First, whoa. The last week has been crazy fun. My “What (Not) To Say To A Pregnant Woman” video has officially gone viral (amassing over 1.4 million views so far on Facebook), and has been shared by The Today Show, US Weekly, Refinery 29 and so many more places. I’ve got a lot of new readers and followers, which is so rad.
What typically happens after a bunch of new people learn about my blog is I start to get questions about why it’s called “Baby Rabies” and that’s definitely been the case this time, too. Most are genuinely curious, but I also always get some people emailing or direct messaging things like, “Really? Baby RABIES?? What made you think that was ever a good idea?”
It’s confusing if you don’t understand, I guess. I’ve even lost clients over it. One major brand kicked me out of a campaign because the higher ups thought it was “off color.” Okay.
So here’s how I chose it and what it means:
In the summer of 2007, I was in between jobs, and basically living a quarter-life crisis. I decided to just go ahead and take advantage of the down time while I tried to figure out my life and get pregnant. Logical choice, 26 year old me.
This was SUCH a 180 for me, that nobody who knew me “in real life” would ever believe it (other than my husband, obviously), and I didn’t really want to talk to them about it, but I did want to document my thoughts, and I’d been active in online message boards for a couple years while planning my wedding. I thought I’d anonymously blog about it all, just to share with the people I talked to online and to keep for myself.
There was a lot of talk on the wedding message boards about “baby rabies” or what could happen to you if you became obsessed with getting pregnant- it was like incurable baby fever. We would see the girls graduate from the wedding boards and move on to the trying to conceive boards, and they would start talking about all kinds of crazy shit, like checking their own cervical mucus and taking their temperature every day, both classic symptoms of the rabies.
Once I realized I was becoming one of these women, I thought that would be a fine name for an anonymous blog about (at the time) trying to get pregnant, and I bought the dot com.
Read my first post ever here.
9 years later, and I’m not shaking it. I’ve considered re-branding, but the babies keep coming. I’m not saying it will stick forever, but it fits for now. I may continue to turn people off, and lose brand relationships over it. Meh. There’s no ill meaning behind it, and people who know me know that.
From the beginning, I’ve tried to laugh at myself when it comes to motherhood, and I think it reflects that.
