pregnancy

No Effs to Give: On Body Image at Eight Months Pregnant

I recently posted a few pictures on Instagram from our babymoon in Thailand. A few people kindly commented on how confident I looked. At first I thought they were just being nice, but looking back at the photos, I can see what they mean.

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It’s true that I’m not self-conscious about my body or about how I look pregnant. It’s not that I look at my swollen belly and my stretch marks and think, “I’ve earned these tiger stripes,” or whatever it is the mommy bloggers like to say. I know I look huge. I am huge. But it’s also abundantly clear why I’m huge. And there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.

My confidence is that of a person who has zero effs left to give. And I realized that that is a far cry from who I was nine months ago.

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Back in January, I wrote this post about how very much I was struggling with my body. I had reached an all-time low, exhausted by self-loathing and feeling powerless to make any lasting change.

I spilled my guts about my desperation, and six weeks later I found out I was pregnant. Hilarious, God. Truly.

As you probably know, my initial reaction to the news was not positive. I admit, one of my first panicked thoughts was, “I can’t be pregnant now. I am the heaviest I have ever been in my life. I am going to be HUUUUGGGE.” I understand that extra weight and a changing body are a small price to pay for creating a whole new life, but at the time it felt like one more way my life was being taken from me.

Now here I am 8 months pregnant and it turns out that losing control has been one of the best things that’s ever happened for my relationship with my body. I have felt freedom from self-criticism and self-hatred for the first time since I was ten years old and became aware of my body as female and of all the expectations that go along with that.

Some pregnant women are filled with love and appreciation for what their bodies are capable of as they move through the stages of pregnancy. And yes, it is miraculous. But for the most part, I have not felt this way. Most of the time I feel this odd combination of being intensely aware of everything going on in my body while also feeling like a stranger in it. I feel every ache and pain and jab and stab acutely, and at the same time I have the sense that I am floating around inside of this vessel I do not recognize, just waiting to get my life back. While this distance from my body has been isolating in some ways, it’s been healing in others.

Let me be clear. I have not particularly enjoyed pregnancy. I do not feel beautiful, sexy, or powerful the way some women seem to feel during pregnancy. I don’t particularly likethe way I look pregnant and I definitely don’t like the way I feel. But I’m also not disgusted by my body the way I was pre-pregnancy. I just honestly don’t care.

For the first time in my life, what is happening to my body is really and truly beyond my control. I could eat organic kale for every meal and workout twice a day and I would still going to have this giant belly. Since there is nothing I can do to change what my body looks like right now, I have no brain space or energy to waste worrying about it.

My expectations of my pregnant body are so vastly different from what my expectations of my body have always been. As an adolescent growing up with the mixture of societal pressures and the targeted messages of purity culture, I was constantly aware of the wrongnessof my body. There was the shame of not being attractive enough, along with the shame of being inappropriately attractive. I felt the expectation to simultaneously figure out how to be thin, toned, feminine perfection, and to dress in way that protected helpless men from that thin, toned, feminine perfection.

As I got older, I stripped off some of the burdens of purity culture, but struggled as my weight fluctuated and my self-worth rose and fell with the expansion or shrinking of my thighs.

Now for the first time, my attractiveness is utterly irrelevant. I take up more space than ever before. People are hyper-aware of me and my body. And at the same time, I have never felt more invisible. I feel no expectation, from myself or from anyone else, to be attractive. My body is no longer an aesthetic object, it is pure function. I am an incubator. That’s all.

Of course, I don’t want to feel this way forever. I don’t want “mother” to become my identity. I don’t want to disappear. I want to walk down the street and have someone think (but maybe not say) “Daaaaayummmmn, girl!” But there are also things I hope I take with me from this time.

I hope my base level expectations of my body have permanently changed. Instead of valuing myself based on arbitrary measures of attractiveness, I hope my foremost expectation of my body is for it to be healthy and strong so that I can do everything I need to do. No more. No less.

I want to feel attractive again someday, but I hope that feeling is based on confidence and acceptance, not meeting an external expectation. I think it can be incredibly attractive for someone to say, “My body is just my body. I look how I look.” If I can accept without difficulty the fact that I have blue eyes and small hands, could I also accept whatever shape my body ends up being when this ride is over?

I don’t know what to expect or how things will change post-partum, but I’ll be sure to keep you updated.  Whatever the next part of the journey looks like, I kind of hope that I’ll continue to be fresh out of effs to give.

