This Woman’s Maternity Shoot With Her Thesis Is Pure Joy

Originally published June 4, 2019

The rise of social media has drastically changed the way that we share our lives with others. Unfortunately a lot of the time that means oversharing (like when your distant uncle asks everyone on Facebook to weigh in on a new weird skin thing he found on his neck) or constantly sharing things that nobody cares about. Remember when all anybody tweeted was stuff like “going to get coffee #starbucks”? Yeesh… Dark times. But social media has also made it so we can broadcast important moments in our lives to anyone and everyone at lighting speed, and in some pretty creative ways.

Of all the big announcements one can make on the internet, nothing gets people more fired up and willing to go balls to the wall than pregnancies and new babies.

Professional photoshoots in fields of flowers, perfectly filtered photographs of potential baby names written on chalkboards, cellphone videos of burly men opening gift boxes and pulling out shirts that say “new grandpa” and immediately weeping, there’s no shortage of ways to tell the world that you’re gonna have a baby.

But… here’s the thing.

Baby announcements were cute at first. At first. But we passed the point of it being quirky and cool and novel long ago. Now, it’s hard to be inundated with rapidfire posts featuring thousand-word captions with indents and citations on Instagram and do anything but groan and go, “oh my god how long is this going to take me to scroll past.” It’s gotten A LITTLE OUT OF HAND FOLKS, and I hate to say it but someone has to: if you’re having a baby and you’re excited about it that’s great. I’m happy for you. We’re all happy for you. But also? Tone it down, chief. Just a tad. Just a SMIDGE.

Please. We’re tired. We’re all just so tired.

Why don’t we make the same kind of spectacular announcements for other great feats in our lives?? I’m sick of babies. I want to gush over professional-grade photos of some guy named Bryce wearing a daisy crown, looking all maternal with soft lighting, to commemorate the fact that he finally makes enough money to move out of his shitty studio apartment above a pawn shop.

Or how about moments like this — the day twitter user Sarah Whelan Curtis finally finished her thesis.

Courtesy of twitter/SarahWCurtis

LOOK HOW PRECIOUS THAT IS!

What a beautiful, bouncing baby academic paper. You can really tell she loves it.

Courtesy of twitter/SarahWCurtis

She’s just glowing — and so she should be. As she put it, this was “the longest labor of her life.”

Courtesy of twitter/SarahWCurtis

They’re so adorable at this age… It probably still has that new printer paper smell.