It is truly the season of baby making and baby having. In this past year alone, I’ve witnessed or been told of at least 10 pregnancies. New babies are exciting. The whole process is exciting. I mean, the miracle of birth truly is pretty amazing, but with the miracle of birth comes the management of not only your baby, but the people who you choose to let your baby be around.

Just a few weeks ago, I went to visit a friend who recently had a beautiful baby boy. In true Scarlet fashion, I stopped and picked up some food for the couple –  Bucharest to be exact,  a metro Detroit area favorite and food that I knew that the couple would enjoy.

Scarlet Says… when visiting a family who just had a baby, do consider bringing some food or snacks to alleviate some of the stress of cooking.

To my surprise, when I arrived the baby was awake (hurray). It seems that newborns are always asleep, so it was great to get a little bit of eyes open time with the handsome little man. It was only a matter of time before the expected happened – the camera came out. Now, personally, I like babies and I like pictures, so I struck a pose while holding the baby over my shoulder and then went back to our conversation. The mother is a dear friend of mine and we had a lot of catching up to do, so  we chatted it up for a while about everything from career, to child-birth to when we would have some out of the house time together again. I made sure to not focus the entire conversation on the baby. This woman is my friend and although she is a wife and now a mother, it’s essential for me to ask her about her, her well-being and how she is doing, because if she isn’t doing well herself, it’s going to be hard for all of her other roles in life to succeed.

Scarlet Says… even when your friends take on new personal or professional roles, remember that at their core still remains a human, a person and your friend. Make it a point to check in on them and their well-being, not always the add-on accomplishments and roles that they’ve taken on along the way. 

We were able to spend a solid 60-90 minutes together, which comparatively speaking is short for us, but was just the right fix to at least catch us up on life in general.

Scarlet Says… as much as you may want to spend all the time in the world with a new baby or even a mother in the hospital after birth, limit your stay. There are likely lots of other people in line and also, the couple will need to rest and recharge and most importantly tend to the baby often.

So, after I left I proceeded on to the rest of my always busy day until I got a nice little text message containing a picture a short while after. What a pleasant surprise – the picture of me and the little one. I was excited to see that it came out so well. Shortly after, I thought, what a nice addition to my other baby photos and I considered posting it on my Instagram page. Then, I paused and thought, wait… I have not seen one photo of this baby on social media. While the mother did not give me any explicit directions to not post, my common sense detector kicked in and said, let me ask for permission first. Upon asking, the mother said, “thank you for asking, we are not posting public photos yet”.

Scarlet Says… new babies are exciting; they’re cute, cuddly, innocent and just so nice to be around. But if it’s not your child, it’s not your place to go around spreading the likeness of their image on social media. There are all kinds of reasons why parents choose to not post photos of their children from safety to privacy. Even if it’s not explicitly said to not post, think twice about what images you are posting that are not you, about you or belong to you and when appropriate ask for permission. 

Until Next Time,

Scarlet