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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to think if you're going to update your fb status during labour..

107 replies

judgeypantaloons · 09/01/2011 10:24

you should try not to be too vague?

A work colleague was induced early yesterday morning. About an hour ago, she posted her first post in labour: she "feels like she is in someone else's bad dream".

Having close family experience of stillbirth, I felt absolutely sick to read this. I don't know her that well, but had this awful sinking feeling.

Cue a lot of comments from her other fb friends clearly indicating worry e.g. "thinking of you", "hope you are safe and well","hope all is okay?" etc

10 minutes ago, update from her husband: "Good luck love, I'm off home, have left you money for the taxi, no need to get cash out".

a) Ill-advised to discuss labour like this
b) Husband is a twat.

AIBU?
So I am assuming that no catastrophe has occurred.

It all seems horrendous to me.

OP posts:
usualsuspect · 09/01/2011 13:34

Yes I understand that fb is more personal ..but people use it in different ways ...I very rarely update my status but don't have a problem with people that do

JamieLeeCurtis · 09/01/2011 13:34

usualsuspect - I don't use FB, because I don't think I could accept that

QuintessentialShadows · 09/01/2011 13:35

I agree with the op, in Principle. It is attention seeking, and smacks of WANTING the facebook friends and family to be worried.
When you are in labour, you are not really contactable, people dont call up and say "hey pet, whats up?" because you are in hospital, and they dont want to disturb. Anything can happen.

Say you are taking part in a mountain bike ride in the Rockies, and everyboyd knows it is challenging, and you post midway throug saying "I feel like I am in somebody elses worst nightmare", people wont just assume your legs are aching, they will automatically assume you have had a really bad accident, as why else would you post?

Labour pain is to be expected, you dont need to facebook about it, it is therefore ridiculous that you do. Aching legs during a bike ride is to be expected, you dont blurt this out to the world, it is par for the course! So, any such update, would automatically make a lot of people who cant contact you, feel worried about you.

wannaBe · 09/01/2011 13:35

buzz, can you imagine if I'd posted:

"Ibu to delete someone from fb because I don't want to read about their premature, dying baby in scbu?" Oh yes, I'm sure that would have gone down well. Hmm

And the thing is, lots of people had hidden her updates precisely because they didn't want to read them - some of those people were even friends of hers but felt her constant updates on fb were just too much. And so when the baby was born, instead of calling her friends to tell them, she put it on fb, thinking that everyone would read it, but because so many had blocked her updates, they didn't. As for me - I generally tune them out when they're dull and so it was only by chance that I saw the baby had been born and the subsequent updates. But I couldn't really stop reading - what if the baby had died, it felt uncomfortable reading about it not because I didn't want to know, but because we are not at a level where I would have been one of the ones she would let know if she didn't have fb, iyswim.

The point I am making is that people have lost the art of actual communication. We don't talk to each other - someone posts about their life on facebook, and if you're not on facebook then you don't know about their life. Even you said that you only have people on fb who you could text - text? what happend to the art of picking up the phone and ringing someone?

And why do people feel the need to make their lives so public even to people who in all honesty aren't that signifficant a part of their lives?

BuzzLightBeer · 09/01/2011 13:35

well thats plainly ridiculous isn't it? " I have friends I don't like and don't really want to hear about, but its I have to have them" You really don't, or if you choose to do it that way you can't really complain about their updates. They are talking to people they think want to hear it, not their fault you don't.

Friends, not "friends" I would have thought. I don't know why you would bother doing it that way, whats the point?

QuintessentialShadows · 09/01/2011 13:36

And to add, I am sure her husband felt embarrassed with what she wrote in her update, and wanted to downplay it in a really humorous way.

sungirltan · 09/01/2011 13:38

sigh. i think its a bit sad to update fb during labour. being in labour is pretty epic and lifechanging and imo private! fb is just bf - its not compulsory. but then i am one of those who thinks posting immediate post brith pics on fb is just inappropriate too

JamieLeeCurtis · 09/01/2011 13:40

I agree again Wannabe - even the concept of "friends" annoys me - real bastardisation of what a friend is. Teenager amassing as many "friends" as they can

Original poster
judgeypantaloons · 09/01/2011 13:41

Buzz, I have associates and colleagues that I don't want to share every detail of my life with, or hear every detail of theirs. Some of these are on fb.

I do not dislike this girl. We share pleasantries in a work context and have sat next to eachother at work do's etc. I will cough up the requisite amount of money to buy her a baby gift or leaving gift if she one day moves on.

If you truly believe that "friendship" on fb - or in real life, for that matter - does not involve social contact with people who are within your social network but whom you would not choose to holiday with or have dinner with at your home or with whom you would care to share the details of your most recent gynaecological exam, you are taking a most literal standpoint.

There are levels of "friendship" but only the closest of these really warrant the sharing the most intimate and personal details of one's life.

I note that you still haven't offered an opinion on the actual topic. I have seen you on other threads, and this appears to be what you do. Each to their own, as you might say.

OP posts:
usualsuspect · 09/01/2011 13:42

JamieLeeCurtis ...if it ever gets to the point where fb pisses me off I won't use it either ..I use it mainly to play bejewelled blitz anyway Grin

Original poster
judgeypantaloons · 09/01/2011 13:42

*nor not or

Hmmm, QuintessentialShadows.. you might be right! That's an interesting spin on it, actually.

OP posts:
JamieLeeCurtis · 09/01/2011 13:44

Am seriously concerned when my DS want to use facebook that my ranting will become counter-productive (must try and "get with it")

MrsBonkers · 09/01/2011 13:53

Those that matter don't mind
and those that mind don't matter.

