Mommy Blogging

I started this blog before I had heard of the term "mommy blogger" and whether you think the term is condescending or not, that's what I am. I write about motherhood. Just like every woman who's started a blog about parenthood, (along with a smaller number of daddy bloggers) what I would choose to write about would be obvious - there's a never-ending source of stories to be told about family life.

Many of my "mommy friends" have blogs and although many of us admire and follow one or many of the famous mommy bloggers, none of us is writing to become famous or even for an audience beyond family and that small circle of friends who actually has the interest in hearing story after story about our kids. Yet maybe because of all the attention surrounding mommy blogs, some have felt sheepish about starting one or like they're "jumping on the bandwagon." It's hardly unique to write a blog, particularly about your children. But for those of us with an interest in writing or photography, blogging satisfies the need so many parents feel for a creative outlet. (Heck, I feel brain cells growing back with each full sentence I successfully type without interruption from my kid.) If done well, a blog can be a wonderful gift for your children.

With the attention blogs in general have garnered, has also come controversy surrounding blogs centered on personal narratives, especially when the subject matter is your children. Don't children deserve privacy? Shouldn't they be able to be kids and experience the natural developments of childhood - tantrums, potty training, whatever else made their parents absolutely miserable for days, weeks, even months on end - without every last embarrassing, annoying or non-endearing moment documented in words, pictures, video or all three? Will the cutesy stories we tell about their infancy and early childhood resurface in their vulnerable teenage years? By posting pictures, are we not properly safeguarding their rights to their images?

I continue to write even as I ask myself what impact this blog will have on Oliver in the future. Even before the Internet, there were plenty of ways to embarrass your kids, (For me, as an unphotogenic teenager, it was, "You're including that picture in the Christmas cards you're sending to everyone you know!") except I will admit that Facebook and blogs provide much more fodder to a limitless audience. So I do wrestle with my desire to share my stories of parenthood and my belief that Oliver will someday appreciate that he has this piece of me with the possibility that even if the feeling is temporary, I will embarrass him.

And too, I admit I feel I can get away with my desire to fulfill my need to write because I'm betting on the fact that no one in our family will become famous or run for politic office, and politic vetting teams or Fox News will ever go searching for my blog. And whatever unintended audience does stumble upon my blog, they'll be disappointed to discover it's not a tell-all. Most, no matter how much they appear to be, probably aren't.

In the February 23, 2011 New York Times article, "Queen of the Mommy Bloggers," one of America's most read bloggers, Ree Drummond, author of The Pioneer Woman, said, “Nobody reveals every piece of themselves online. It’s not really inventing a personality as much as shying away from certain subjects.”

And "David Sedaris once said that his stories are ‘true enough.’ Blogs, the ones that last, are also ‘true enough.’"

For my grandmother who wonders why you would "write all that stuff for the world to read," (but is also one of my most dedicated readers) the answer is that like any other blogger (at least those who understand boundaries) I don't write about everything. Some things are either too personal or too painful to write about, other stories are just too boring to bother writing. And then there are the ideas for posts I have, but don't have the time write, and too many posts are written, but never published, mostly because I deem them too unpolished to post and eventually I lose interest in the subject and move on to something else.

Just because you have the means to share with the world, doesn't mean you have to. Although we owned a camcorder and the hospital had no policy against videorcording births, no video of Oliver's birth exists simply because we chose not to film it. We did take some pictures to document the experience for ourselves, and I even let Chris take some unflattering ones, because we knew we had no intention of ever showing them to anyone, let alone posting them on Facebook. Our first family photograph - me still lying on the operating room table and Chris in scrubs holding up a swaddled Oliver - was my Facebook profile picture for months after Oliver was born. So many people commented on how radiate I looked despite just having had a c-section after a very long labor. Well, a look of radiance was simply luck, and because the picture happened to be flattering, I posted it. I was my own best PR manager.

Everyone has a story and this blog is the story I choose to tell.