pregnancy for cool girls

May 9, 2017 1:39 AM

Where do the cool internet ladies hang out when they're up the duff?

I'm 7 weeks pregnant and both ravenous for pregnancy-related content/socializing and sort of nauseated by everything readily available. Looking for cool or funny or feminist or snarky or academic or hipster or geeky or basically anything that doesn't refer to me as "mommy" constantly (enough barfing going on over here, thanks!) I'd especially love interactive spaces like groups/forums but will happily scarf down blogs/articles/books. My favorite thing I've found so far has been Kara Jesella's tumblr entries about her pregnancy.

Throwaway at [e-mail] if you want to share privately or be my pregnancy pen pal or whatevs

posted by anonymous to Human Relations (19 answers total)

This is more along the lines of academic books and child psychology, but here are my fav books:

1) Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong--And What You Really Need to Know
(yes you can eat sushi)

2) The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us about the Relationship Between Parents and Children

3) Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World
- Not at all pregnancy-related, but may have some good advice on child-raising and psychology
posted by moiraine at 2:06 AM on May 9, 2017 [4 favorites]

mumsnet is fairly snarky and very feminist.
posted by low_horrible_immoral at 2:38 AM on May 9, 2017 [4 favorites]

I can't say enough terrific things about Rima Apple, book-wise. Valerie Fildes' "Breasts, Bottles, and Babies" is a hard-to-get 500 page doorstopper, but it makes for fascinating reading. I also found Jack Newman to be good stuff.

It's been a decade since I went looking, and I ended up on an on-line group that was largely crap but 10% cool. Me and a few others exchanged private messages: the moderation is a joke, most of these people know next to nothing...we should start our own group. We looked carefully for people to invite, expecting a high rejection rate. Nearly nobody said no, though.

Ten years later our little group is still chugging away with about two dozen on us. Many have taken (despite some pretty big distances!) visits to meet each other, sent care packages/$ over ill health, a child's ill health, a divorce...

So my advice is to find something that is kind of your flavour, and then organise a bit of an exodus, and make your own place for cool pregnant folk to hang out at. Unless you want to keep reading "How does Nevaeh Nevanda Twilight Sparkle Smith-Jones sound?" and "I'm going to feed my baby loads of avocado! But, how do you cook avocado?" over and over and over -- I really think it requires vetting members to steer clear of that. Mazel tov!
posted by kmennie at 2:45 AM on May 9, 2017

r/babybumps and spacefem.com!
posted by chaiminda at 3:27 AM on May 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

A lot of this is happening in Facebook Groups now, as I learned when I went looking for this with my first. Caveat: a lot of the groups are totally ridiculous, so you may have to wade through a lot of junk to find Your People, but in my experience it's worth it! The good thing about them is connecting with others at the same stage of pregnancy/child rearing as you. The bad thing is that they lean young and dramatic at times. I joined a couple of birth month centered groups a few years ago. One splintered and ~ 30 of us are still in touch regularly, having created our own supportive community as described above. Another is still big and active - by happy accident it's just a great group of women.

There are also a couple of more general mothering groups I could recommend, though they'll be light on pregnancy content. Feel free to PM me for names!
posted by marmago at 4:01 AM on May 9, 2017

Try the alphamom calendar for content. I found it very satisfying. R/babybumps was a staple as well.
posted by stormygrey at 5:28 AM on May 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

1) Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong--And What You Really Need to Know
(yes you can eat sushi)

^This. A Favorite for this comment wasn't enough. This book a million times.
posted by French Fry at 6:14 AM on May 9, 2017 [9 favorites]

My other half really enjoyed The Rough Guide To Pregnancy And Childbirth. It's more a snarky collection of stories and humour than a detailed reference tome (so take the bad "uninformative!" reviews with a pinch of salt).
posted by EndsOfInvention at 6:14 AM on May 9, 2017

Hello and congrats! There's a pregnancy / parenting group on Facebook for Mefites that we started up about six months ago - at this point there are more than 150 of us chatting it up. You may want a more specific birth-month cohort group to join elsewhere, but if you (or anyone else reading this) would like to join our little general community on FB, just memail me and we'll set it up.
posted by sestaaak at 6:15 AM on May 9, 2017 [18 favorites]

When I was pregnant, I've found Berkeley Parents Network to be magnitudes better than any other forum. Obviously it's somewhat localized but 90% of it is applicable no matter where you are.
posted by rada at 7:24 AM on May 9, 2017

Oh, man, reddit can be a trash hole but I found r/babybumps to be one of the better baby/pregnancy forums. Also check out r/breastfeeding (maybe NSFW depending on if your work minds photos of babies breastfeeding?) for info about breastfeeding.
posted by kellygrape at 7:46 AM on May 9, 2017 [3 favorites]

Breaking Mom is a subreddit that I found invaluable for the real and raw take of pregnancy and motherhood. It tends to be more geared toward motherhood than pregnancy but I found it to be a breath of fresh air as I was overcome with prenatal ambivalence as one of the few places that I wasn't expected to vomit rainbows or have a fully Pinterestic nursery.
posted by crunchy potato at 7:52 AM on May 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

http://www.altdotlife.com has some great forums related to pregnancy and being a new parent. It's a bit of a ghost town now but the archives are really great.
posted by beandip at 9:09 AM on May 9, 2017 [3 favorites]

My better half joined the month group for expecting mothers at the Bump. They stayed there for a while and then migrated to facebook. They're the mafia. The numbers have steadily fallen, but there still several hundred strong. They go off and do weekends, compare notes, (engage in immature nonsense), and it is generally positive. Each of them is roughly going through the same thing at the same time, so there is a lot of comparing notes and checking in. A bunch of them went to some crazy weekend and she came back and said that when the maitre'd/tourguide/bartender.someone they interacted with found out who the group was, he asked "like off the bump?" and they were not the first group like this he'd encountered. Your mileage may vary. Good luck.
posted by history is a weapon at 10:17 AM on May 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Nthing reddit babybumps. Reading every labor story posted from month 6 to my delivery really helped alleviate my terror of labor because you see the total gamut of things that happen, and not just horror stories.

R/beyondthebump is also great for after delivery, and if you have questions about babies after they are ejected from your uterus.
posted by permiechickie at 11:42 AM on May 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

A lot of people who used to be on TheBump are now posting on a site called ThenComesFamily, which has discussion forums, including ones for your birth month. I post there every so often. I find the vibe there kind of mainstream rather than "cool," but then again I'm in my 40s and probably don't know what cool means anymore anyway. I've never bonded with any of the people on the forums for whatever reason, but I've gotten a lot of useful and thoughtful advice on there nonetheless.
posted by medeine at 12:45 PM on May 9, 2017

Podcast One Bad Mother and I think a related Facebook Group that you'll have to search for.
posted by Crystalinne at 4:44 PM on May 9, 2017 [3 favorites]

I take back my previous answer. The forum I mentioned has basically dissolved in an immature dumpster fire in the past couple of weeks. So goes it on many parenting forums, unfortunately.
posted by medeine at 9:40 PM on May 23, 2017

nthing r/babybumps but there are also subreddits for pregnant moms by month that they're due, so everyone in the sub is going through the same stuff as you. the naming format varies a little, but it's usually r/[month][year]bumpers or r/[month]bumpers[year]. a few may be private but you can message to add. their viewpoints are pretty liberal on all parenting decisions except anti-vax (which is perfect for me, but ymmv).
posted by anthropomorphic at 10:03 AM on May 31, 2017