knew it!”

I missed out on that. I missed out on all of the positive thoughts and excitement, and I found myself in a deep pit of regret. Why had I been so hesitant to share our joy? All I was left with was a cautionary tale and a hundred “I’m so sorry” comments or “I don’t know what to say” or “this is horrible.” And it was. And it is.

I felt sadness compounded on sadness. I try very much not to have regrets, but if I had to say one regret of my entire pregnancy it was this: I wish we had taken the opportunity to celebrate while we could. I was consumed with worry, and I didn’t allow us the space to have joy, and there’s no do-overs.

I had this regret almost immediately, even before we posted about Maliyah’s death. I wished for a redo. I wished we could have been happy before we were devastatingly sad. I remember calling my pregnant best friend and through snotty tears, telling her I saw a repost on her stories of her with a bump (which had also cried privately about) but I had noticed she hadn’t put anything on her feed. I was worried she was doing this to protect me. I didn’t want her to dampen her joy because of my sadness. It wasn’t fair to her. I hadn’t allowed myself to be happy (certainly not publicly) and I regretted it. I didn’t want her to make the same mistake. Of course, I said it was up to her if she wanted to mention anything on social media, it’s a personal decision, but I didn’t want her to base it on me. I told her not to worry about me seeing anything, and I had her account muted because I wanted to make the decision about when or if wanted to see it, but this was my issue, not hers, and I wanted her to feel comfortable sharing whatever she wanted to share.

When I spoke to another pregnant friend recently, she mentioned she wasn’t planning to post on social media about the baby. She knew many people in her life who struggled with infertility and had devastating endings to pregnancies, plus she had me. She said she didn’t know who else was hiding in pain as well, and she didn’t want to contribute to that. She explained that for those reasons, and because of her own “what-ifs,” she wasn’t planning a post. I told her I could relate, but then I admitted my regret to her. I told her how I wished I had made a different decision, but it was too late. I told her to bask in her joy and excitement because you never know when it will be taken away. She ended up telling me I convinced her to change her mind.

But I understood her hesitancy. I also had friends I knew who struggled to get pregnant, and friends who had lost babies. When I found out I was pregnant, I didn’t want to push my happiness in their face. And now, I have regret for that. For prioritizing my friends’ emotions over my own, and for letting my worries shroud my happiness in clouds of anxiety.

I want to make sure I’m clear here, I think it’s important to look out for your friends and to not do anything with intentional malice. But there are always people in the world who are struggling and may find your posts triggering, whether it is about babies, parents, siblings, work, food, really anything. As a human, you should always balance the feelings of others with your own. But you also cannot take responsibility for each person’s struggles. First of all, many may be invisible. There is no way to know if something you post may hurt someone with a silent struggle. It is also important to live life for yourself, and to take control of your own story, both in the real world, and online. While I regret not sharing about my pregnancy, I cannot change the past.

I have mentioned before that social media sometimes feels like a highlight reel, and for that reason, I plan to make a conscious effort to share authentically here, and link these posts on my Instagram. This blog has quickly become heavy and dark, which is mostly because a majority of my life in this moment feels that way. But I want to also make a commitment to myself to share the moments of joy. There are so few, and they can feel fleeting. They deserve to be celebrated.

You may have assumed this post would end with an announcement. Well, it’s not going to. You may also be wondering if this means I’ll share publicly and early about a next pregnancy, and I’m not sure. To be honest, that’s none of your beeswax. But I have a feeling I will do things differently, and I promise if I do decide to share anything, I’ll take you along for the ride.  

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Highlight Reel

TW: Pregnancy Loss

Last week I talked about social media and how I have been taking a break to get away from the “highlight reel,” which constantly makes me feel like my life is filled with lowlights. This week, I wanted to switch it up and show you some of my own highlights.

I want to be clear that I’m not doing this to show you that I’m ok. I’m not. I also don’t want to give the impression that in these moments, I forgot about my daughter. I didn’t. But emotions are complicated and layered, and they don’t fit into an easy box. So many different things can exist at the same time: happiness and sadness, joy and anxiety, laughter and fear. That said, here are a few times I felt better than other times over the past 5 months. And for my parents, I included photos as #proofoflife. Sometimes I smile, and some of those times (not all times), it’s actually genuine!

(Friends, family, if I have seen you in the past few months and you are not included in this post, please realize that it has nothing to do with you. It’s not easy to get out of my head and feel happy, so if my time with you is not on this list, I was probably having a bad day. There are more of those than good days. Sometimes I appreciate company on bad days even more than on good days.)

