When I launched the first Choice Moms discussion board at the end of 2005, we had fewer than a dozen messages with a handful of women who stumbled upon my yahoo page. A year later there were more than 750 messages in a month.The board peaked at 1272 messages in the month of February 2010, when it had 1,200 members.

It was wonderful to see the community grow -- largely by accidental stumbling upon, and word-of-mouth -- to more than 1,000. But I knew it was only a drop in the bucket in terms of the size of our community. There are just not as many Choice Moms who want to communicate online on an ongoing basis as there are those who don't.

And the yahoo group had simply gotten too big to be effective for new women. Most women found the board when they were trying to conceive, and thus each daily digest of 25 or more messages tend to revolve around fertility questions. Some women in other stages simply felt squeezed out by the topic. So I decided it was time to build a new board, and closed the yahoo group to new members.

There are still women chatting daily on the yahoo Choice Moms board, which is wonderful. But the discussion board on ChoiceMoms.org (launched in part thanks to funding from California Cryobank) allows its members to pursue different forums based on the topics and stages that interest them. Each week I get about 10 new questionnaires filled out by women who want to join the discussion. It has easily grown to nearly 600 members in its first 10 months of full operation.

One of my favorite threads that has developed on the board is for those who are specifically in a 2ww that month. It gives them a place to check in and learn of others in that agonizing space. In September 2010, for example, there were 559 visits to the thread. They share news about IUIs, IVFs, embryo transfers -- and share the tick tock space when time seems to go so slowly as they wait for news about whether sticky baby dust helped things "take."

We have a forum specifically for lesbians and queers, where we've had 222 visits since it launched.

The biggest thread -- out of more than 200 -- is Introductions, where women read and share stories of their journey. Those posts have been visited more than 2,000 times.

While nothing can replace the bonding that comes from face-to-face connections at Choice Mom networking events, and other meet-ups and SMC gatherings, I am proud to see all the ways women are able to support each other, raise questions and fears, and get insight from peers on the Choice Moms discussion boards. If you haven't tried it out yet, please consider joining -- and lend your voice to the conversations happening there on anything from talking with other single mothers of multiples to learning about how others have made contact with half-siblings to connecting with women in a particular geographic area.

-- Mikki