24. The Problem with Social Media Birth Prep
There are, of course, good things about social media. It can help you connect with others who are in a similar life stage, and it can introduce you to a lot of information quickly that you might not otherwise come across. But the information we see on social media also has some fundamental flaws, and if you use it as the entirety of your birth prep, instead of just a starting place, you can wind up unprepared for birth in the ways that actually matter.
Barring the obvious — that not everything you see on social media is true or accurate — what are some other ways it can leave you overwhelmed and underprepared?
It’s too much. I’ve heard people describe social media in general as drinking from a firehose, and that’s exactly it. Once the algorithm knows you are pregnant and looking for content related to birth, it’s going to come flooding at you. I don’t think we as humans were designed to take in this much content this quickly. Especially if you’re already feeling a little overwhelmed or anxious about birth, the pace of social media can leave you feeling more frantic and frenzied. Next time you log on without thinking about it, notice how your mind feels as you’re scrolling. You’re probably not feeling calmer because you’re not getting the answers to your specific questions. You’re just getting bombarded by information you may or may not want.
And what happens when we get overloaded with information? Most of us tend to shut down. We can’t do it all, so instead of feeling helpful, all that information feels insurmountable, and we’re not able to take action on any of it. There are too many options, and we enter a sort of inertia because it’s too hard to know what to get started on.
It lacks personalization. Your birth prep should be personalized to you. Birth is an incredibly personal experience, and because of that, what you want, how you want to be cared for, how you want to feel, what supports you want to have access to, how you want your partner to encourage you, and how you want to make decisions are all going to be unique to you. The skills that you need for your birth are going to look different from what someone else might need. Even if you have similar goals, the things you struggle with and the things you are great at are going to be individual to you. Your experiences leading up this birth are also going to be unique. So your preparation absolutely needs to be too.
It lacks context. I see this all the time because it’s cool to have a “hot take” and be punchy. But there are few absolutes in birth because again, it’s all so personal and individual. Posts that say, “I would never have an induction,” don’t mean that you should never have an induction.
Social media doesn’t give you all the context you need to figure out what’s going to be best for you in your particular situation. It doesn’t know what your priorities are, what your past experiences have been, what your concerns are, what’s going on in your pregnancy, what your options are with your provider, and what options you may have access to beyond that. Your decision-making process will be complex and shouldn’t come down to a one-liner on social media.
It lacks depth. This is the biggest one, and I don’t just mean that it lacks depth of information (see my thoughts on context above). It’s that scrolling birth prep posts on social media can make it feel like you’re doing something to prepare when in reality, that’s not the bulk of the work of preparation. Really preparing for your birth in a deep way is getting to know yourself really well and how you move through challenges and then building the skills you’ll need for your journey. This is hard work that can’t be done on social media. It takes time and reflection and working through tightly held beliefs about yourself and birth. Of course, not everyone has to do this work to have a happy birth. But if it sounds like work you want to do, I encourage you to take this opportunity to prepare in a way that changes how you handle stress and the unknown for the rest of your life!