Speaking of highlights, my first positive thing that happened was getting my hair colored. For some reason, whenever I am going through some sh*t, I have this feral need to change my hair. I remember after my first horrible breakup I dyed my hair DARK to reflect my mood. This time, I was hoping for a fresh start, so I went super light blonde for spring. I’m including a photo here but don’t judge my ghastly dark circle eyes appearance, this was 3 days after leaving the hospital. You can see the full color transformation video from my stylist’s Instagram. #NewHairNewMe

I was looking forward to maternity leave and bonding with my baby. I was not looking forward to weeks on the couch recovering from a long hospital stay with no living baby to show for it. Two highlights from my recovery: gummy bears & a Friends coloring book. In those early days, I received cards and flowers and succulents, and ubereats gift cards, and all of them were appreciated. But I wasn’t really thinking about food in terms of meals. I was thinking more in terms of what I mindlessly put in my mouth while sitting on the couch barely comprehending Modern Family. I ate literally 10 pounds of gummy bears those first two months. Five pounds of those were sent from my friend who also sent comfy PJs. I lived in those pajamas for days on end while I consumed pure sugar. I wasn’t allowed to work out, and there’s only so much staring at the wall you can do, but I loved my Friends coloring book. It was mindless but it kept my hands busy instead of scrolling social media. Flipping through the coloring book and remembering all of the scenes where I had laughed out loud reminded me of some of the things I loved and found funny “before.”

Six weeks after losing our daughter, Chris planned a surprise staycation for us. We stayed at the Beekman hotel downtown and it was the perfect low-stakes way to have our first night out of our apartment together. We took a quick Uber ride downtown and it was as if we were transported to a different time. I didn’t have to sit at the same table where I was sitting when my doctor told me to come into the hospital. I didn’t have to stare at the empty spot in our living room where the baby swing had been set up. I didn’t have to look at my empty fridge door that used to be filled with ultrasound photos. I just got to sleep in a luxurious king size bed with the man I loved, eat delicious food, and be together. We came home from dinner (one elevator ride away) and put on the thick, plush hotel robes and watched Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. It felt so nice to get out of our apartment and have a change of scenery.

My first major outing after I came home from the hospital was to a Heat playoff game. I’m extremely lucky that one of my closest friends has amazing work perks, and one of those is VERY good seats to events. Since we are both big Miami Heat fans, and they happened to be playing in New York against the Knicks, she got amazing tickets. As I mentioned last week, it wasn’t without its anxiety and pre-outing worries (do I even bother putting on makeup when I’ve only cried once today so far?) but overall, I had a blast. I was able to have a few hours where I could focus on the game and remember what it was like to be out with a friend having fun. We went out for a drink after, and I made it through many hours in a row with company and no tears. I knew I was hitting my maximum of breakdown-free social interaction, so I left before dinner, but it was fun to dress up and leave the house again.

Somehow, throughout these past few months I have been #BookedAndBusy with my braiding side hustle. I am honestly extremely impressed with myself that I have been able to manage any of the jobs I took. The administration of back-and-forth emails, communication of rates, deposits, and then showing up on a specific date and time to carry out a task? Herculean. But I did it. Time and time again. I have had more than 20 clients and events this year. Every time I finish a job, I feel not only a sense of accomplishment, but I am so proud of myself for doing something I used to do with ease “before.” There is nothing like the look in a young girl’s eyes when she sees her hair in ribbon braids for the first time. Again, this hasn’t been without hiccups. Braiding adults and children ALWAYS leads to questions about whether or not I have kids and comments about how good I am with kids. I usually have to do serious mental pre-work before any kid’s party. I braided a mother and daughter for a family photoshoot just 6 weeks after I left the hospital. The topic of kids came up when I was braiding the mom and I was prepared. I said, “we just recently went through a traumatic loss but hopefully someday.” It was a succinct way to tell the truth, and it cut off any follow-up questions. Unfortunately, later when the dad came home with the daughter, he hadn’t heard that conversation and he also asked, talking about how great I was with kids. When I left that client, I was extra proud of myself for being honest, for holding it together, and for being professional. I felt like it was a highlight because it was the first time I told the truth and I felt good about it.

Last week I mentioned how fraught our Jamaica vacation was, but I didn’t mention the main highlight: our anniversary. Chris has been a rock for me these past few months, but as some books say, a grieving person is a selfish person by necessity. I haven’t had the capacity to look after anyone but myself for many months. I really wanted to do something special for Chris for our anniversary, but I knew I didn’t have it in me to order, buy, and hide a unique gift. I didn’t even pack for our trip until 10 hours before. But somehow, I had the idea to email the hotel and have them orchestrate an anniversary surprise. With a few emails back and forth, I paid for them to have champagne and a bubble bath in our room when we arrived. They went above and beyond, with chocolate dipped fruit and rose petals everywhere. It was a big highlight for me before I finally felt like I had done something for someone else, and I wanted to make sure Chris knew how much I appreciated him.  