A Letter to My Daughter: You’re Not the Best and Other Things I Hope to Teach You

People like to write sappy letters to their unborn children. It’s a thing. I get it. There’s something all mushy gushy about imagining your little person and all your hopes and dreams for them. I too have some hopes for my daughter. Mostly I hope she’s going to be a badass baller with a mane of red hair. But there are also some things I really hope to teach her. I decided to share them with you I guess so you can start judging my parenting skills before I even start parenting properly? Or something?

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Dear Daughter (who has a freaking awesome name that I can’t wait to use), 

These are some things I hope you learn from my words and actions in the next 18 or so years. 

You are important. And so is everyone else.

You are fantastically gifted. You are treasured. You are infinitely adored. AND you are an oh-so-tiny speck in a great big universe. 

What I’m trying to say is that the world does not revolve around you, Darling. We live in constant balance between our own wants and the needs and desires of the people in our families, our communities, and the world. 

We are so blessed to get to be a part of this big messy world. But we have a responsibility to God, to nature, and to the other humans we share this planet with to recognize that we are not the most important beings in the universe. 

I want you to grow to understand that each person you come into contact with is important and is loved, whether they know it or not. And because of that, they deserve your respect and compassion, just as you deserve to be treated with respect and compassion. 

You’re not the best at everything. And that’s OK. 

I promise that I will always be proud of your efforts in whatever you do. I will be proud when they end in triumph, and I will be proud when you put your heart into something and fail. You do not have to be the best to have done well. You only have to have given the best of yourself in the trying.

I will try to teach you how to be genuinely happy to see other people come alive doing what they are good at. Even if you suck at it. Especially if you suck at it. Because then you will understand how to love people well when they are not good at the things that come easily to you.

Mom and Dad love you enormously and unconditionally. But we love each other first.

We have a history. 12 years together before you even existed. You were created out of our love for each other (and also a little too much fun in Vietnam, but that’s another story). You don’t have to be jealous of the love we have for each other or the time we spend together. It is our love for each other that will help us to love you well.  

It’s OK to be sad.

Sometimes, Mom gets sad, but it’s not because of you. Sometimes it’s not because of anything. Sometimes you might feel sad and not even know why, and that’s ok.

Our brains and our emotions are weird. They don’t always communicate clearly. Sometimes the feelings come before the understanding. Sometimes the understanding comes and the feelings show up behind schedule. Sometimes you just need to cry a little for no real reason. So cry.  And then take a deep breath, take a sip of water, blow your nose, and keep on going.

Lies are not cool.

From day one, one of my biggest goals as a mother is to never, ever lie to you.

Even if you ask about something difficult. Even if the answer isn’t what you want to hear. Even if the truth makes me look bad. Even if it means admitting that I just don’t know. 

I will not lie to you about how Santa gets around the world in one night or where babies come from or what it means to die. I hope that practicing radical honesty with you will help you to trust me and to extend that same level of honesty back and to know that nothing is off-limits. 

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And now, here are a few requests I have for you. Because it’s cool to put expectations on the unborn, right?

Try not to have stupid hobbies or interests. Please?

I hope you never feel constrained by the ridiculous notion that certain activities are gendered. There are no “girl things” or “boy things.” If you like playing with dolls, awesome. If you like catching frogs, also awesome. I hope as you grow that you will find yourself fascinated by things I’ve never even thought about. I want you to develop passions that challenge and inspire you. 

But for the love of goodness could you please not choose something stupid to put your heart into? Mostly I’m thinking of activities your parents will have to sacrifice all of their evenings and weekends to help you participate in while wanting to tear our own fingernails out. 

I mean, if cup stacking is what really, truly lights your fire, I will support you. But…I will also probably tell you that that’s an objectively stupid hobby. But like, nicely.

If it’s a dumb sport, you get a pass cause Dad and I made an arrangement a long time ago that if we ever had kids that were into dumb sports that would be his responsibility.

Please, please, please love books.

I’m just gonna say it, OK? If you don’t love books, we can’t be friends. 

Of course, I will still love you. I just won’t like you as much. 

Kidding. (Not kidding).

Just promise me you’ll try.

Love,

Mom

 

Adulting So Hard: In Which I Carry My Own Pee All Around Hong Kong

Today I went for my glucose tolerance test and a check up at the public hospital where I’ll be giving birth (in just 3 ½ months. Apparently.) I don’t have the results yet, but I’ve been assured that IF I have gestational diabetes, they’ll be sure to tell me. 

