I’ve had the same profile picture on Facebook for the past few months: It’s me holding a scrunch-faced Baby Y. The other night, as I loaded some new pictures of the kiddo onto the computer, I lingered over an image of him trying out his inflatable duck tub on the kitchen floor.

Aw, that would make a cute profile picture, I thought. And so I navigated to my page, started to upload it …

… and stopped myself.

You see, this is one thing I promised myself I wouldn’t do when I found out I was pregnant. I remember taking a solemn vow: I would not become one of those moms who immediately make their profile picture a photo of their baby! I would not!

Before I had a baby, I remember finding the phenomenon of disappearing Facebook friends a bit curious. No, people weren’t unfriending me in a massive wave, but they were suddenly vanishing in my news feed, their photos replaced by cherubic children. Ugh, I scoffed. Now that they’re moms, they’re even losing their online identities.

At the time, I thought Katie Roiphe of Slate.com’s Double X blog summed it up perfectly.

Many of these women work. Many of them are in book clubs. Many of them are involved in causes. But this is how they choose to represent themselves. The choice may seem trivial, but the whole idea behind Facebook is to create a social persona, an image of who you are projected into hundreds of bedrooms and cafes and offices across the country. Why would that image be of someone else, however closely bound they are to your life, genetically and otherwise?

Then I became a mother.

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While I was still in my profile picture, my status updates pretty soon fell victim to baby mania. Yes, I have posted several updates about Baby Y’s poop (he’s pretty prolific, what can I say). Yes, I have complained about his naps on several occasions. Yes, I have bragged about him sleeping through the night. Yes, of the oodles of photos I’ve posted since his birth, he is usually the only one in them.

And, well, I refuse to feel bad about it. My more militant former self would probably cringe, but adjusting to being a new mom is pretty all-consuming, and that’s my life right now. So my profile reflects it. Perhaps I’ve been hidden from a few news feeds, but that’s how it goes.

I returned to Roiphe’s article the other night and read it through the lens of motherhood, and couldn’t help but giggle at a lot of it now, particularly this:

This generation leaches itself of sexuality by putting the innocent face of a child in the place of an attractive mother. It telegraphs a discomfort with even a minimal level of vanity. Like wearing sneakers every day or forgetting to cut your hair, it is a way of being dowdy and invisible, and it mirrors a certain mommy culture in which its almost a point of pride how little remains of the healthy, worldly, engaged, and preening self.

Ugh! I may be a little dowdier than normal these days, and perhaps less willing to trot out a ton of photos of myself online, but I can assure you that it has nothing to do with any sort of perverse reasoning that this somehow means I am Mother of the Year. Sure, I don’t get to shower some days because my kid doesn’t nap, but trust me, I want to! It’s no badge of honor.

An interesting aside: I scrolled through my friend list to see who had used pictures of their children instead of themselves for their profile pictures. And half of them were dads! Are we then going to argue that the daddies of the world are also allowing their children to “leach their sexuality”?

In the end, I know I remain me. I am a wife, sister, daughter, friend, journalist, teacher, and traveler. My profile has reflected all of those things over time, and now it reflects a demanding new role: mother. I expect that the ratio of baby to non-baby updates will naturally decline over time as I settle into that role a bit more. But I don’t think I’m going to lose any sleep over whether my profile is too mom-centric. I lose enough already to night feedings!

One last thing, though: I will be keeping me in my profile picture, whether with the kiddo or alone. That’s the line I’ve drawn for myself. At this point, it’s largely symbolic, but my former non-mom self would approve.

Do you use pictures of your little one in your profile pictures online?

Hellobee Series: Mrs. Yoyo part 8 of 16

1. Taming PCOS by Mrs. Yoyo
2. Birth Story: Part 1 by Mrs. Yoyo
3. Breastfeeding: Rocky Beginnings, Part 1 by Mrs. Yoyo
4. Getting Over the Little-Boy Blues by Mrs. Yoyo
5. (Still) Swaddling by Mrs. Yoyo
6. On the Road with Baby in Tow by Mrs. Yoyo
7. He's not adopted by Mrs. Yoyo
8. Feminism, motherhood, and Facebook by Mrs. Yoyo
9. Baby Growth: It’s Not a Contest by Mrs. Yoyo
10. Review: Baby Connect for iPhone by Mrs. Yoyo
11. Resentment by Mrs. Yoyo
12. Confessions of a non-worry wart by Mrs. Yoyo
13. The Reluctant SAHM by Mrs. Yoyo
14. Digital Inadequacy by Mrs. Yoyo
15. The Most Dangerous Phrase in Motherhood by Mrs. Yoyo
16. Baby gear: Save or splurge? by Mrs. Yoyo