Friendship

There are so many different kinds of friendships -- childhood friendships and high school friendships, college friendships and lifelong friendships, friends we have coffee with and friends in the office. But I have a special friendship with a group of women, some of whom I've never met. When I tell most people about this friendship, they look at me like I'm insane.

Sixteen years ago, when I bought my first computer, a snazzy desktop model that sat in my small living on an old desk and connected me to the Internet via my phone line, knocking me off constantly, I was playing around on AOL -- let's face it, that's one of the only sites there was to play around on at the time -- when I found a public forum dedicated to women having babies in January, 1998. It was July, 1997, and I was about three months pregnant with my second child.

I read some of the posts and then got off the computer. A few days later, I went back on and read some more. Then I started posting, too.

We were an eclectic group -- we came from all age groups and backgrounds, from all parts of the country, we had varying political and social views and economic situations. There were single pregnant women, married pregnant women, women having their first, second, third, fourth, and in one or two cases, fifth babies. There were women having twins, women having scheduled csections, women having home births.  It was fascinating to me.  I'd never met some of the types of people I met in this group.

We shared the typical pregnancy woes. We shared our scares with bad test results. One woman delivered her baby so early she was barely viable. (She lived and is now the oldest Janbaby, even though she celebrates her actual birthday in September.)  As the group shared more, we got closer. And I lamented the day that we would deliver the babies and no longer have a group, because it appeared that AOL only had groups for pregnant women until the month they delivered.

But then AOL continued the group for parents of babies born in January 1998.  And then we were parents of toddlers born in January 1998. And then kids.  We grew as our kids grew, discussing controversial topics (sometimes more successfully than other times) and we leaped into issues surrounding our school aged kids. We retained a private site so we wouldn't be stalked.   Our pregnancies were the thing that originally brought us together, but despite our differences, our kids weren't what kept us together.

There have been tough times in our group.  We've fought, left the group, come back, split up, come back, split up again, come back together.  Many of us have said things to one another we regret. But we've made up, again and again.

Now it's sixteen years later.  We're a tight group, and I visit our private message board throughout the day. We send hopeful thoughts to those in the group who are having a difficult time, and we cheer on the exciting moments, too. We support each other through our kids' sometimes challenging teen years.  Some of us have older children in college, or married, and our first member became a Grandma to her older son's baby a few months back, while we have one member who is pregnant with her ninth child right now. We always like having a new baby to get excited about.) So while I have many friendships IRL ("In re(al life", as we say) one of my most favorite groups of friends is JanMoms98.  Wouldn't change them for anything.