An early one today but I just wanted to congratulate a friend who gave birth at 7.15 this morning to a little boy called Thomas.
If you take the miracle of birth away, it's a great story of the internet community. There is a group of us who 'met' on a parenting website when we were pregnant in 2008. There are so many stories within this group of women and so many stories still developing. Not all over us have always got on, but we work through our issues and are always there to lend each other support, just as it should be. Only this is on the internet, not in 'real life'.
Real life community has been stretched to the point where the support of good friends in the near vicinity can be lacking at the time when you need it. Through no fault of the people who live near us - they're just busy. In the same way as we are busy. On an internet forum (we have our own closed forum now) you can post your thoughts and friends can deal with them when they have time. It's good. Real life and the internet community is now so blurred that my best friends from work are people I talk to on the internet out of work through facebook and twitter.
Anyway - back to the new baby boy. 3 of us from our closed forum have had babies recently, with little m being the first and Thomas the last. Thomas' mum had two birth partners. The first was her partner and the second was her best friend from our forum. I like that, internet and real life become the same thing and the old style community is revived with a modern twist. Thomas will be welcomed into the world by 15 families, some of whom he will hardly ever meet but who will always be there to give him help and advice. To celebrate and commiserate with him. I'm already jealous that his mum will have those lovely warm few first weeks that me and little m have just had but we'll get to share it in our own way, even if it's not an actual real life cuddle.
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