One of the amazing advantages of the public healthcare system in Hong Kong is that if you are eligible to use it (which I am) the services are either free or extremely affordable. These hospitals are very efficient and safe, but since the government is paying for everything, they are pretty stingy about providing any creature comforts…like, you know, urine sample collection cups. 

Each time I go for an antenatal check up, I have to provide a urine sample. By provide, I mean, I have to come in with a jar of pee in hand. I’ve been instructed that this must be first morning urine, so no collecting upon arrival. This has come to feel almost normal to me now, but I distinctly remember my first time.

I wake up and luckily remember to get that sample. I screw the lid on the newly christened pee jar and stick it in a Ziploc bag. Then I put that bag inside of an opaque paper bag so that no one can see what it is. Then I take PJ (pee jar) on a joyride through Hong Kong starting with two subway rides to get to my office. 

Since I’m not turning the sample in within an hour, I have to refrigerate it. I do not think any of my coworkers know what was in the paper bag in the back of the mini fridge that day, and I’d like to keep it that way. For all of our sakes.

After lunch, I take PJ on a long bus ride to the hospital where I check in, then queue up to turn in my sample and check my weight and blood pressure. At each stop of this assembly line, I have to present my appointment slip, ID card, and a card where the nurse will write down my weight, BP, etc., so I am holding all these things in my hands along with PJ inside of a Ziploc bag inside of a paper bag. I get up to the desk and have to juggle all of these papers and take out PJ and open the lid and set it all onto a numbered grid on the table without spilling any pee. (Hah.) 

I leave my pee and get in another line to use the scale. The scale is digital and announces your weight in a loud voice so the nurse can write it down without getting up from the desk where she is collecting urine samples and taking blood pressure. 

I take off my shoes and step on the scale. I am pleased to see that, being overweight before I got pregnant, I have not gained yet and am still at my pre-pregnancy weight which is announced by the loud computerized voice to the entire room of 15-odd pregnant women and nurses.

I get into line to have my blood pressure taken. Meanwhile, the woman behind me steps on the scale. Y’all, I am not exaggerating. She is visibly about 8 months pregnant. She is obviously quite slim normally, but is of average height, not just an exceptionally small person. She steps on the scale and the electronic voice belts out a number that is 50 lbs less than mine. 

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My self-satisfaction immediately disintegrates.

I go back to collect my pee jar. “Take it to the bathroom to empty it,” the nurse says. The nearest bathroom is outside of the waiting room down the busy hospital corridor. I try to juggle my papers, my full backpack, and my bags (plastic and paper) while screwing the lid back on the jar and getting out of the way as quickly as possible. Then, arms completely full, I start towards the hallway only to feel a slosh of slightly chilled pee trickle over my fingers. Feeling my gag reflex rising, I shoved my important papers into my armpit and tried to hoof it to the bathroom while fiddling with the lid, resulting in more pee-slosh. I slow to a waddle, trailing small drips of urine behind me the way my poor childhood dog Chloe used to do when she got scared. It is the ultimate walk of shame.

I am pleased to say that after many such visits, my technique has improved. Today’s interaction went off without a hitch. You know you’ve really nailed adulting when you can successfully navigate the healthcare system in a city of 7.5 million people who speak a different language from you without getting pee on anyone. 

Hashtag Winning. Hashtag Crushing It.

 

6 Lies Y’all Told Me About Pregnancy

I usually roll my eyes at “Things nobody tells you about x, y, z” posts. First off, they very rarely contain information I haven’t heard before. (Just because nobody told you something doesn’t mean nobody is talking about it. Maybe lots of people were talking about it and you’ve just never paid attention). I also usually roll my eyes at listicles. But…I still write a lot of them for my side hustle. So this post is a listicle, but it is not about things supposedly nobody told me. Instead this is a post about what I would like to call “Lies.” Mostly told to me by people like you. Possibly you yourself. (If you think it might have been you, you’re probably right). Fair warning…there’s some TMI here.*

Lie #1: “Morning sickness gets better as soon as you reach the 2nd trimester”

Liars go to hell! I thought benevolently, pouring sweat and streaming tears as I wretched into an outdoor public toilet at 16 weeks. My nausea and aversion to all food did dissipate between 18 and 19 weeks, but let it be known that that was 6 weeks past the date I had been promised my salvation. And I am one of the lucky ones. I have a friend who threw up every single day of her pregnancy and others who had to be hospitalized for dehydration. 

