ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 12, 1996 TAG: 9605130097
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELIZABETH WEISE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DUE IN AUGUST? So are a whole lot of other women, and the Net is helping bring them together.
Once, a young woman like Kelly Modica might have remained in the neighborhood where she grew up. She could have gone to her mother when she first learned she was pregnant, would have been surrounded by family and friends seeing her through the birth of her first child.
Instead, she is at an Army base in Alabama with her soldier husband, some 600 miles away from her loved ones in Austin, Texas.
But in this most physical of things, as her body is transformed with each passing month, Modica is surrounded and buoyed by a community of women who exist for her in virtual form only.
She is a member of the August list - one of 143 women from Norway to South Africa, all connected by e-mail, all due in August. It is one of 12 Internet mailing lists created especially for women expecting their babies in a given month.
``If I was living somewhere else where I had friends who were pregnant, it would be OK,'' the 27-year-old expectant mother said. ``But the list has been the greatest resource for me, because I've been able to bond with all these women.''
The women of August all are six months pregnant, having shared the same bouts of nausea in the first trimester and thrilled to the first kicks by their babies, all together, all in the same time frame.
Internet mailing lists are like round-robin letters. After subscribing via a simple command, each woman can send mail to one address and have it automatically forwarded to everyone else on the list.
The resulting flurry can be a cross between an old-fashioned party line and a medical seminar, but mostly the 30 to 40 messages that arrive each day are a continual reminder to these expectant mothers that someone understands just what they're going through.
``In the beginning, I was so sick I couldn't look at a computer screen for very long,'' said Beth Rosenberg, 28, who lives on Martha's Vineyard, an island off Cape Cod, Mass. ``But when I did, here were all these women who were going through the same thing that I was, and it was this wonderful feeling that I wasn't alone.''
The call and response of the mail messages follow the steady progression of pregnancy with its weekly litany of changes.
``First, everybody got morning sickness. Then, everybody outgrew their clothes. Then, a lot of women went up a shoe size,'' said Sarah Haddad of San Carlos, Calif. ``Right now is the time of a real growth spurt for the baby, so women have been bemoaning their weight gain.''
For first-time mothers, the list can be an incredible source of support.
``Even though you go out and buy all the baby books in the world, there are still things you can't find there,'' said Ginger Vukas of Randolph, N.J., who is pregnant with twins. ``You go to the obstetrician, and they just say, `That's normal, and it will get worse.'''
But the women on the list, a mix of first-time and experienced mothers, tax lawyers and computational molecular biologists, seem to know everything - or if they don't, they know where to find it.
Where else, Haddad asked with a laugh, would you find in the same week an abstract of a research paper that found eating 18 jelly beans was just as good as drinking the wretched-tasting syrup used to treat gestational diabetes and an explanation of shifting sleep patterns common in the second trimester - which explained the nightmares many were experiencing.
The sisterhood has known its tragedies, too. One woman, who had a history of miscarriages, entered the hospital at 24 weeks. List members rallied, collecting money for a dinner to be brought in to her and her husband. Despite her doctors' efforts, she miscarried.
``The outpouring of grief on the list was amazing,'' Rosenberg said. ``I felt like I knew her.''
``People say the Internet isolates you from other people and doesn't create community. But they're wrong,'' Rosenberg said. ``This is a community.''
To subscribe to a mother's list, send an e-mail message with the words subscribe MONTH (the month should be the month you're due) to listserv@csi.net. An automatic message will confirm your subscription and provide more information.
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