Raging, Ranting, Raving, and Rhapsodizing

You may remember a post a post a few months ago in which I decried Facebook's irritating advertising tactics, specifically, them deciding it was time for me to have a baby.

You see, Facebook advertising works on two principles: your demographic (age, sex, location, etc.) and what they know about you based on your bio, wall posts, etc.  So, FB knows I am a female living in Colorado between the ages of 18 and 30.  They also know what kind of music and books and movies and activities I like.  Thus, I usually get ads encouraging me to get pregnant, buy hiking boots, and go to Coldplay concerts.

What I'm saying is that, at the time of the aforementioned post, FB had no idea that Stephen and I were, in fact, very much hoping to get one of those cute little plus signs on a pee stick (but not because FB told me to).  On Mother's Day, I happily got such a result and have been celebrating ever since.  We went about personally sharing the good news with family and close friends.

My due date is set at January 12th, and both my nephews are certain that there's a girl growing in my rapidly expanding belly.  We had a great conversation with my 4 year old nephew, wherein he explained how he knew the sex of my baby:

Us: How did you know it was a girl?
Him: I just knew... I saw her.
Us: Awesome.  How did you see her?
Him: (in a 'don't be silly!' tone of voice) I had an x-ray!
Us: Wow.  Did she wave at you?
Him: No.
Us: What was she doing?
Him: Nothing.  She didn't see me... she wasn't looking at me.

Obviously, a lot of things are changing right now.  One thing that hasn't changed much is my Facebook experience.  They've been pitching pregnancy at me for at least a year.  But as soon as they found out via an announcement on my wall, the ads got worse.  Just now I logged on and on the sidebar were three ads: A gender predictor, a week-by-week pregnancy guide, and an invitation to join some mommy networking group.  Every time I log on, I'm greeted by pregnant bellies and baby pictures and blah blah blah.

So, I'm beyond thrilled that we'll soon be welcoming the newest member of our family.  I'm two weeks away from my second trimester, I feel wonderful, and I'm having a lot of fun.  But there's a little part of me, deep down inside, that can't help but feel like Facebook won.