One thing that Diane and I were unable to do was attend a baby class. Being the hip, new age and somewhat competent internet people that we are, we turned to the web to answer our parent questions. Before we jump into online baby sites, you should should always consult a doctor if you have a question and never do anything on the internet that you feel is wrong. A lot of the time, your natural instinct will let you know if a treatment seems bogus or if something might harm your baby. And as I stated before, if you’re unsure, please consult a doctor before trying home remedies.

So with out further waiting, here is the list of websites that we visited pre and post baby:

What To Expect.com: Like the famous book that the site is named after, What To Expect.com was our main crutch through the pregnancy and after. During the pregnancy, this was a great site for week to week updates on how our baby was doing. Along with the online weekly updates, they also feature a widget that can be placed in your iGoogle, Facebook, or dashboard pages that will pull the current week of your baby automatically (this came in handy when we didn’t want to lug ourselves over to the site but were still interested in our babies progress). They also have lots of articles for Dad as well (one of them is even mentioned in the comic here) which I enjoyed several times. The only downside with this site is the lack of depth in some of the articles. Some of the lifestyle ones (read: non-technical baby articles) felt more like quick snippets of information rather then an in depth article and as a father wanting to get involved, I felt a little cheated (example).

What To Expect Forums: This site I haven’t gone to too many times but Diane has an account and turns to these ladies with baby questions all the time. She often sites how fast they will respond, the support they offer with tough situations and the fun of sharing baby moments with other people.

Diane: They have specific forums for the month your baby was born. This has been a tremendous help as we’re generally all going through similar issues with our babies. Plus we swap tips on what we’ve found works on our kids. I highly recommend them if you have questions about something but it’s not an emergency. Not to mention, it’s a good place to vent to other people that understand your frustrations.

Babies Online: Babies online is a lot like What To Expect except but features articles more in line of technical writing. It’s not dry and boring by any means, but check out Babies online features for the 19th week of pregnancy versus What to Expect (here and here). There isn’t anything wrong with Babies, I just like the human aspect of What To Expect.

Exclusively Pumping: Since we are no longer directly breast feeding (we’re pumping and then feeding through a bottle), we’ve used this site to help us understand the world of “power pumping”. Seriously, I didn’t even know such things existed until Diane brought it up to me. My only complaints about this site is that it seems to take forever to load! Once you get past that you’ll be free to cruise the boards and chat with other woman who are exclusively pumping and feeding. Some of the topics include “what is power pumping?”, “how to pump on the go” and “proper storage methods”.

So that’s what helped us get through becoming parents and beyond.