Lie # 2: “Your boobs will look amazing.”

First off, I’m not into big boobs on me. I find them annoying to keep covered and also think they make me look like a Pillsbury biscuit canister that has exploded and is oozing biscuit dough out of all of the crevices in the previously vacuum-sealed container. 

Second…this is clearly being spoken by someone who has only ever seen pregnant boobs in clothing. 

Early in pregnancy, your areolas get larger and darker, ostensibly to provide a “landing pad” for the baby to aim for when breastfeeding. In other words, my boobs now look like two pieces of salami ringed by a tiny rim of regular boob flesh which is mottled with bright blue veins and the beginnings of stretch marks. Additionally, my previously perky boobs now point straight down. So when I’m sitting down, I can rest my nipples on my belly-shelf. Sexy.

Lie #3: “Now that you’re in your second trimester, you are probably experiencing a sudden energy boost!” (Quoth “TheBump.com”)

False. If I could sleep 22 hours/day, I would. I am much more tired than I was in my first trimester. I may or may not have fallen asleep while teaching a class recently. (Don’t worry. I think the kids believed me when I said I was just thinking really hard).

Lie #4: “The sex is great!”

Also false. I mean, it’s not not great, but mostly, the sex is…complicated. Not only do you physically have to negotiate what works and what does not anymore with your constantly changing body, but also, it’s hard to feel sexy when your unborn child is kicking you in the vagina, reminding both you and your spouse of their presence there with you in your special moment. 

Another factor in this…grooming the lady bits becomes significantly more difficult when you cannot see them. Lately I’ve just been going at it blind, trying to use my intuition. My “Lily Tingle” if you will. (10 points if you catch the reference). Results have been…suboptimal.

Lie #5: “When your baby kicks it is the most magical feeling in the whole world”

I admit, I really like being able to feel the baby move and know it is OK. What I’m not wild about is feeling like there’s a basket of snakes moving around inside of me. 

When the movement is near the surface, it feels like involuntary muscle spasms. Like when you drink too much caffeine and your eyelid won’t stop twitching. Except much bigger. And in your abdomen. Not something to make me weep in wonder, but not a big deal. 

But when that kid goes for your organs? Uh-uh. My child believes in expressing themselves by alternately grinding a heel into my bladder and ultimate punching me down the vagina. I swear sometimes the shock waves radiate down to my kneecaps. If you have not experienced this, it’s like when you go in for a pelvic exam and the doctor hits a sensitive spot, but instead of pulling away, he punches you there. Sometimes I swear a little hand or foot is just gonna pop right out.

You say magical, I say akin to having a vengeful alien take over your body as its host and show no mercy. Tomato/Tomahto. 

Lie #6: “You might experience more vivid dreams”

Not a lie. Just not nearly warning enough.

After a friend showed me her engagement ring which had been custom-made from some family pieces, I dreamed that she had entrusted me with these precious family heirlooms and I had had them set into a diamond and sapphire encrusted molar. Yes, a molar. As in a tooth. I kept my fancy molar safe in the back of my mouth and then one day it fell out! And some of the stones came loose. I was distraught. My friend had entrusted the family jewels to me. What to do?! Luckily, I was able to track down the little old man who had made the molar in the first place and he successfully put the stones back. (Incidentally, he looked just like the guy who fixes Woody in Toy Story 2 complete with the big magnifying glasses). How I got the molar back into my mouth, I’ll never know. 

I also recently dreamed that my baby fell out. Like whoosh, just fell right out there. Fully clothed in a onesie. And I was just chilling there for a while and then remembered Hey, it’s not supposed to come out this early, I should put it back. And then I kept trying to put it back in there, but an arm or a leg kept falling out like it was a baby doll I couldn’t quite fit into the toy chest. And then I had an epiphany Wait a minute! You’re not supposed to put them back once they come out!  Then I started panicking about how early it was (I think I was 20 weeks at the time) and decided to take a closer look to see if it was OK. I took it back out and laid it on the bed. It was a completely normal-sized baby, except its legs were only 2 inches long. 

This is like every night, y’all.

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If you’re pregnant or have ever been pregnant, maybe you can sympathize. Or at least laugh at me. If you’re thinking of someday being pregnant, take this as an alternative truth, And if none of these things apply to you, I sincerely apologize for any damage this has caused your psyche. Just wait til I tell you about some of the unique experiences of being pregnant in Hong Kong.

