The Bump: Online Community for Expectant Parents

One thing first time pregnant parents can't get enough of is information. When I was pregnant with my first child, I scoured the internet in search of communities of women with my due date to befriend. While I did have some real life friends to share the journey, many of them were not yet in the stage of their lives of having children so I didn't have too many resources of humans to exchange stories, fears and photos with...that is until I found a wonderful bulletin board community.

In this particular community, we were divided by due dates and we would join and regularly post comments and respond to other commenters who were moms in our due date month. It was a wonderful experience. The women from our group have remained friends. We stayed communicating together until we each had our babies and believe it or not a couple of moms formed off shoot communities and we still keep in touch daily; some of us weekly and deadbeats like me ever so often. We even had a reunion in Ohio to meet each other in person. My husband was apprehensive at first, but eventually let me board a plane with my six monther to Columbus to meet with my Internet mom friends", he called us. Well really, he called us a "cult" because of how much influence we had on each other, the fact we exchanged holiday and Christmas cards, and photos; and were always on the computer chatting with one another.

While scouring the net recently looking for content to add to the new layout, I discovered, TheBump.com

From the creators of The Knot and The Nest, The Bump gives first-time parents the lowdown on fertility, pregnancy, birth, and babies with stage-by-stage advice, stylish ideas, local resources, and interactive tools -- all in one savvy online community. At The Bump, we aim to connect new parents and parents-to-be, as well as offer them personalized advice using a wide variety of user-generated content and up-to-date community features, including baby blogs, local reviews, checklists, personal profiles, photo galleries, topic-based message boards, and more...

Nice! I do know that BabyCenter and other similar communities have cropped up over the past decade and it is nothing new about commensurating with other parents in similar situation, your first pregnancy. I highly recommend all new moms seek out, visit and settle in with a group of preggers moms in one of these communities.