So I spent time I didn’t have today watching sappy reunion videos on YouTube. I got linked to one on facebook and that led to another of course and like some kind of sick addiction, I kept clicking those buttons like somehow I had both the time and the hydration to spare. But as I sat afterwards, I thought back to the conversation I have had with many people about Internet reality. Have you seen the website It’s Like They Know Us? If you haven’t, go there now.It will open a new window, go ahead. Hilarious, right?  Because while having a baby is beautiful and wonderful in many senses, it is also horrible, messy and sometimes terribly, terribly painful. So is everything in life.  Everything. And so the reason we lash out at things like unrealistic photos of women in white pants on their periods playing on beige carpeting with perfectly clean toddlers is that it hide the messy. Not just the literal mess, because holy crap this is what my son looked like the last time we were in public. But perfect Internet photos also hide the other mess. The real mess. Stock mom and newborn photos hide what 72 hours of labour, more stitches in places you cant see that anyone should have, a terrified husband and a baby in the NICU when you haven’t even had time to sleep.  Ripping your stitches walking to the incubator at 2 am and hiding your exhausted tears in the breast pump room so the nurses won’t see because you’re afraid they’ll think you can’t cut it. And stock couple photos hide the 8am screaming matches, dirty looks and those times when you were…