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*Obligatory Disclaimer: I know that every body and every pregnancy is different. The liars are probably speaking “their truth” or whatever. And also, please note that I’m really not complaining. Much. I’m very thankful for a (so far) uncomplicated pregnancy. Please take this in the spirit it is intended. 

 

Thankful Thursdays Guest Post: For Antidepressants, and for Quitting Them

Are you as excited as I am for another Thankful Thursday? These posts always touch and inspire me and I love being able to share them with you. Today’s post is especially close to my heart because today’s writer is close to my heart. Laura and her husband Josh have been our closest friends during our two years in Korea. We had the great privilege of walking with them through Laura’s entire pregnancy, the birth of their first child, and the next year of transition into parenthood. This story touched me  because I was around to witness a lot of it, but also because I too have struggled with anxiety and depression and while I’ve never experienced the hormonal havoc of childbirth, I know what it is to have your mind and body betray you in frightening ways. I’m so thankful for Laura and her family and also for God’s work in her life through a very difficult and scary time.

For Antidepressants, and for Quitting Them

It was just shy of a year ago, as the clock struck one on a humid August night in Korea, that I birthed our beautiful daughter. My mom stood at one shoulder and my husband at the other and the doctor and nurses at my feet, all urging me to push as hard as I could after 24 hours of back labor had left me exhausted and whimpering.

Laura and Gen

Laura with one month old Genevieve

Then she was here, and she was perfect. I spent the next two weeks in a tired-but-wired state of attentiveness, Mom still on one side and Josh on the other, tirelessly supporting me in those early days of nursing and changing and cuddling and kissing this miracle, as I struggled to sleep when she slept and only managed about three hours out of every 24. Other than this, I felt like everything was going really well.

Until one morning a cloud descended. The adrenaline had run out, it seemed, and the rest of my hormones were going haywire in its absence. A few extra hours of blessed sleep did finally come, but it wasn’t enough. Something was wrong and it wasn’t just exhaustion. I had postpartum depression.

Except for how suddenly I crashed, it really wasn’t much of a shock. Throughout my teens and early 20s, I lived with low-grade anxiety, a constant tension in my tummy that I didn’t realize wasn’t normal till my chill-as-one-can-be husband came along and showed me how to relax. Then we moved to Korea to teach English, and the stress of doing a new job in a new country—and trying to do it perfectly—brought that anxiety back with a vengeance. This time depression came with it.

I limped through that year with copious amounts of pizza and beer and ice cream and TV (I know, I know), as well as a lot of prayer and care from Josh and friends and family. I did learn how to be a more effective EFL teacher and how to stop trying to be a perfect one, so things got better. But the lingering fatigue left me aching to go back home to Kansas, and we did, and it was good.

Fast forward three years to the August of our daughter’s birth, and we’d been back in Korea for almost a year. This time only Josh was teaching, and I was finishing up a low-stress pregnancy as a stay-at-home-mom-to-be, in a culture and with friends I was able to fully enjoy this time around. Some nausea and heartburn notwithstanding, I felt really good and right on track for an all-natural, “ideal” delivery and postpartum experience.

Maybe it was the intense back labor that kicked my body into high gear and kept it that way for those first two weeks postpartum until I crashed. Maybe I just didn’t prioritize sleep enough in those early days. Maybe I didn’t procure exactly the right nutrients to replenish my body and help my hormones rebalance themselves. Maybe I wasn’t getting enough sunshine and fresh air in our cave-like studio apartment at the end of a hot and rainy Korean summer. Maybe I was under spiritual attack in which evil voices whispered to me to toss my baby out our third-floor window so it would all just be over. Maybe it was some of all of these, or maybe I’m just wired for anxiety and depression, and there was nothing I could have done to prevent my curling into a ball day and night, my only real activities to nurse lying on my side and to choke down as much food as I could stand while my mom, husband and dad (who had since joined us) did all the diaper-changing, shopping, cooking, cleaning and loving on me and our sweet Genevieve.

Whatever the reason, it became obvious after two more weeks that fighting the PPD with food and sunshine and prayer just wasn’t cutting it (and the Lord knows we really tried). So on a rainy Wednesday morning my support group packed up me and our 4-week-old, and we all got on the bus to a mental hospital to ask for some antidepressants.

