2009-12-18 New baby announcements

The birth of a baby is one of the most exciting and happy times in life and the new parents are usually in a big hurry to get the news out to everyone who's been waiting.

Almost twenty years ago when my first daughter was born, technology was nowhere near what we have today. The hospital phones required us to call collect or use a calling card so even making phone calls was incredibly difficult and we made very few. We took pictures and my husband brought the film for one hour processing so he’d have pictures to show at work. I hand-wrote and mailed birth announcements.

Though I had e-mail and internet access at work, very few of my friends and family had e-mail or internet. I was able to announce Jessica’s birth to my internet friends when I returned to work three months later. The internet was text only and my friends and I shared photos by putting together an annual photo album, which required mailing pages, getting color copies made, and having the books assembled and mailed out.

Nearly a decade later when my youngest daughter was born we had a cell phone (one for our whole family) and could easily call anyone from the hospital. It was not a camera phone and we did not yet have texting capability nor did we know why we would even want it.

Though the internet had come a long ways in those ten years, we didn’t yet have a digital camera or even a scanner to get printed photos to the computer. We did have a desktop home computer with dial-up access and knew a lot of people who had e-mail by then, though still not many in our family. I was able to announce Alicia’s birth online from home as soon as I was home from the hospital. We ordered printed birth announcements from an online source.

Now, almost another ten years later, this past Monday night my cousin Sam Hard and his wife Alice gave birth to beautiful baby girl Kimberly Jade Hard. How do I know she’s beautiful? Sam e-mailed a birth announcement with a photo from the hospital just over an hour after she was born.

"I created the template for the announcement days in advance," Sam told me. "On the day of the birth, we brought our digital camera and netbook, so we were able to send the announcement right from the delivery room ..."

Now that almost everyone has e-mail, the good news reached friends and family in nearby and far-flung locations nearly instantaneously. I love that technology makes this possible and can't wait to meet the new baby in the family!