Imagine; you’ve just pushed out a watermelon sized baby (or gone through major abdominal surgery if having a c-section), you’ve done the hard work and you’re super, super proud.

You can’t wait to share your happy news with the world.

After all, it’s YOUR news, right? You’ve waited 9 long months for this moment.

Imagine, then, going through such an personal, intense and painful experience only for someone to steal your thunder and announce the birth of YOUR baby to the world on social media before you’ve even had a chance to come off the bloomin’ gas and air!

Of course, it’s usually done with good intentions (unless the culprit is genuinely being a prat), and it’s so easy to become overexcited when it comes to new life, right? I know I’m guilty of getting a little too emotional when babies are born into my family! However, intentions aside, the vast majority of our parenting community agree with us that…

It isn’t fair to announce the birth of someone else’s baby without express prior permission! But how can we prevent it?

If you know you wouldn’t be happy with this happening to you and would love to be able to announce the birth of your baby yourself, it’s best to put measures in place now before after the fact and forever be annoyed at someone for overstepping their bounds and announcing YOUR news. Here are our top tips for preventing this…

Don’t Tell Anyone You’re in Labour.

Of course, if you’re relying on family for childcare, they’ll need to know, so in this instance firmly tell them that no one is to know. If you know that your relatives can’t keep a secret for toffee, tell them you’re in for monitoring and that daddy needs to be with you ‘just in case’. Then surprise them with your birth announcement!

Keep everyone who doesn’t need to know guessing!

Or, Tell EVERYONE You’re in Labour…

On the flip side, telling people you’re in labour is a great way to set the precedent of all announcements coming from the parents only, and it stops people from speculating when you’ve been quiet for a while. I personally did this when in labour because I wanted to set that boundary of all communication about the birth coming from me and my husband only, and it worked.

Put Up Posts Like This on Social Media…

I also put up one of these notices to politely remind my family & friends that we wanted to announce the arrival of our son ourselves. These are pretty effective, from what our community parents tell us, and pretty hard for anyone to take offence to! It’s very visual (hard to miss, polite and to the point, so we’d highly recommend doing this.

Have Firm Conversations With Friends & Family…

If you just KNOW that a friend or relative is likely to get overexcited, or has stolen the thunder for new parents in the past, don’t be afraid to have a diplomatic but firm chat and tell them that whilst you love them and value their input and support, you would really love to share your news yourself. Be kind but explain how much it means to you. They should understand, and if they don’t, it’s worth asking why they think YOUR news should be shared by them…