From here on out it is clear that I’m one of the lucky ones. Within days of starting a low dose of an SSRI that (please God, let it be true) seems to have done no harm to my nursling or me, my depression had eased and I was beginning to see the light. When Josh had to go back to work and my mom had extended her stay as long as she possibly could, my mother-in-law flew the thousands of miles to help us through the next few weeks, by the end of which even the anxiety had lifted and I was feeling downright happy. Our family of three started finding a “new normal” that involved leaving the house regularly, nursing in public on occasion and handling with relative serenity the caring, if nosy, advice of all the Korean grandmothers who treated us as their own.

The little white pills had pretty single-handedly brought me back to our world. So it was with intense gratitude (though certainly not always a perfect attitude) that I soaked up the next six months of motherhood while faithfully taking my meds each morning. And then spring came, and it was with cautious hope that I wondered if I might be able to wean myself off of them.

See, in addition to being a secretly anxious person most of my life, I have also been a not-so-secretly sensitive gal emotionally. I cry pretty dang easily, and while this is not always fun for those closest to me, my sensitivity and its related empathy feel like an important part of who I am.

But once on the antidepressant, I got to where I wasn’t crying ever, at all. And while no one else was complaining for sure, I missed being able to tear up during a touching movie scene or even break down a bit when something felt wrong in my world. So with the continued support of Josh and our loved ones both near and far, I decided to start cutting my dosage and see what happened.

Three months and just a few headaches and anxiety spells later, I am “drug free” and again one of the fortunate ones. It seems that my body just needed more time for the nutrition, sleep, sunshine, exercise, laughter, love and who-knows-what-else to help my hormones get back as they were meant to be, at least for now.

As an idealist, I wanted so badly to use only these “all-natural” gifts from God to bring about my healing (or even prevent illness in the first place), and it is possible I just didn’t figure out or follow through early enough with what could have allowed me to avoid the side effects and risks of manmade meds full of synthetic chemicals. But depression wasn’t waiting for me to fix things naturally, and I see the drugs as a stopgap measure, a less-than-sterile piece of cloth used as a tourniquet because you’d bleed to death waiting for a clean one to get on the scene.

I also see the hand of God behind this less-than-ideal means of grace. Even as I celebrate the fact that I don’t seem to need antidepressants anymore, I firmly believe that our Lord, who works in all the things of this broken world for good, can use even imperfect little white pills to fight the darkness and bring light.

And for that I am so very thankful.

Sweet Rhoades FamilyLaura Rhoades is wife to Josh, mom to Genevieve and photographer to women. Before moving back home in August to her hometown of Wichita, Kansas, she’ll be spending her final weeks in Korea singing karaoke, soaking and scrubbing at the sauna and scarfing down as much mul naengmyeon and bingsu as possible. You can find her online at www.laurarhoades.com.

Laura Rhoades is wife to Josh, mom to Genevieve and photographer to women. Before moving back home in August to her hometown of Wichita, Kansas, she’ll be spending her final weeks in Korea singing karaoke, soaking and scrubbing at the sauna and scarfing down as much mul naengmyeon and bingsu as possible. 

Does It Have to Be Public to be Real? Social Media And Authentic Community

Recently Jill Duggar brought down public speculation when she announced her pregnancy a mere two months after her wedding to Derick Dillard . She defended the purity of her relationship and their decision to announce their pregnancy at only eight weeks, saying, “Understanding that the majority of miscarriages happen within the first trimester, and believing that every life is precious no matter how young, we decided to share our joyful news as soon as we could.” Pro-life conservatives raved.

Jill Duggar

Photo credit: jezebel.com

Reading this story brought up two issues for me. First, her defense of her early announcement (and conservative reactions to it) implies that the reason others might choose to wait to make a public announcement of a pregnancy is because they don’t value the life of the child until they are past the stage where miscarriage most commonly occurs. For most people, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Many people choose not to publicly announce a pregnancy early on because they greatly value that life and having to share the grief of losing that life so publicly if something were to happen would be unbearably painful.

My other problem is something I touched on in my last blog post. I am uncomfortable with the implication that unless something is public knowledge, it isn’t being celebrated – at least not properly. Pro-life conservatives applaud Jill for making a statement about the value of human life from the moment of conception, but my question is why does all of America have to know about it for it to be valued?

