The baby ultrasound: To share or not to share?

Girlfriend M has unfollowed mutual acquaintance S due to an overdose of baby scans. She managed the first one. She was genuinely happy about it. She also forgave her the second one, but when a bombardment of pre-scans followed, it became too much for her. She wanted to know if it was because of her not being a mother. And whether I had a joyful heart when seeing the unborn fruit.

I immediately thought of my boss L, who ran the Marie Claire empire. Her daughter-in-law was carrying her future grandchild and had treated her as a grandmother in the making with a print of the scan. As a proud grandmother should, L had also stuffed this photo into her Hermès bag and showed it unsolicited to everyone. However, the continuation of the story was somewhat more surprising. ‘Don’t you think she’s ugly?’ she wanted to know from all of us. When we awkwardly waved it off, she pushed the photo even closer to our eyes and said with her spicy French accent: ‘But look! It’s ugly, isn’t it?’ Because honesty takes the longest, I just said that no baby looks like Cindy Crawford or Brad Pitt in a bag of murky fluid where you’ve been dangling for about six months. Moreover, I find babies particularly juicy and cute, but pretty… nah, that comes later.  On Bobby Boomsma except for that. Rarely seen such a beautiful baby.

Anyway, scans then. I don’t have much to do with them. Besides being hard evidence that our child existed, it wasn’t something I could stare at for hours and shed a tear over. By the way, I’ve lost all of them. Just like the first baby teeth. I’ve never felt the need to show them to anyone other than my parents. And I remember that in my pre-motherhood days, I never quite knew where to look when someone waved their scan. And where exactly is the head? Oh, is that the body?

I didn’t need to become a mother to understand that such a scan snapshot can have a special meaning for someone. Although they are all really the same and none of them can be called pretty. To merge the scan camps, I would say: for the scan critics: unfollow I would do for better reasons. Give that woman her little escape and scrolling past is done in no time. I advise the happy pregnant women: find a willing audience and enjoy, but post in moderation.