{"id":4,"date":"2009-05-07T14:55:49","date_gmt":"2009-05-07T14:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/theirbadmother\/2009\/05\/me-the-mommy-blogger-an-odyssey-in-two-parts.html"},"modified":"2009-05-07T14:55:49","modified_gmt":"2009-05-07T14:55:49","slug":"me-the-mommy-blogger-an-odyssey-in-two-parts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/2009\/05\/me-the-mommy-blogger-an-odyssey-in-two-parts.html","title":{"rendered":"Me, The Mommy Blogger: An Odyssey In Two Parts"},"content":{"rendered":"

I began blogging almost accidentally. I had never planned to keep an
\nonline record of life with the baby that I referred to, on the blog, as WonderBaby; in the early weeks of our life
\ntogether, I was pretty much entirely preoccupied by the incredible challenge of
\npulling that life together. My psychiatrist had suggested keeping a
\ndiary as a way to sort through my thoughts on and experiences of new
\nmotherhood, but I had dismissed this as a fantastic suggestion for a
\nbrand new mother. Keep a diary? When? <\/i>All of my literary energies were devoted to reading
\nthe same pages of <\/i>over
\nand over and over again, hoping for some hidden insight to leap off of
\nthe page at me and reveal the secret of How to Keep Your New Mother
\nShiz Together, and to recording the details of every last spit, shit
\nand nursing session in a little notebook that was dedicated to these
\nsubjects. I did spend a lot of time on-line, but that time was spent
\nclicking back and forth between kellymom.com <\/a>(why
\nis baby spitting up with the force and volume of Linda Blair? why does
\nbreastfeeding hurt so much? is new motherhood going to kill me?<\/i>) and askdrsears.com <\/a>(co-sleeping
\nis okay, right? I’m not messing up baby forever, right? immediate crib
\nsleeping isn’t necessary to avoiding Electra complexes, right? RIGHT?<\/em><\/i>) and googling “nipples falling off breastfeeding ouch.<\/i>“<\/p>\n

I had never heard of a mommy blog. I did not know who Dooce<\/a>
\nwas. If you had said to me, ‘go read Dooce,’ I would have boggled at
\nyou and wondered who in their right mind looks for enlightenment on
\nfeminine hygeine product packaging.<\/p>\n

(Then again, if someone had told me that reading Dooce would reveal the
\nsecrets of surviving motherhood, the knowledge of which I craved with
\nthe desperation of a dehydrated hippo, I would have been camped out in
\nthe feminine products aisle of the local pharmacy scrutinizing every
\nlast Summer’s Eve box and <\/em>the Monistat boxes just for good measure.)<\/p>\n

(But I digress.)<\/p>\n

One day, during a google search on “extreme baby gas help<\/i>,” I noticed a link to a page <\/a>that
\nI hadn’t seen before. Amidst all of the links to pages advertising
\nGerber Gas Drops and gripe water, there was a link to something called JezeWhiz<\/a>, where somebody was saying something about the gas my god the gas what is UP with the baby gas thank god I had the foresight to stock up on gas drops.<\/em>
\nIntrigued, I followed that link, and in doing so, tumbled down a
\nvirtual rabbit hole, and arrived in the mommy blogosphere. And my life
\nchanged. <\/p>\n

Forever.<\/p>\n

Well, for the next three years, and counting.<\/p>\n

(Tomorrow I’ll tell you what happened next.)<\/p>\n

(SPOILER ALERT: I became a mommy blogger.)<\/p>\n

Revised and updated from Her Bad Mother, May 2006<\/a>.<\/i> Copyright Catherine Connors 2006 – 2009.<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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