YABU

Panzee · 09/01/2011 13:59

I would have used Twitter for a labour update I think. Although I had an elective section so there wasn't really time.

ILoveItWhenYouCallMeBoo · 09/01/2011 14:05

i think the only thing that can be taken from this is teh realisation that tehre are as many different ways to use FB as there are members of FB and that when we don't like how someone is using it, it is only OUR OWN opinion and they are quite entitled to use it on the loo, in bed on the tube, in labour etc there is a 'hide news' facility for anything you don't particularlly liek and we can also delete people if it is a very big deal.

i personally don't see a problem with what this girl has done, in my own head i can imagine her having a breather between nightmare contractions, her husband has left and she want's to rant at not anyone in particular, FB allows her to do this. i accept that others have trouble understanding why she would even want to do this.

Original poster
judgeypantaloons · 09/01/2011 14:09

MrsBonkers, yes. Indeed. Let's all scratch our bums and eat open-mouthed and be Very Loud and not bother with cards or presents and ridicule the disabled and make racist jokes and beat our children.

Those that matter don't mind
and those that mind don't matter, after all.

Who needs social convention?

OP posts:
Original poster
judgeypantaloons · 09/01/2011 14:11

(Incidentally, I am not mentioning the above in relation to this specific issue, merely that "those that matter don't mind and those that mind don't matter" seems to me to be a get-out clause for doing anything that makes others uncomfortable).

OP posts:
Original poster
judgeypantaloons · 09/01/2011 14:18

ILoveIt, I can see that many would find it totally reasonable for her to post as she has done and that my interpretation is my own.

On the other hand, I don't accept what some have said that because you use a particular service voluntarily, this means that you can't dislike or react to aspects of it and comment on those thoughts without necessarily needing to cease your subscription.

I also think that the "anything goes" attitude that we are adopting with reference to the internet will trickle down into face-to-face interactions. I notice it with younger relatives: they will discuss really personal and intimate things at family dinners e.g. a cousin who told us, in front of her grandmother, that she had dumped her boyfriend as he wasn't "that sexually exciting".

I'm not saying the subject of this thread was the worst ever example of this, not at all. I have actually seen worse on my sister's fb page but thought little of it.. this intruded in a particular way upon me, perhaps reflecting my own feelings about birth etc.

I do think some degree of self-editing is wise in general, in fb as it is in life.

OP posts:
JamieLeeCurtis · 09/01/2011 14:22

judgeypantaloons, whilst I don't like to subscribe to a "we're all going to hell in a handbasket" philosphy in general, I do share your worry about how young people are learning to communicate.

ILoveItWhenYouCallMeBoo · 09/01/2011 14:25

well in an open family, i don't see any problem with gran knowing why X dumped Y Grin, it's not as if gran hasn't been there Wink

but i do accept your point, you pick your audience for such things. as i said i was texting in labour, i texted my aunt and my best friend, and i do see how that is different from FB where you can have hundreds of people that you haven't seen since school knowing how many minutes apart your contractions are.

working9while5 · 09/01/2011 14:43

OOoooooooooh, I think I may have seen a similar fb update... I wonder if it's the same one? Don't worry judgey, if it's the same woman, I don't know her that well either!

I think it's a very "first time mum" type of thing to do. I think that before you meet your baby, you have only a vague impression of who he or she is and if everything is progressing in a normal way, the labour experience is more about you than the baby.

So judgey's superstition about commenting on an labour that has yet to be completed resonates with me. I don't think I was too moany a sod in labour (hopeful emoticon) but I do think it was most definitely all about me.

I was also induced and, as sadly often happens, had the "cascade of interventions" that led to quite a traumatic forceps delivery that I have often mentioned on MN.
I too remember reading back over the earlier stages of my "labour diary" (yes, readers, I did have one Blush - but just for me!) and emitting a certain amount of wry, hollow laughter at - dare I say it - the smugness at how "brilliant" it all was. Cringe.

At the moment that things "went wrong" with the rush to theatre etc and - not long after - the emergence of a baby who did not cry on his own, it very much ceased to be all about me.

I can't help but think that next time, there will be no point where I feel I have it sussed (for good or for bad). I will be acutely aware that, really, for good or for bad you are there for an outcome and it's just something you have to get on with and apart from hoping that you see a healthy, pink baby at the end of it all, you are best not thinking too much about it.

Panzee · 09/01/2011 14:52

Somewhere - was it on MN? - related the story of someone posting as a FB update: "I'm 5cm dilated!" Someone (a man) had replied: Thank you for telling us how big your vagina is at the moment.

I think that reminded me about pregnancy, labour and how we don't always have to share all the details...

ILoveItWhenYouCallMeBoo · 09/01/2011 15:04

panzee that is a fab response to the update! Grin

Stangirl · 09/01/2011 18:49

Whilst I can still appreciate why that particularly worded update in the OP was unduly worrying I actually feel quite inspired to use fb for the delivery of next DC in July. It'll be elcs (i hope) so I can imagine a quick post beforehand along the lines of "Off to add to the population explosion in 30mins." Last time we had a picture of me, DP and DD in the delivery room whilst they were stitching me up within the hour in fb. Many people commented how serene and glamourous I looked (I was looking up from the table with my arm draped langorously over my head) - I explained it was the morphine.

MrsBonkers · 10/01/2011 01:20

Hang on - this thread is about FB isn't it? So my response was with regard to FB..
Some of the things you compared my post to are illegal and therefore a completely different kettle of fish.

Personally, I wouldn't have put the update she did, but I don't have a problem with it.

Silly me, I thought you asked if people thought you were being unreasonable and I posted accordingly - I didn't have a go at you.