What The Lana Rhoades Baby Drama Taught Me About Online Privacy

I was sitting on the cold hexagon tiles of my downstairs bathroom at 2:14 AM, the blue light of my phone illuminating a weird stain on my sweatpants that I was aggressively pretending was just yogurt. Leo was four months old, sleeping in his bassinet, and I was doing what I always did when the crushing weight of the universe and sleep deprivation hit me simultaneously. I was posting a photo of him online.

It was a picture of him asleep, drooling slightly, looking like a tiny drunk angel. I spent a ridiculous amount of time writing a caption about how blessed I was. I waited for the likes. I needed the dopamine. I needed someone on the internet to validate that I was, in fact, doing a good job at this whole keeping-a-human-alive thing. And then, for some completely inexplicable reason, my sleep-rotted brain decided to open a new tab and look up celebrity gossip, which is how I ended up deep in a reddit thread about Lana Rhoades having a child and the absolute circus surrounding it.

If you've been living under a rock—which, honestly, good for you, stay there, it's safe—the internet lost its collective mind trying to figure out who fathered the former adult star's son. Like, the obsession was terrifying. People were analyzing facial features, comparing timelines with NBA players, making TikToks with red string conspiracy boards. It was wild. But the thing that actually made me stop and put my phone down on the bathroom tile?

She stopped showing him. She pulled his face off the internet. She flat out refused to feed the beast anymore to protect her kid from the toxic wasteland that's social media.

I looked at my phone. I looked at the photo of Leo's face that I had just broadcasted to eight hundred people, half of whom I hadn't spoken to since high school geometry. Oh god.

The realization that hit me like a ton of bricks

So anyway, the point is, I started spiraling. Hard. Here was a woman whose entire career was built on the most extreme version of public visibility, and she was drawing a hard line in the sand for her child's privacy. Meanwhile, I had been documenting Maya's literal bowel movements on Facebook since 2017. I had posted her ultrasounds. Her first bath. I practically handed her digital footprint to Mark Zuckerberg on a silver platter before she even had teeth.

I brought this up to my pediatrician, Dr. Miller, at Leo's six-month checkup. I was a mess, sleep-deprived, and drinking a coffee that had definitely been sitting in my car since yesterday. I basically word-vomited my guilt about posting my kids online. She gave me this very sympathetic look and mentioned that the American Academy of Pediatrics actually has a whole thing about this now. I think she called it "sharenting," which sounds like a fake word somebody made up for a morning talk show, but apparently, it's a real issue.

She told me that kids who grow up with their entire childhoods broadcasted online sometimes develop serious anxiety when they hit their teens and realize they never consented to any of it. They feel like they don't own their own memories. She also mumbled something terrifying about digital kidnapping—which sounds like a plot from a Liam Neeson movie where he punches a computer—but is apparently a real thing where strangers steal photos of your kids and claim them as their own. My stomach literally dropped to the floor.

What it means to do this solo

The other thing that really struck me about that whole celebrity baby situation was the intense reality of single motherhood. She's raising this kid on her own in the middle of a media storm. Now, I complain a lot about my husband Mark. Like, a LOT. The man can't load a dishwasher to save his life. He puts the bowls on the bottom rack facing UP. Who does that? But when he goes out of town for a conference, I turn into a feral gremlin by day three.

Doing this parenting thing without a partner is basically running a marathon while wearing a snowsuit and carrying a watermelon. I remember reading somewhere—maybe a World Health Organization report that I skimmed while hiding in the pantry eating stale crackers—that single mothers have insanely high rates of parental burnout. They're the sole providers of emotional regulation, financial stability, and physical care. They don't get to tap out. When the baby has a fever at 3 AM, there's nobody to nudge.

It made me think about the pressure we put on moms to perform. We're supposed to have the perfect organic lifestyle, keep a spotless house, never lose our temper, and document it all beautifully on Instagram. If you're doing it alone, that pressure must be suffocating.

It really forced me to look at the stuff I was buying and using, too. When you're touched out and exhausted, you don't need complicated gadgets that require a wifi password to soothe your kid. You need things that actually work and don't make you want to scream.

Things I bought that really helped (and one that didn't)

Speaking of things that work, I've to be completely honest about the teething phase with Leo. It was hell. Pure, unadulterated hell. He was drooling so much I thought he was part Saint Bernard, and his skin was so sensitive everything made him break out in these angry red patches.

I ended up getting the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit from Kianao and it was basically the only thing he wore for three months. I'm not kidding. I washed it in the sink at 2 AM more times than I can count. Because it doesn't have all those synthetic dyes and weird chemicals, his skin really cleared up. Plus, the neck stretches out enough that when he had a massive blowout (you know the kind that goes all the way up the back), I could pull the whole thing down over his shoulders instead of dragging it over his head. That feature alone is worth its weight in gold.

