Finding a Virtual Home

Before I had Little Man I could never understand the people who formed friendships with people in an on-line chat room or board. In fact, prior to Little Man I'd have put "friendship" in quotes, scoffing at the idea that you could be friends with people you didn't even know.

When I got pregnant, I joined the May 08 birth board on Babycenter. I'd post here & there, but mostly I gathered information about child birth, rolled my eyes at the militant mamas and the clueless first-time moms, but in general I felt detached from it. It was more like a rapidly updating, occasionally hysterical Wikipedia for the expectant mother. Even as other moms were posting their birth stories, I refrained from posting mine. I didn't see a reason. My "real" friends knew my story.

Then, about 8 weeks after Little Man's birth, I was unhappily facing the prospect of returning to work in a few weeks. I was browsing through the May 08 board and noticed a post asking about other moms who were going to be pumping at work. I went in and posted, because here was a group of women who were agonizing over going (or being) back to work and trying to figure out how to squeeze (no pun intended) in time to pump at work so we could continue to keep feeding our babies breastmilk. It was like our own Milk Memos.

In the beginning our posts were largely about Amedas and Medelas and how to keep our supply up and the best methods for storing milk. We also tackled other issues facing new moms-- the sadness of not being home with our babies and how to get our babies on a nap schedule and the trials and tribulations of getting infants to sleep through the night.

Then as time passed, we started really talking-- about husbands and body image and funny things that happened to us at the grocery store. About health scares and pregnancy scares and speeding tickets and the crazy things our babies did.

Over the past two years this amazing group of moms has become a close-knit group of FRIENDS. Friends who know the minutae of the day-to-day; friends who send each other Christmas cards; friends who have comforted one another through losses; friends who celebrated new babies and new houses. We text each other, IM with each other, talk on a daily basis. Not friends in quotation marks, but real friends.

I don't know if I can even put into words how much these ladies mean to me, but they have become such an amazing source of love and support that I cannot thank them enough. So PAW mamas, thank you for everything!