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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

AIBU to be annoyed MIL shared scan photo?

67 replies

Dav87 · 23/01/2020 22:14

Thinking it may help to get some opinions from people outside of the situation...

We had our 12 week scan yesterday and we were so happy to find out everything was looking good and our baby was looking healthy 😊
We bought 4 photos of the scan and I gave one to my mother in law today. I looked on Facebook after work and she had posted our scan photo, even though we haven’t told a lot of people yet, including a lot of DH’s family and friends.

We haven’t decided if we are posting anything on social media at all yet, and if we do I would like to be first to do this!

I feel upset, and that what should be a lovely day of sharing our news with our close friends and family has been overshadowed by this - me and DH have fallen out because he says she didn’t mean anything by it and she was just excited.

MIL says she didn’t realise she had posted it 🙄

Now I’m upset me and DH have argued, and not sure if I’m overreacting 😥 Sometimes these bloody pregnancy hormones make me irrational! Am I? x

OP posts:

BorneoBabe · 25/01/2020 11:24

MIL says she didn’t realise she had posted it

She made it ten times worse by saying this.

DobbyLovesSocks · 25/01/2020 11:38

@BorneoBabe how? PP, including myself, have explained how relatives of ours have done things without meaning to on fb. OP of course has the right to be upset but her MIL may genuinely not have meant/realised what she had done.

venusandmars · 25/01/2020 11:40

In MIL's time there wasn't this kind of photo or social media. How is she expected to know the rules of 2020?

Also there was no 'gender reveal' or stuff.

Just put it down to being an excited grandparent. Appreciate her enthusiasm.

Besidesthepoint · 25/01/2020 12:02

Well, now you know who will be the last to tell when the baby is born and any other news.

Besidesthepoint · 25/01/2020 12:04

In MIL's time there wasn't this kind of photo or social media. How is she expected to know the rules of 2020?

In MILs time it was pretty normal not to tell other peoples private news till the OK was given.

OverthinkingThis · 25/01/2020 12:12

MIL says she didn’t realise she had posted it

That sounds like bullshit. But I'd be holding off sending her photos for a while and telling her she clearly needs to spend some time learning how to use Facebook before she can be trusted with more photos.

MintyMabel · 25/01/2020 12:14

Maybe I should have explicitly said not to share, but as PP said I didn’t think I’d need to. Certainly didn’t need to tell my own mother, who’s just as excited?!

Newsflash. People are different and do things differently. You gave it to her, you presumably know she is active on SM, you should have told her not to post it if you didn’t want it posted.

MintyMabel · 25/01/2020 12:16

In MILs time it was pretty normal not to tell other peoples private news till the OK was given

Was it really? It was also pretty common that beyond 12 weeks the news was fair game. And private news was only private if they were told it was private.

Frenchw1fe · 25/01/2020 12:16

@venusandmars I'm a mil and gp of course there was this sort of picture. We're not prehistoric you know. I still have all my dc scan pictures and my son's 35 now.

Personally i think posting anything to do with someone else's child should never be done without the parents permission.

Take this opportunity to work out what you want on social media and ensure that your family have strong privacy settings. A paedophile can have a child's picture within hours.

Chocolatelover45 · 25/01/2020 12:32

Old people can't be trusted with social media! I would be careful about telling them things in future. If they take pictures of your baby when it's born, keep reiterating every time 'thats fine as long as you don't send it to anyone or put it on social media '. Meanwhile talk about how you are protecting your child's privacy and how awful it is when people put inappropriate baby pictures on Facebook. The penny will drop. I think because they are old, they haven't lived through this themselves, and don't really understand how public the Internet is. In their mind, posting a scan photo on fb is exactly the same as mentioning the pregnancy to a couple of friends they happen to see in the street. I don't think they are doing it deliberately to annoy or control.

Chocolatelover45 · 25/01/2020 12:36

A paedophile can have a child's picture within hours.

Yes...there are photos of children everywhere..they could just look at an argos catalogue. Don't see what this has to do with the OP! Sounds like silly scaremongering. If the in laws are posting the kind of pictures likely to be of interest to a paedophile, Facebook boundaries are not the main problem.

venusandmars · 25/01/2020 13:33

@Frenchw1fe
yes I had a scan picture, but if I wanted to show it to someone I took the crimpled image out of my bag and chose to show it to them. I made a very blurred copy for my dm and dmil. If they wanted to show it someone they also had to get the crumpled image out.

It's the combination of high tech scans and media that create this situation. We now use facebook / whatever media to share with our friends and don't always think before we post.

Frenchw1fe · 25/01/2020 15:54

@Chocolatelover45 I think you'll find Argos don't put the child's name and dob which with the current lapse attitude of some on social media is simple to find, also what school they go to and who their friends and family are.
Full privacy settings are just common sense.

YakkityYakYakYak · 25/01/2020 18:44

Aw, YANBU to be upset but I think she was probably just overexcited rather than malicious. I think social media etiquette isn’t really obvious to everyone, especially if you haven’t grown up with it.
My MIL announced the birth of DD on Facebook before we had even had chance to tell my family, I just had to grit my teeth and let it go, not worth falling out over.

BecauseReasons · 25/01/2020 18:45

Glad it's sorted OP, and I agree, it's best to explicitly state you don't want anything sharing on social media.

CallmeAngelina · 25/01/2020 18:54

I would have been cross too (and this isn't a MIL thing, as one's own mother might well have done the same thing), but I would have been REALLY pissed off at her pretending she didn't realise she'd posted it. It's not an easy one-step process to post a picture on FB.

monkeymonkey2010 · 25/01/2020 18:55

me and DH have fallen out because he says she didn’t mean anything by it and she was just excited

So your dh immediately jumps to his mum's defense no matter how wrong she is - cos her feelings trump yours?

MIL says she didn’t realise she had posted it
Lying cow!
At least she's given you the perfect reason to use in the future when you want to say 'no' to her - "No MIL, that won't be happening - can't risk you losing your mind and 'forgetting' when it suits you to get yourself off the hook"

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