How to Avoid Oversharing on Social Media as a New Parent
Parenthood is an exciting time, especially for first-time moms and dads. You’re learning and experiencing new things every day. You’re in a weird, perpetual world of fatigue, admiration, and joy. Your baby has the most perfect burp! You will want to share every wonderful moment with your friends and social media has made that easier than ever.
However, new parents have a tendency to overshare on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and whatever else you’re using. Here’s how you can avoid being that parent.
Do not share your child’s bathroom habits.
You are the only person in the world who finds the consistency, frequency, color, and shape of your child’s bowel movements endearing. No matter how funny, inspiring, or lovable a diaper-related event may be, you’re still talking about human waste. Save those stories for your small circle of friends who you’re sure will laugh along with you.
Don’t share every photo you take.
These days photos are easy to take, edit, and share. We carry a camera in our pockets all the time and they easily integrate with our social media profiles. This turns new moms into shutterbugs. By all means, take as many photos as you like for your personal collection, but avoid sharing anything but the best shots. If you share too many photos, people tend to stop looking, and that means they’ll miss your great ones.
Don’t share every step you take.
Your first few months of parenthood will be full of chores and sleepless nights. You’ll be doing a lot more than you’re used to. New parents often make tweets or statuses that go something like this: “Folded laundry, made dinner, swept the kitchen, read a bedtime story, and had a glass of wine! So busy!” You don’t have to inform the world how busy you are every day – it’s exhausting!
Do not share photos of your delivery.
Yes, childbirth is natural, and yes it’s a wonderful experience that should be celebrated. Even if you are comfortable exposing your bits to your social media network, many others are not. They probably won’t speak up, they’ll just block, restrict, unfollow, unfriend, or otherwise censor you so they don’t have to deal with it. These sort of sensitive photos can certainly be shared, but you should do so one a one-by-one basis, individually with people you know will appreciate them for their beauty.
Take an interest in other people.
If you expect people to respond to the praise and admiration of your own child, you have to return the favor. After all, social media is for interacting with your friends and family, not validating your own feelings. Be social and try not to measure you and your child’s accomplishments against other people. Remember that social media is akin to a highlights reel of someone else’s life. They rarely show you the bad.
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Written by Stephanie Parker from Sleepingbaby.com, inventors of the Zipadee-Zip
The motto for Sleeping Baby, makers of the Zipadee-Zip, is: "Inspiring Dreams One Night at A time," and that, in a nutshell, is how it all started…with one little dream that has since become the Parker family's reality. When Brett and Stephanie Parker's daughter, Charlotte, was born, the feeling that welled up inside of them was indescribable; they never realized until first looking into those baby blues of hers that they were even capable of that kind of love.
When it was time to transition baby from swaddling, the Parkers tried every sleep sack on the market and every swaddle weaning trick they could find for nearly two weeks and nothing worked to get baby Charlotte to fall and stay asleep.
Stephanie became determined to restore sleep and sanity to their household and set out to find a solution that would soothe Charlotte's startle reflex and provide her the cozy womb-like environment she loved so much but still give her the freedom to roll over and wiggle around in her crib safely. Out of sheer desperation and exhaustion, the Zipadee-Zip was born. The first Zipadee-Zip(R) Stephanie put together on her little sewing machine worked like magic!
To date tens of thousands of Zipadee-Zips have been sold and all from word-of-mouth marketing. It is so rewarding for the Parkers to see other parents and babies getting the sleep they both need and deserve!
For more information, visit sleepingbaby.com.
Interested in writing a guest blog for Sleeping Baby? Send your topic idea to pr@sleepingbaby.com.
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