September Friends

-      Wonderful, amazing, caring, beautiful women!

It was during my fifth pregnancy & I was due in September of 2010 that I remembered stumbling across a website called Bubhub with my previous pregnancy. Bubhub is a pregnancy, baby & parenting website, it is also a place where you can connect with others & join groups of women that are due to give birth in the same month as you.

It was here that I joined the due in September, 2010 group. We shared our pregnancy journeys with each other, supported each other, & got to know each other, all while we went through the same things together. It was here that we formed friendships, with a kind & supportive network of like-minded women.

Our ancestors had their support networks within their communities, sisters, aunties, mothers, & grandparents all living close by. The aunties would come & care for the children while the new mother slept, and the women would work together to help each other.  We don’t have this in our day & age, families spread out & people move away, but we do have the Internet where we can make connections & build our own networks, which is what happened with this wonderful group of women from all over Australia.

I joined later than most of the other ladies, so a lot of the time, I kind of felt like I crashed the party, although none of the women ever made me feel that way at all. In fact, they were very welcoming & they included me making me feel like I belonged.

I joined 16-06-2010, this was my first post in the group:

Hi all I am new to the forum & thought I would just introduce myself here...

I'm Katie & I am pregnant with my 5th baby, but will make child no.6 as I have a step-son also.

I am due on the 9th of September. I am 28 weeks at the moment, and MS (morning sickness) or all day sickness is starting to set back in...not happy Jan... 

I feel like a pill popper at the moment, I'm on so much medication. I am taking multi-vitamins, calcium & magnesium, vitamin D (for deficiency), anti-depressants & now my OB (obstetrician) has started me on blood pressure tablets (for the possible unrelated to pregnancy, development of hyper-tension).
I am starting to get a lot of pain in the left of my back, which is worse when going from sitting to standing...which I'm quite sure is the onset of SPD (symphisis pubis dysfunction, in other words a very sore & painful pelvic area). I had this with all pregnancies, but it was extreme with DD4. I'm dreading it getting that bad with this one too.

Wow, what a sook I am! 

Aside from all of that, I am getting so much movement from bubba, and I'm noticing times he is awake & asleep. He likes to wake me up at 3am with hunger pains. To eat or not to eat, that is the question??

I didn't go into labour on my own, with my last 4 pregnancies & was worried about being overdue with all of them, but with this one I'm worried my water is going to break & I'm going to be giving birth with my 3 yr. old on the phone to an ambulance...after 2 very fast labours with DD's 3 & 4.

My dreams are so vivid at the moment, and I am remembering them clearly when I wake up, they say that happens in pregnancy. Anyway, enough about me, how is everyone else going with their pregnancies?

My final post on Bubhub was on 27-08-2010:

Hi ladies all went well with the birth of my beautiful baby boy... he is sleeping & breastfeeding well so far.

 I lost track of the ladies that had become my support network, as I became busy with my newborn son. I was feeling down one particular day & logged into bubhub to see if the ladies were still about. I was hesitant to connect with them again & I had found that they had migrated to a closed Facebook group, where I would have to ask permission to be invited to join. This scared me!

One of the wonderful ladies passed my request on to the administrator, I was accepted, and then I got booted & the group went crazy – it turned out to be a virus, and I realised that they didn’t dislike me that much! ;) A new group was formed & all the ladies were added to it, including me. :D

This group still runs on Facebook to this day, originally it had 35 members, some of the ladies decided it wasn’t for them & left the group for their own personal reasons. As of today we still sit at a strong number of 27! We are twenty seven women that have shared our own personal journeys with each other for over three years now.

There has been heartache & pain, laughter & joy, good times & bad times.

One of the members says:

“I love this group. I don't feel as though anything I say is overlooked, but also don't expect everyone to comment on everything that is put up either.
I really wasn't big into the BubHub scene so was left behind in the beginning and as a result didn't really know all the history.
I feel that I can share anything in the group, and I just like it that way.. That's all I really have to say about it. I count ladies in this group as better friends than some of my real life ones, whether I have met them or not.”

Addressed to my dear September Friends:

"Wonderful, Amazing, Caring, Beautiful Women!!!!" That is what each & every one of you bring to this group, a group of friends that have been there for each other through thick & thin, & brought each other up, 60 or so shoulders to share the weight that we all carry & have carried for the last 'almost' 3 years. Friends, whom even if we don't talk for days, weeks or months...it doesn't matter, we just pick up where we left off. 
I may not comment all that often, but I read along & think of you all on a daily basis. Sometimes I want to hug you tight, and sometimes I want to slap you too especially, when you think you're disgusting!... but this group wouldn't be what it is today (even though it has been slow of late), if it wasn't what each & every one of you brought to it!! You are to me a group of online sisters, whom I know if we were close enough would be the ones to pick me up if I fell, & vice versa. 
If you feel you need to take a step back, do what you need to do, but please know that you are thought of & you are loved, even if you don't hear those words as often as you need Xxxx