Social Media Moms

By Paige Tucker

Oh, social media. The good, the bad. The necessary?

As modern moms, we have so many conveniences right at our fingertips. A quick status update can help with everything from choosing the best children’s photographer to feeding your family, with twenty-five Crock-Pot recipes all provided in minutes by your Facebook friends.

The equipment upgrades aren’t shabby either! I had a baby just three years ago, but already when walking through a baby store it’s clear how quickly the latest and greatest gear becomes outdated. New products to make raising children easier and must-have items for surviving those first few months line the store shelves, making you wonder how you ever lived without them.

Video monitors, split screen monitors for when more than one child comes along, and my favorite, the Rock-N-Play, that’s now automatic. (Get one… it’s a game-changer!)

Social media conveniences are the bright spots of what can often be a black hole. Scrolling through Facebook can sometimes help you make it through that 3 AM nursing session. Instagram has become the 21st century baby book.

I’ve recently discovered a golden nugget called Marco Polo. It’s a video message app to use among friends. My closest high school friends invited me to join and I have since formed groups with other mommy friends. Short video messages let you catch up on life, ask questions like “Is it normal when…,” and really just support each other in a non-intrusive, mommy-friendly way.

Motherhood has a way of making you doubt yourself. Should I have taken her to the doctor sooner? Did I make the right decision about this or that? Was I too quick to discipline or not firm enough? What is a normal amount of Daniel Tiger, whining, wine, etc.?! 

Just when you think you’re the only mom who’s close to losing it when you’re on Day 8 of a child’s funky cold or the only one failing miserably at weathering the tantrums of the terrible twos, a friend will post a video with two children under three squealing and crawling on her like she’s a tree… all while she expertly maneuvers her arm through their intertwined bodies to take another sip of her wine! In our groups, we don’t use the glossy filters (although there are filters for when you’re not feeling “camera-ready”) and we meet each other where we are.    So I say get social! Many of these ladies I have not seen in years and had not kept up with beyond a few Christmas get-togethers and Facebook updates. Our lives have gone in all different directions since high school and we are spread out all over the country. But now, we are all moms of little ones and have so much in common again. We are finding joy in the journey and taking delight in the day-to-day of this amazing, exhausting and most precious phase of life.

After twelve years in local news, most recently as evening anchor of NBC 26, Paige Tucker is now a work-at-home mom and freelance journalist. She produces two series for NBC 26 TV, First Responders and 26 Women Today, and you can see those stories on Tuesday nights. Paige and her husband have one daughter, Julia Reynolds, who is three years old.