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Tweeting During Labor: Too Much 411
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Is tweeting during labor the ultimate in mommy multi-tasking?
Sara Williams, wife of Twitter CEO, Evan Williams, tweeted updates for her followers while in labor all the way up to finally getting her epidural shot. Dad took over to tweet the birth. OK, maybe Sara had a small publicity motive, but she's not the only mom out there tweeting through contractions. CNN did a story on the trend and one mom described demanding her blackberry between contractions. She explained her need to put her pain "out there" in the universe, so other people could feel it along with her.
I can see why moms with parents and friends who live far away say that these up-to-the-minute tweets help to shrink the miles between them, but I also understand why others say it's too much 411. Especially since most people tweet to a list of followers that includes casual acquaintances and even strangers.
Psychologist Renana Brooks told CNN that she's concerned with the trend and the idea of couples texting rather than being focused on each other.
"One of the few rituals we have in terms of giving each other undivided attention, is that time in a delivery room," she said. "To be spending time writing to someone else destroys the whole ritual."
I agree and that's why you would never catch me tweeting during labor. I can barely force myself to be nice to the people around me (including my husband) in the birthing room, let alone think of something uncensored to tweet to my friends and family in cyberworld.
I can, however, very easily imagine my husband tweeting during my labor. After all, I've seen him chat up the doctor about real estate while I was in the middle of a painful contraction, and even take unflattering pictures of me pushing, which I later discovered he later posted along with a picture of our new daughter on our family website, much to my absolute horror.
My husband has enough trouble dealing with a crabby wife in pain who doesn't seem to think he can do anything right in the labor room. Tweeting would just one more thing to annoy me.
Are you with me on this?
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
8-21-2009 @ 12:59PM
Sherri said...My daughter was born just 2 days ago and although I do not "Twitter" my hubby updated my Facebook status regularly as a way to share our experience with our out of town relatives and friends that would've loved to have been there with us.
Many of them were anxiously awaiting the news about whether our new bundle of joy was a boy or a girl... and they salivated over the first pictures.
When I got home from the hospital yesterday, reading all the wonderful comments that friends & family left for me on my Facebook page was truly a gift.
I'm glad we did it and I would do it again. :-)
Reply
8-23-2009 @ 2:22AM
Ginny Brideau said...I twittered during labor and I would do it again - but I would have hooked my phone up to a charger so that I wouldn't have worried about running out of battery power before Iolani's birth.
I got more hater than lover email over the whole thing. It caused a two second stir on the internet.
I did it for two reasons: 1) Update friends and family and 2) I was bored. We tried to watch a movie, but we were distracted. We liked watching the contractions come and go, and once the contractions were over...a quick tweet summarized that we were ready for the next.
It passed the time. The baby was never in danger. And, I can look back through my tweets, watch the video, and then scoot to her bedroom to watch her sleep.
http://www.blogher.com/twitter-baby
http://laist.com/2008/08/27/twittering_labor_and_we_dont_mean_l.php
10-06-2009 @ 1:55PM
C.T. said...OK, keeping the family updated(or telling your boss you can't make it in today) is reasonable. What Ms. Williams did, sending every scream and holler out into the public eye so all could 'share her pain' is ridiculous, like using her child's entry into the world as some insane product placement!
Dr. J
8-21-2009 @ 7:53PM
Trigeia Twins said...As a husband and soon to be father, I can tell you that I probably will be tweeting during my wife's labor. For some odd reason I think that my followers will want to read and follow along. =) Always searching for great content to share online LOL. Twitter is now the place for breaking news stories so why not break the news about my wife labor as it happens... I guess that makes sense
@Trigeia
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8-21-2009 @ 10:31PM
Stacie said..."Psychologist Renana Brooks told CNN that she's concerned with the trend and the idea of couples texting rather than being focused on each other.
"One of the few rituals we have in terms of giving each other undivided attention, is that time in a delivery room," she said. "To be spending time writing to someone else destroys the whole ritual.""
When was the last time this psychologist actually went into a delivery room? I think spending the time strapped to machines, being pumped full of chemicals, with strangers shoving their hands into your body at painful moments without even asking destroys the whole ritual. If that's her idea of blessed undivided attention, so be it.
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8-21-2009 @ 11:43PM
Kyle M said...I'm the husband in that CNN story, and we had nothing but positive experiences during labor. Obviously, if my wife hadn't been on an epidural, phones would have been put away much sooner. But as it was, she wasn't in any pain, we were hanging out waiting for hours and hours, and so it seemed only natural to text and tweet with our friends about something so new and momentous for us.
We didn't get at all graphic (and neither did Sara, the Twitter CEO's wife)...just a few tweets to let friends and coworkers know what was going on. We spent the whole day reading the steady stream of excited reactions on Twitter and Facebook.
8-22-2009 @ 4:43PM
Megan said...My daughter is three weeks old and I updated my Facebook status throughout my labor. It was a nice way to pass time and communicate with people that matter.
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8-22-2009 @ 11:12PM
Sifrina said...Rachel - I'm 100% w/you on this one!! All this technology makes me yearn for the days when people just passed out cigars to announce a new baby's arrival! We didn't have tweeter 7 years ago, and as much as it would have been nice to give my concerned parents periodic updates on my long labor (followed by c-section after 4 hours of pushing), there would have been NO TWEETING PERMITTED (not even after the epidural)!! Naturally, until I had our healthy son in my arms (and out of my body), I was too focused on other stuff for tweeting.
Your horror of the birthing photo makes me laugh (but I do feel your pain!); my husband took 2 shots I could kill him for - 1 of me sleeping about a week before I delivered (w/my enormous belly hanging out) and 1 of me about a week after holding our newborn at home, wearing an unflattering, long tshirt and greasy hair. I knew about the 2nd one, but only recently found out he had proudly taken it to work! One of his female coworkers said to him, "Uh, does your wife know you have this picture at work?"
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