Internet abstinance

This is something I've been thinking about doing for awhile now. We all know that in 2014, it's impossible to make any sort of lifestyle change without a sweeping public declaration. Here it is.

I'm done reading internet articles about the wild adventure I'm about to embark on.

I love the internet as much as anyone else. Maybe more. It's been a fabulous time waster on my summer break, and I fully plan to continue liking cute baby pictures, reading the 47 things kids from the 90s miss, and snarking on ridiculous blogs about how CrossFit is better than chocolate, sex, babies, wine, and anything else desirable on this planet, and recipes for kale tacos (I'm not even making that up).

I'm giving up a very specific type of internet-ing. Like all mothers-to-be, I'm curious, in a morbidly fascinated terrified way, about what's coming down the pike. Knowledge is power.

Obviously, there's no shortage of information. In my mom's day, aside from the doctor, you were pretty much relying on what your friends told you. In my case, that in itself is frightening enough. But now I have the option of reading birth stories morning to night, seeing photographs, videos, and the icing on the cake is websites like Baby center, What to Expect and WebMD, etc., to inform me of every possible thing that could or has ever gone wrong, ever.

Then there's the "humorous" side. I don't know if Facebook secretly put me on some "scary" newsfeed track or what. Every day there's more links.

• "How Labor and Delivery is worse than anything Ramsay Snow ever did to Theon"
• "349 reasons caring for a newborn is worse than time in a Korean prison camp"
• "Why having kids is the worst idea ever and should be avoided at all costs"
• "9 ways kids are dicks" - that one is actually real

I get it, these things are hard. I know I don't actually get it, because if there's one thing everyone seems to agree on, it's that you can't truly fathom what it's like until you do it. But on an intellectual level, I think I get it as much as possible. I don't think reading 200 more scary mommy articles is necessary to drive that point home. Probably, all these posts are hilarious after the fact. I'll get back to you on that.

My guess is that, like most people, I decided I wanted a baby based on a romanticized, idealized view of motherhood. I'm no scientist, but I strongly feel that's a key factor in the continuation of the human race. All this reading is destroying that romanticized view, and I don't really think I want that. I'm taking the newborn care class (we start tomorrow!), I'm reading the books, but aside from that I want to spend the next 9 weeks getting teary eyed daydreaming about playing "this little piggy" with the foot that's currently kicking inside my belly. Instead, all this internet noise is making me dread it.

The other thing is, there's a huge menu of things that can go wrong all along the way. Pregnancy, delivery, breastfeeding, infancy.... they all have tons of risks. And now I'm learning all about all of them, including quite a few I'd never even heard of. I'm prone to quickly descend down the rabbit hole of the worst case scenario anxiety, so this is not good for me. Whatever does go wrong, I'll deal with, obviously, because what other option is there?

With my due date being two months from today (side note OMG), I think it's safe to say I'm out of time for medical science to suddenly develop a fantastic, pain/blood free way of magically transporting your baby from your womb to your loving arms. That means that as much as labor and delivery might suck, there's no way around it, because he has to come out. I'm comfortable with maintaining my state of utter denial until then. Although we begin childbirth classes at the hospital next week, so that may shatter my denial plan.

What's your favorite/least favorite thing about the internet? Do you have anything you specifically avoid?

PS I know I always use Theon/Ramsay as an example, but there's just no better torture scenes I'm aware of. And I'm not posting a gif because it's torturous enough to watch the first time, in my opinion. Also gifs are right up there on my least favorite list right about now, I'm so sick of them.