I think she looked amazing and the baby is cute but I, too, was disappointed with the "everything was perfect and my life is perfect and my home is perfect and my make up is perfect" facade. I would find her a lot more interesting and relatable if she showed up with no make up and a coffee in hand and said she is very happy but also very tired.
I agree with you 100% but I don't think for a minute that being relatable is what Annie wants AT ALL. She's all about cultivating an unattainable image of complete perfection, cleanliness, and tidiness that is unrealistic in most people's real life, no matter how clean or tidy they are. EVERYTHING in her bubble/vlog land is curated, polished, reviewed and redone to the most minute detail. Her goal is to project an impeccable home and a spotless kitchen, and herself, her spouse and her marriage as immaculate as possible. We all know things can't be that perfect every minute of the day, every day, but I feel that as she's quite stringent as a personality despite the "sweet" surface with the syrupy baby voice that she projects, her house is probably cleaner than the average one- I'm sure she keeps Mo on his toes. What we see in her vlogs is the "myth", the fairy-tale image she wants us to accept, embrace, and subscribe to- it's all part of her "business", just like her potions and creams, because her channel is a moneymaker for her. Don't you know? ANYONE can "be" anything they want
online.
For sure her pregnancy and birth wasn't all flowers and roses, but she chose to put a positive, clean and romantic spin on things, well...because she's Annie and everything has to be perfect and sterile, especially a birth which is in and of itself messy and unpredictable... She can't even bring herself to say the word "vagina" and prefers the more exotic-sounding "vagine". She doesn't ever projectile vomit; she delicately brings up food that has been troubling her in neat, tiny burps, etc. C'mon. Even her bananas have no spots on them, the avocados are ripened to perfection and her cucumbers, carrots and zucchinis are all the same size, lined up in a perfect row when she cooks.
During birth, you are all sweaty and flat-out exhausted, crying, angry- so many emotions- by the time it's time to push, but does anyone think there would be the remotest possibility of Annie's putting out a video where she is red, sweaty and hyperventilating with her bangs pasted to her sweaty forehead and her ponytail not perfectly coiffed? Never. She never even mentioned pain-all she said was that it was very intense. Get real. What's so bad about saying that giving birth is messy and painful? There's blood and fluids and mucus and other crap everywhere. If it were so unbearably painful, no woman would ever have a second baby. Right? It's painful and wonderful and the truth is, that after you pull yourself together, you forget all about the pain, because it plays an infinitesimally small role in things. It's not what characterizes birth. It's a small part of it that you never think about again.
On the other hand, what I CAN see her doing is compulsively wanting to show her viewers that SHE manages to do everything perfectly, even /especially, give birth: Annie's birth experience was stress-free, only positive, spic and span clean and even her contractions were perfect, well-behaved, on time and manageable, She is so perfect, well-organized and put together, that giving birth can be clean and "perfect". It's doable for her and she leaves everyone else in her dust wondering how she does it and why everyone else is just a slob. She even managed to make tearing sound elegant and neat. I can certainly also see her redoing her immaculate ponytail a few times, checking herself out in a mirror between contractions-which btw is when you feel absolutely great- and refreshing her face with moist towelettes to remove the sweat for the camera and also surely yelling at Mo when he was on his phone...
If you're not a vlogger, you don't give a flying fig what you look like. She is a youtuber with a large following who knows that the birth vlog is going to get views ($$$) and she has that "squeaky clean, never messy or less-than-perfect image to keep up with. Do you really think she is ever going to put out a video when there is washing that needs to be folded lying around or toys and crap everywhere when the baby is older or walking or crawling around? Not on your life. Or one where her kitchen has dirty dishes in the sink and the counter-tops are crowded, full of bottles, chargers and papers or the whole flat anything but immaculate white and pristine?? Never. Something like this might make her more relatable, but it would be totally inconsistent with her image of herself AND what she wants us to believe... She airbrushed and filtered her belly and her face throughout her pregnancy up to the very last minute, and posted those studio pictures of airbrushed perfection, making every other new mom out there feel dumpy, ugly and incompetent. (Btw, there is a moment in the birth video, in the hospital, where you can CLEARLY see stretchmarks on her thighs... Run before she reads this...)