The next week was my birthday. I won’t say my birthday itself was a highlight, I was a mess and I cried that morning after I went to the gym. But my parents decided to come into the city to visit that day, and Mother Nature showed off. My birthday can be extremely hot, but this year it was sunny and bearable! My sister hosted a Memorial Day BBQ, so my parents and husband and I walked up to my sister’s place along the Hudson River. It was so nice to show my parents my usual walking route, to be outside, and to have a brief distraction from the fact that I wasn’t 38 weeks pregnant. I always feel proud and happy when I can show people the little things I like about New York (hint: it’s not the crowds or the traffic).

Chris and I love to celebrate our many anniversaries. Ok, maybe only I love to celebrate them. For our wedding anniversary we were in Jamaica, but for our meetiversary Chris scheduled another surprise trip. This was his belated birthday present to me, and we went to Chicago for the weekend. The timing was perfect because it was also Father’s Day weekend, which we were happy to have a distraction from. The entire weekend was a highlight. We stayed in beautiful hotels, we ate AMAZING food, and again, the weather was absolutely perfect. We got to do our favorite activity together, Segways! Since we had done them a few times before, we wanted a unique experience, so we did a night tour and got to see fireworks. It was a blast (literally).

Slowly but surely, I’ve been getting myself back into the world. I’ve been trying to socialize in safe spaces, which is often with family. Many highlights have been just going on walks with my sister. Doing nails. Talking about normal things without having to act. Two weeks ago, I went to my great aunt’s 90th birthday party. It was so nice to see family. It was not without a breakdown in the middle of the luncheon (why did I bother wearing makeup!?) but overall, I was so happy to see family I hadn’t seen since before Covid. This past weekend, I went to Texas to visit my nephews and in-laws. It was so refreshing to spend a weekend with family having fun. Sitting in my apartment makes my mind wander, and it is usually not to bright places. In Texas, my brother-in-law, a two-time-purple-heart Army vet, took me to the shooting range because he said I needed to “let off some steam.” Concentrating on a target and learning a new skill left no room in my head for other thoughts. What a rush. I came home feeling lighter than I have in months. Being with family, going bowling, getting blizzards at Dairy Queen, I felt like I did last year.

Writing these blogs has been interesting for me, because I have had a chance to reflect on both the good and the bad. There have been both, and sometimes at the same time. I’ve been writing a lot, and I already know that the blog I will publish next week is a doozy of reality, and it’s not uplifting. But between those moments, there have been good ones. Sometimes I have to look harder for them now, but they’re there. Here’s hoping for many more bright spots and highlights in the future.

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Social Media and Grief

TW: Pregnancy Loss

I’m on social media hiatus. I know it’s hard to believe, but Little Miss 4 Instagrams, 3 Facebooks, and 2 TikToks has gone dark. I haven’t been on the apps in almost 2 weeks, and I have to tell you, I feel free and light.

I’ve taken a break one other time since my loss and it was around Mother’s Day. I left social media for 5 days and felt great about it, and then the moment I opened Instagram for the first time I was bombarded by yet another pregnancy announcement. I regretted it immediately. Of course, the ultrasound and bump photos are extraordinarily terrible, but it’s not just that, it’s everything.

I remember a few months ago, I mentioned to my therapist how tired I was. She asked me if I was sleeping well, and the honest answer was, I was sleeping great! More than ever (hello… no baby to wake me up!), and with amazing quality. She dug into my statement a little more, and asked if I was tired like sleepy tired, or something else. I had to think about it, but the reality was, I was just mentally exhausted. Something people don’t talk about enough is that grief is extremely exhausting. There was the anxiety piece – I was always worried that something I didn’t want to talk about would come up – and there was the fear that no one understood me, but there was also the main problem: it takes an exorbitant amount of energy to “act fine.”

When I explained to my therapist that I was mostly tired of pretending I was ok, she again pushed and asked why I was pretending. Part of it was that I felt no one wanted to be around the “sad girl” and I had already lost so much, I didn’t want to lose my friends, too. Another small part was that I was hoping I could almost will myself to be ok, in a “fake it ‘til you make it” mindset. But the main part was, I felt like I was the only sad person in the world. It seemed like everyone else was happy and thriving, and I was… not.