For the actual teething, I went a little crazy buying toys. I saw an ad for this super colorful silicone bubble tea teether from some random brand and bought it because it looked cute for photos. Total fail. It was too chunky, Leo couldn't hold it right, and he ended up just violently chewing on the canvas strap of my diaper bag instead. It lived under the passenger seat of my car until I finally threw it away last month.

But the Panda Teether? Holy crap. It genuinely worked. I think because the shape is flatter, his tiny uncoordinated hands could really grip it. It has these different textures that he would just gnaw on for twenty minutes straight, giving me exactly enough time to drink one hot cup of coffee. I'd throw it in the fridge for ten minutes while I made breakfast, and the cold silicone seemed to really numb his gums. It didn't have any weird plastic smell either, which Mark is super paranoid about.

If you're trying to find clothes and toys that aren't coated in weird chemicals, you should really take a minute to look through Kianao's organic baby clothes collection.

Pulling the plug on the performance

After that night on the bathroom floor, I did a massive purge. I went through my social media and deleted hundreds of photos. I stopped using those little wooden milestone blocks that I used to meticulously arrange next to Leo while bribing Maya with fruit snacks to stay out of the frame.

I realized I was spending more time trying to capture the perfect moment than I was honestly living in it. The irony is that by trying to document everything to remember it later, I was totally checking out of the present. And kids know when you're checked out. They feel the phone between you. They know when you're looking at a screen instead of looking at them.

So we started doing more floor time. Just unplugged, messy floor time. No cameras allowed.

I got rid of the horrible plastic activity center that flashed lights and played a robotic version of "Old MacDonald" that literally haunted my dreams, and we switched to a Wooden Baby Gym. Mark thought I was being a pretentious hipster when I bought it, but he ended up loving it more than I did. It's just simple. The wooden frame has these little hanging toys that are quiet and don't overwhelm the senses. Leo would lay under it and bat at the little wooden rings, and the sound was just... peaceful. It was just wood clacking together. No batteries. No flashing lights overstimulating his brain right before naptime.

Just me, my baby, and a quiet room. Nobody on the internet needed to see it. It belonged entirely to us.

Look, I'm not perfect. I still take a million photos on my phone. I still occasionally text a funny video of Maya to my mom. But I stopped treating my kids' childhoods like content to be consumed by acquaintances. Whoever is fathering babies in Hollywood, whatever drama is trending on TikTok today—it's noise. It's all just noise. Our kids deserve a private space to grow up, make mistakes, and figure out who they're without an audience.

Before you fall down another 3 AM internet rabbit hole about celebrity gossip, do yourself a favor and check out Kianao's sustainable play gyms for your own quiet floor time.

Questions I constantly ask myself about all this

Should I delete all the old photos of my kids off social media?

I mean, I did. I sat down on a Sunday, drank three massive cups of coffee, and just nuked everything. It felt weirdly terrifying for about ten minutes, like I was erasing them, but then it felt incredibly freeing. You don't have to delete everything, but maybe go in and check your privacy settings. If your high school lab partner can see your baby in a bathtub, it's time to lock that down.

How do you handle relatives who want to post pictures of your kid?

Oh god, this is the worst. My mother-in-law was furious when I told her she couldn't post photos of the kids on her public Facebook page anymore. I basically had to blame the pediatrician and say it was a safety issue. People get really defensive because they view posting photos as a way of showing love. I try to text her photos privately and say, "This is just for you to keep!" It sort of works. Most of the time.

What really helps with mom burnout when you're flying solo?

If you're doing this alone, honestly, you've to drop the ball on the things that don't matter. The laundry can sit in the basket for three days. Let them eat scrambled eggs for dinner. The whole "perfect schedule" thing is a trap. I read all these books about routines and just ended up crying because Leo wouldn't nap at exactly 1:15 PM. Surviving the day with your mental health somewhat intact is the only real goal. Lower your standards until you can breathe.

Do wooden play gyms really make a difference compared to the plastic ones?

In my messy, non-scientific opinion? Yes. The plastic ones we had were so loud and visually aggressive that Leo would get hyper and cranky after ten minutes. The wooden ones are just calmer. It requires the baby to genuinely focus and engage with the object instead of just being passively entertained by flashing lights. Plus, they don't look like a plastic spaceship crashed in your living room.

Is it weird to talk to a toddler about consent for photos?

Not at all. I started asking Maya, "Hey, can I take a picture of you in that costume?" when she was like, three. Sometimes she says no, and I've to physically restrain myself from taking it anyway because she looks so cute, but I respect it. If we don't teach them that they own their own image when they're little, how are they going to enforce boundaries when they get older?