She is ALWAYS in charge of things. She had people cleaning her already clean flat when there were only the 2 of them tiptoeing around in white slippers. You really think she doesn't have a battalion of people to tidy and clean up and a nanny or 2 at her beck and call coming in every day to help while she gets herself made up and ready for the new vlog about her perfect life? She certainly CAN afford to employ help, so why wouldn't she? Most people of course can't, ergo the messy homes. She's never going to admit it though, because a HUGE part of the image is that she does it all by herself and that she is extremely capable of organizing and streamlining every single aspect of her life- which , I'm guessing, she probably is, albeit at the expense of other people's sanity (Mo's..)... She will probably say on her vlog that she still has her cleaning lady come in every now and then to dust the few specks of dust on the countertops, but that's it.
Mo, as usual, doesn't seem to be helping much. He doesn't seem to be too into doing anything except updating and posing for his Instagram account with his tongue tucked behind his teeth ? showing off his beige outfits or his fancy food. Poor Mo... He always desperately grabs the chance to eat something tasty. (Annie, your stuff may be healthy, but for SURE , it's nowhere as tasty as the spicy, saucy stuff he eats out... You make the same easy, boring things over and over again and although it looks like you're having multiple orgasms whenever you take a bite and always rave about how it's "soooo delicious", well, ya can't fool us, Annie! Who wouldn't want a juicy burger that's not green for once? )
He doesn't strike me as a hands-on guy anyway...I can't see him -by any stretch of the imagination- changing a single diaper, feeding his daughter or taking charge or any kind of initiative. He may play with or hold the baby for a few minutes when she tells him to. Yeah, the usual excuse is "I don't know anything about babies", well, neither does ANY mom. You learn. But he probably just removes himself discreetly from the flat to get away from the stress so he can vlog in the car, photograph his food in restaurants, or catch a workout. I also think that Annie's probably more than ok with that. I always get the underlying feeling that she's sitting there in the videos with him, teeth and fists elegantly clenched, silently fuming to herself. I'm sure he subliminally frustrates, bothers, angers or embarrasses her by being more raw, human, goofy, even likeable -if immature- at times. She's not very good at hiding her distaste, just like she would always be distant and kind of uninvolved and monosyllabic whenever he tried to include or engage her in his vlogs, because it was HIS content for HIS channel, even at their wedding. I think someone mentioned it somewhere and she has since made an effort not to appear so indifferent, blase and snobby in his videos. Annie strikes me as a person who is obsessed with "perfection" in her off-camera, everyday life too, and living with a person like that must be very difficult. I'm sure she yells at Mo for drinking water on the white sofas. or throwing a jacket on a chair, so I'm guessing that the sofas are going to get removable slipcovers for off-camera time-not that we'll ever know...Unless she reads the comments here and adjusts some things, hahaha!
We all know that perfection is IMPOSSIBLE in a real home with babies. This video was put out more than 2 weeks after the actual birth, so we know she had ample time to double check everything a dozen times and put out a "perfect" version of everything.
Please, especially new moms out there: having and taking care of a tiny baby may not seem like a big deal, but it is exhausting to the point of no return and draining as hell. You might look like a hag from the demon pit, you might have stretchmarks all over and pimples you never had before, you may have mood swings and bad days where you will scream at everyone uncontrollably- it's different for everyone. It's ok and things WILL get better. Your hormones are still on a rollercoaster and you will often feel like you simply can't cope or keep up. And keep in mind: even perfect Annie's story is not the one we saw...Even Annie doesn't look like that without a few hours of primping, filtering and airbrushing when needed, or when the ring light is turned off and the camera is not running. She is always VERY high maintenance and it won't change now. It's all very, very pretty, but it's fake. So love yourself as you SLOWLY return to normal, enjoy your beautiful babies and watch the videos if you want, the same way you would watch a Hallmark movie: for the cuteness, the aesthetics and the calming effect, but NOT for the reality of the content. After all, I watch them too, for those exact reasons.
Remember: online, we only see the cuts that have been approved to be camera-worthy. We shouldn't compare our behind-the-scenes, real lives with the meticulously curated highlights of Annie, or those of any Annie out there. Because even her life is not what she chooses to show the world.
P.S. Sorry...I rambled on much longer that I intended too.
P.P.S. Annie, if you're reading this-which I believe you probably are- I wish you much happiness and good luck to your baby, despite the fakery, deception and impossible standards you set and project online.
had to laugh so hard