In May, Chris and I went to Jamaica. We took some photos, although nowhere near as many as usual. I could have posted the picture of my nails around my pina colada in the pool. But the truth of that photo was that I was crying behind my sunglasses because I saw a pregnant friend on Instagram, so I was staring blankly at my Kindle and I couldn’t process the words. I could have posted the view of the 5 pools at the resort, but the truth was that I was barely functioning, staring at the water thinking only that we wouldn’t have been at that resort or looking at those pools if I was 37 weeks pregnant like I was supposed to be. My main activity during vacation? I had telehealth therapy twice while we were there.  I thought about posting a selfie of us on the shuttle to the airport and captioning it “can’t wait to sleep in my bed,” but the truth was that an old friend texted me that morning while we were at breakfast to “check on me and the baby” and I cried when the TSA agent asked me to open my passport to the photo page. I couldn’t stop crying until an hour into the flight, and the reality was, I “couldn’t wait to cry in my own bed,” not sleep in it. I struggled posting anything happy on Instagram, because I knew how unrepresentative it was of the whole picture.

I realize that Instagram is a “highlight reel,” and people are showing only the best parts of their lives. The app literally has a feature on your profile for “highlights” and no one is ever talking about lowlights. There have been some ups and some downs in the past few months, but it feels fake to talk about the ups, when the downs are so far down. For example, I went to multiple Miami Heat Playoff Games, but when I see those photos, I remember debating whether I could put on mascara or if I would cry it off. I once was talking about social media with my sister-in-law, and she said, “of course everything on my Instagram is fake and highly curated.” But I never ran my social media like that. I tried to be as real as possible, showing highs and lows in my stories, complaining about the dentist, showing my gross sweaty self while waiting for the subway in the summer, not putting filters on my face, etc. I knew I was in the minority, and it became even more clear when I was seeking to find anything real or any sort of struggle as I was dealing with my own, and I couldn’t find it anywhere.

When I explained to my therapist how tired I was of acting fine, she encouraged me to “bring people into my grief.” She said that real friends would be there with me if I invited them in. She gave me some homework to try and make a genuine connection and open up with a friend. I tried, and you know what, that b*tch (my therapist) was right… to an extent. I hate when my therapist is right, but unfortunately it happens a lot.

Chris and I eventually decided to share about the loss of our daughter on social media, and I was ready for empty platitudes and stupid replies, but I found that was not the response. Most people said what they could, because what could you say? I have a blog coming soon on what to say and what not to say, but the reality is, nothing helps. A few people said “Congratulations,” so I recommend reading the caption before commenting, y’all. (“Congratulations” definitely doesn’t help.)

It was relatively cathartic to come out of hiding with my grief. I found that people were willing to share things with me one on one. Sometimes on the very same app where they were posting happy smiling kids and spouses, they opened up to me in my direct messages that those same smiling kids were sick and up all night. Or they had 2-month NICU stays. Or their happy family actually had a member who was struggling with deep depression. Or despite their 2 happy kids on the ‘gram, they had 2 pregnancy losses before them. I started to feel a bit less alone, but I still couldn’t get over an overwhelming feeling of fakeness.

I was working so hard to be authentic, to open up my whole self and show my hurt, my depression, my endless tears and panic attacks at doctors. And then I would go back to the main feed and I saw highs and highs and more highs. I heard all of the “right” words in private conversations, but no one was sharing the way I was. I found out that someone was hiding a pregnancy for months while at the same time, I was throwing my heart on the table. I wasn’t able to balance what I knew to be true through conversations, and what I saw in those happy smiley photos. I knew I needed a break.  Sharing things is a delicate balance, and some people are far more private than me. I wear my heart on my sleeve, and often expect the same in return. Unfortunately, social media doesn’t work that way. People share what they want, when they want, in the way they want.

I was recently journaling trying to figure out what I needed in friends, whether it is coworkers, super tight best friends, acquaintances or Facebook “friends.” I came to the realization that I need people I can relate to, people I have things in common with, and people I can feel like I’m in a relationship with 2-way sharing on similar levels. I am fine with surface-level pleasantries and highlight reel-type interactions from people if I do the same toward them. My real struggle is when there is an imbalance, and when I feel like I open myself up to a person and it isn’t reciprocated.

I realize this is a hilarious oxymoron, as I am currently pouring my heart out on a blog that is read by over 100 people, but often gets 0 comments. Writing on a blog feels different than social media because I am writing into blank space. I don’t need a reply, and I don’t need to see anyone else’s thoughts or “perfect” lives. There is an understanding that a person is reading this only if they want. Social media feels like a constant imbalance where I am pushed things I don’t want or need to see. I am sure that I will eventually be back on Instagram and Facebook, maybe even tomorrow if I’m driven to it, and I’m sure I will see things that upset me. My hope is that I’m able to find genuine connections, as well, to balance these surface-level ones. While some people are extreme introverts and are ok without deep connections on a regular basis, I know I am not that person. I crave closeness from others, and I have been working hard to find people who I can relate with, share with, and who I feel will share back. It’s a work in progress, but for me, I know I need that balance before I can dive back into social media.

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