![]() I also wanted to show my ob-gyn that I was a good team player, that I was on her side in getting her job done-kind of like when I find my old waitressing instincts kicking in at restaurants and I start automatically stacking the plates to the side of the table in an easily bussed pile. I told myself that I mostly just wanted to leave the hospital with a live baby and preferably no more and no fewer holes than I came in with. I did not write a list of birth preferences it struck me as so arrogant, so unwise, to attach myself emotionally to a certain set of hoped-for ways that the birth could go. I have just one child-I actually do a lot of my Instagram-creeping curled up in her bed as I coax her to sleep-and I gave birth in a regular hospital. When I finished reading the description of the unmedicated, unassisted home birth that accompanied the photograph, it was impossible not to recall my own birthing experience. When practicing this kind of social-media creepiness, you find yourself feeling small in two ways: you understand yourself as less than, living a life that is not nearly as fun, interesting, or worthwhile as the account you follow, and you also sense that you are a petty person, swiping the screen while huffing fumes of self-righteous antipathy. ![]() Their days seem idyllic, full of mud pies and chickens and art. ![]() She and her husband are young, tattooed, and good-looking, but have a hardy, outdoorsy style that is not overly calculated or curated. Her family lives up to a lot of hippie stereotypes: the off-grid life, the multiple home births, the homeschooling, the (hot!) dad in a band, the fanciful names of the children. The woman with an armful of newborn baby isn’t exactly worthy of hatred. That may sound like a long-winded description of a hate-follow, but “hate” is a bit much, description-wise, for what I’m feeling. One of the easier ways is to follow people on social media toward whom you have feelings that are other than warm. There are so many ways to be a creep these days. I peer at it in the dark, and hiss-whisper, “How dare you.” It’s a beautiful, celebratory image of human existence, as raw and pure and joyful as anything seen through the orderly square of an Instagram post can be. In her hands, she cradles the purplish, bloody bundle of a just-born child. ![]() The woman in the photograph looks out at me with a face full of exhaustion and bliss. ![]()
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