Feb99

Eight years ago, pre Dot Com boom, I was very active on the web, belonged to a few dog related email groups, and the Knitlist. So when I found out I was pregnant with Henry I immediately joined an email list hosted by Pregnancy Today. The groups were set up by the month of the due date. Henry was due February 26, 1999, so our group was called Feb99. We are in the eighth year of our cyber friendship. Membership went from well over 100 at the beginning to about 40 now, with probably less than 20 active posters. We send updates once in awhile which usually brings up the discussions and we all get busy with email for a few days, then list goes pretty quiet for awhile. There have been so many babies we all lost track. A few members dropped off in the early days due to failed pregnancy, the goodbye messages were heartbreaking. Eventually we moved to Yahoo Groups for better organization, I just went back to the Pregnancy Today website and checked, there is still a Feb99 group! Over the years we've had multiple gatherings in various regions. Jenna hosted a big gathering in her house when she was still in Maryland. There was another big gathering in Nashville (I think it was last year). In California we've done birthday parties for the kids couple of times, Nancy hosted in her house in Oakland and Eleen hosted in her kids' preschool in Palo Alto, with gift exchange and all; and I traveled to southern California and met Brigid, Lisa and Elizabeth there. Kari and Kathy traveled to the bay area and I met up with them at various points. The latest attempt was supposed to be a national gathering, but looks like I was the only one made it from the west coast. Of course it's much easier to travel with one child, and as far as I know I'm the only left with one child, while others all went on to have some extra baby love. I met up with Tina from Virginia, Lori and Jenna from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Elizabeth from Carmel, Indiana, who fortunately didn't have to travel since we met up in her town. Feb99 is one place that I know I can count on for support. They have heard so much whining from me in the years past, about Henry's colic, allergies, separation anxieties, my griping about DH, job roller coasters. I scored major sympathy points when I had to work on Halloween nights and missed Henry's trick o' treat two years in the row.