How To Bourne

I was active on a mommy message board for about five minutes in 2016.  I was blacklisted.  There are rules for mommy message boards. Everyone is mean to everyone all of the time.  This is always framed as concern, knowledge spreading, or advice from someone who knows way more than you will ever know. There is usually a group of OG moms who know one another (online) from the TTC (trying to conceive) message boards. They run that place.  They are allowed to talk to anyone in any fashion, they DO NOT want to see any pregnancy tests, and the birth month message board is really for them only.  They tolerate the presence of others who happen to have a baby due in their baby's month but advice from the newcomer mothers is inevitably wrong.   I lurked on these boards for all of my pregnancies and decided that by my fourth baby, I had enough experience under my belt to comment here and there. I was completely wrong. A first time mom posted saying she felt like ...

 I google everything.  I want to know everyone's advice before making a decision.  When I plan vacations, I spend months making sure we aren't wasting time on tourist traps or food that we could just get at home.  The biggest thing I think I am trying to avoid is regret.  I don't want to make a choice that is going to cause me to regret it one day.  The most stress-causing decisions of my life have always involved the question of having more children.  My first baby was a happy surprise.  Our second was an easy decision since his brother was so easy.  We hit a rough patch in our marriage and in our lives in general after that.  I was in graduate school and working nights in the ICU as a new nurse.  Adam was working a full time job as well and trying to keep our kids quiet on weekends when I needed to sleep during the day to work at night.  It was very tough.  On top of that, my mother moved in with us and we were raising m...