On behalf of the Novak family and the Novak family of blogs, my wife Tracy and I are so thrilled to announce the launch of our latest product: Samuel Allen Novak, born Monday morning. Tracy and baby are both doing great, and I think I speak for Tracy and myself when I say this: all it took was one look into our little boy’s eyes, and we instantly realized, “Wow. He is going to do serious social media numbers for us.”
We will be issuing a formal press release via Shutterfly soon, but before then, we wanted to share a little bit about the latest addition to the Novak brand with our closest circle of family and mailing list subscribers.
After a nine-month internal beta test, Sam’s official rollout occurred at 8:32 Monday morning at Good Samaritan Hospital. He has his mother’s nose and his father’s IP address.
This may just be the proud dad in me talking, but his metrics are right on target: shortly after birth, Sam was averaging 32 likes per pound and was measuring at about the length of a 14-tweet Twitter thread, which is right where both our doctors and our social media intern want him.
We’re truly astounded by what our little boy has accomplished already: sure, we expected that his first photo on Facebook would do big numbers, but even we were not prepared for it to pull down a 1:2 “love” to “like” ratio. That photo also earned several “wow” face reactions, two “congratulations!” GIFs of Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby raising a martini glass, and one stray “angry face” reaction, which was left by Tracy’s great-aunt Susan, so we’re pretty sure it was just a mistake.
Parenthood is wild, isn’t it? Samuel only went live this past Monday, but already, it’s like we can’t imagine our brand without him.
I know that every parent says this, but we honestly couldn’t be more excited by the engagement that Sam’s publication is generating. Our numbers are way up from last trimester — even taking into account the spike in traffic we experienced in June when Tracy posted a photo of herself holding a homemade EVICTION NOTICE sign and pointing at her very pregnant belly. So we’re feeling truly blessed.
We were a little concerned when Sam lost several likes between his birth announcement photo and the follow-up pic we shared the next day, but doctors have assured us that this is completely normal, and they’re confident that he should have gained all of his likes back by his first-month photo shoot. Hospital staff really are impressed by our little guy, though! His reflexes are strong, his jaundice levels are low, and the hits to read-through ratio on his medical chart is INSANE.
Also: We’ve just added a landing page for Sam on the Novak family blog, and it’s already bringing in a high number of unique visitors. There’s not much there yet, but Tracy already has several drafts ready to publish: one for the first time that she realizes that the dishes can wait; one addressed directly to exhausted mamas; one for when she’s out at the store with Sam and a stranger in a line either says something very rude or very kind; one for when, as a mother, a political issue really hits home for her for the first time; one for when she develops a very strong opinion about breastfeeding vs. formula, position TBD based on how things go in that department; one for when Sam finally grows into his THIS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE onesie; and finally, one dedicated to me, basically about how she thought she loved me before, but now, watching me and Sam do [FILL-IN-THE-BLANK ACTIVITY] together while [FILL-IN-THE-BLANK SOMETHING VERY SWEET I AM SAYING OR SINGING], she loves me more than ever and can’t wait to see me do [FILL-IN-THE-BLANK FUTURE ACTIVITY] with Sam.
Lastly, we just want to thank everyone for sharing with us in our excitement for our new little family. We know we have a lot of sleepless nights ahead of us, but your support makes it so much easier.
And to Sam, buddy, I just want to say this: I used to think I knew what love was. But now that I’ve met you, I can confidently say, from the bottom of my heart: I never knew such a little person could generate so much content.