I recently spent a few weeks participating on a rather well-known pregnancy message board. Then one day I read a post a woman had written about how, at 22 weeks she had found out that her baby had a very rare genetic condition which meant that her baby would either be stillborn or would probably not survive longer than a couple of days. I think she used the phrase, “This totally sucks.” Now there’s an understatement. Her post was followed by a lot of messages from fellow board members who wrote things like, “You will be in my prayers,” “I’m so sorry you’re going through this,” and various other canned messages of condolence. After I read that message I began to worry that there would be something wrong with our baby. Then I realized how irrational a thought that was, closed my laptop and walked away from the message board for good.
Although I enjoyed some of the discussion threads about silly things like food cravings and bizarre dreams, I found that the overall tone of the site was a lot more negative than I had originally hoped. There seemed to be a lot of unwritten rules that I had to follow, and I felt as though I was constantly censoring myself in this rather conservative community of pregnant woman. It was clear that this wasn’t the case for everyone there…some very close friendships had developed between some of the women. In general though, if members didn’t conform to the accepted set of practices, they were ostracized by the existing members of the forum. I found this to be very ironic, since presumably everyone came to the board for a sense of community and support. I know a lot of women get a lot of positivity from sites like the one I tried out. It just wasn’t for me. I get a lot more out of my day-to-day experience with my blog friends, women I know from the internet who are already moms, who have shown more care and support to one another and to me, than I believe I could ever find in a somewhat anonymous forum. Cheers to you, ladies.
So if you’re pregnant, and considering joining one of the many pregnancy-related communities that are out there on the web, you might want to consider the following before stepping in.
1. Don’t discuss your weight. You should neither complain about gaining too much weight or, conversely, voice any concerns over not yet having gained enough weight. It just “bums out everyone” else on the forum.
2. Flaming is to be expected, and in many cases, is even encouraged.
3. It’s cool to talk about your cervical mucus. (I personally could have lived my whole life quite happily having never been acquainted with the phrase, “snail trail.”)
4. It’s okay to talk about food. A lot. Daily threads about what’s being eaten for lunch are to be expected.
5. There are an alarming number of acronyms to learn, including DH, DD, DS, AW, AE, NBR, PSA, just to name a few. Don’t ask anyone what these stand for, though. You’ll have to figure them out for yourself.
6. It’s cool to admit you drink coffee, pop, enjoy an occasional sip/glass of wine and/or beer, sit in a hot tub, go four-wheeling, eat deli meats and all other manner of activities considered generally inadvisable for pregnant women.
7. Don’t ask a question that’s already been asked by some other pregnant woman at some point in time in the history of the site. See number two, above.
8. Expect to see a lot of web “bling” at the bottom of every post within a thread. Bring your glasses.
(On that note, Eden and Alice have launched their new site, “Let’s Panic about Babies!“ It couldn’t have come at a better time.)
