My Experience

My husband is an IT consultant and skeptical about everything that he or I put on social media for the whole world to see.  Ironic yes then that I have this website!  Well when it comes to social media Facebook and Instagram are two applications that we keep private.

As we were sending loads of photos via group text to my family and other ones to friends I jokingly suggested the first week we had our baby that we should give her an Instagram account I thought he would continue his privacy concern rant.  Well he didn’t instead it went more like – wait a minute that could be perfect.

So we talked through the Pros:

• one central hub for all her photos
• chronological order of her growing up
• private account ensures that we approve who can follow her
• easy access for any family and friends to see photos whenever they want
• way for people to comment on the photos and capture personalities
• her account not mine or my husbands so everything is of her not blended
• we both have access to her account from our phones
• we write comments on each photo in her voice so she gets to see our personalities when she’s older
• we upload photos once and no longer have to text or email
• we save storage on our phones because we no longer have photos taking up huge amounts of space in our text message threads

Cons:

• some people may not have Instagram
• some people may not use social media

Easy fix if they have smartphones you just tell them how to download and start a private Instagram account just to follow and never post photos.

What we did/do:

OPENED AN ACCOUNT– the first week she was born but if I would have thought of it before she was born we could have already had people signed up and ready to upload photos the day she was born

FOLLOWERS– told friends and family to follow her and gave them instructions to create an account if they didn’t have one

PHOTOS – upload a photo every day or couple days

COMMENTS – write a comment for each photo explaining what she’s doing or thinking in ‘her voice’, we love reading the comments and looking at who has liked her photos

TIMELINE – it’s a visual chronological timeline and ensures that we have loads of photos of her especially when you have grandparents reminding you that it needs a new photo – she loves having her photo taken and loves looking at her photos

INSTACUBE – we bought an Instacube for ourselves and my parents which is a cube that plays the last 200 images on your Instagram feed so because her account doesn’t follow anyone her feed is always photos of her, and my parents only see photos of her in their feed because they don’t follow anyone else however the technology doesn’t always work on the cube so it’s flaky but really cool when it actually works!

 

Let me know if you have any other tips on sharing photos with family and friends or if you too have set up an Instagram account for your baby 🙂

 

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