In our technology-dependent world I wonder if we’ve come to rely too heavily on the response of others for affirmation of our own emotions and experiences. Many of us act like nothing we think or feel is valid unless someone else says it too or at very least acknowledges and affirms what we’ve said. I’m not saying this from a lofty place of judgment. I am a blogger. I want people to read what I write and validate me too. It’s because I see this in myself that I want to bring attention to it.

I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to share news on social media – to celebrate important moments in our lives or to seek encouragement in times of struggle. I just want to push back against the attitude I see subtly taking hold at times – even in myself- that real celebration can only happen in the public sphere.

I think there is something important about sharing God’s work with the people in our lives. I just don’t think that has to take the form of a public announcement. There are many benefits to social media and I don’t think it’s bad or wrong to participate in. The problem comes when we make social media a false substitute for authentic community. We deceive ourselves into thinking these people on Facebook and Twitter are our community, when, largely they are people who really haven’t earned the right to access our intimate thoughts and feelings. (And whom we haven’t earned the right to demand that they care about our intimate thoughts and feelings).

After reading my last post, the friend I wrote about in it sent me these thoughts. I had already written this post before she sent this and I loved how she put a lot of what I have been trying to say:

“Here’s the story: I’m not a super thoughtful, loving person. In fact, the main reason I did what I did was to avoid being a terrible hypocrite. After trying for a few months to get pregnant, we were told in December I have PCOS, a hormonal condition that makes it very difficult to get pregnant along with a host of other discouraging symptoms. Miraculously, we got pregnant that same month, only to lose the baby in February. Meanwhile, all our friends announced pregnancy or popped out kids. I was consumed by grief, but even more by envy. I unfriended or unfollowed people who I previously counted as good friends. And at least publicly, I suffered silently. 

So after countless doctor’s visits and fertility treatments when I finally got pregnant again and we managed to make it to the 12 week mark, how could I plaster my Facebook page with indiscriminate joy? I imagined myself reading my own page and crying herself to sleep every night, feeling that she’ll never be a mother. I couldn’t do that in good conscience, considering the miracle God had given me with this second baby.

My experience made me realize that Facebook is not a good place to share either joy or grief with other Christians. I don’t think the verses about mourning and rejoicing together refers to social media, I think it refers to real live relationships with other Christians. I poured out my grief and my joy in heaps on my closest Christian friends in all sorts of life situations, and all of them mourned and rejoiced with me. But Facebook is too contrived, too easy to manufacture. Not only that, but I never mourned on Facebook. I never announced my miscarriage. I never let social media see the reality of my suffering. So it feels very imbalanced, and very contrived, to ask Facebook to rejoice with me. Besides, only my friends and family who walked with me through my grief can fully celebrate with me in my joy. In just that handful of people I’ve received more than enough validation; I just don’t need any more from social media. 

Because really, are we looking for rejoicing and mourning with other Christians on a deep level when we post a status? Or are we just looking for the superficial validation of popularity represented by a number of likes?

I made an Instagram account solely for the purpose of sharing pregnancy updates for those who DO want to rejoice with me in that way. Also I send my mom, my sister in law, and a few of my best friends pictures of me in maternity clothes, weird craving updates, and ultrasound pictures nearly every other day. Even people who weren’t suffering would unfriend me out of annoyance if I thought it was appropriate to put all that on Facebook.  so not posting all that to Facebook doesn’t not equal not going crazy with joy in a community, mine is just a select community of those who don’t mind and understand the crazy.

I think [the problem] comes from this expectation to treat Facebook like a community, when really it’s more like a bulletin board. I’m sharing my pregnancy joy with my community, but not on Facebook, because the two are not synonymous. We should not feel shame about sharing either joy or sorrow with a community we trust, but Facebook is not a community. For people in our generation, sometimes it can be difficult to understand the difference.”

I thought her words expressed what I was feeling beautifully. I’m continuing to work through the question of how to balance rejoicing and mourning with others with sensitivity and compassion. I am finding that in my life that also means asking the question of who truly is my community and what role  the internet and social media should play as I seek to live out that question with authenticity.

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*As a disclaimer – I have nothing against Jill Duggar Dillard and I certainly think she and her husband are entitled to their own decision about what information to share and when. I really don’t have an opinion on whether she should or should not have announced her pregnancy so early. I don’t think it’s anyone’s business. My beef was purely with the responses I saw to her reasons.  I also think as someone who spent a lot of time in the public eye while growing up, Jill’s perspective on public and private information is probably different than many people’s.