Why you should be wary of pregnancy message boards and my list of resources that might reduce your anxiety
If you find that pregnancy message boards are increasing your anxiety, then turn to a different type of resource
First, a warning: In this article we might touch on some themes that are traumatic or may trigger some people. If you have suffered pregnancy or infant complications or loss, then please read with caution. If you feel unable to handle reading about these subjects, then please don't go on any further. Although I have been fortunate enough to never actually experience a loss or complication myself, my heart is with those women (and men) who have. I hope you manage to work through your experiences and find the help and support that you need. March of Dimes has some great resources.
Article highlights (for those strapped for time):
Pregnancy and anxiety go hand in hand.
Pregnancy message boards can be alluring for a number of reasons: wide accessibility, they document lived experience, offer specific information, anonymity, and fill gaps in traditional medical care.
The dark side of pregnancy message boards: participants are generally not experts, information is largely unregulated, and is not detailed, and, most importantly, they can can invoke more anxiety.
My advice:
If you feel they are helpful, use pregnancy message boards with caution.
Consider using pregnancy message forums for emotional support rather than medical advice.
Seek additional advice from experts.
Look into alternative internet resources.
Consult non-internet resources (aka good old-fashioned books).
Arm yourself with resources for the postpartum period as well.
If you're pregnant and you're feeling anxious then you're not alone. More than 1 in 10 pregnant women will experience anxiety during their pregnancy. I'd guess that the true number is much higher than that, because pregnancy anxiety is not something often talked about, and definitely not something that my doctor enquired about.
I endured my fair-share of pregnancy anxiety. It reared its ugly head only minutes after I got my positive test telling me I was pregnant for the first time. My initial thought as I read through the test's instruction leaflet was: what if this is an ectopic pregnancy? I thought about listeriosis and toxoplasmosis every time food crossed my lips. When I had a small amount of brown spotting following a pap smear at around 7 weeks, I thought it it meant an impending miscarriage. When the doctor discovered cysts in my baby's brain, I was certain it would mean Trisomy 18. When his kicking slowed at 36 weeks I thought I was going to have a stillbirth.
What would I do in an attempt to dissipate these fears? Head to Google, of course. I would go down googling rabbit holes - what started as a simple question, propagated into dozens of others. I would find myself becoming aware of new problems, issues, and symptoms that hadn't previously even crossed my mind. Inevitably, I would end up on a pregnancy message board. It almost felt like all Google roads led to a message board - especially when I started googling specific questions and symptoms.
Enter: Pregnancy message boards - what are they?
If you've been pregnant before, or are currently pregnant, then you probably know about these places - perhaps you've even frequented them before. All the major pregnancy and parenting websites have them, such as The Bump, Netmums, and Baby Center.
They're like big conversational threads: you can ask questions, answer questions, or just read through anonymously. If you have a specific question, and google it, you're likely to find that it has been discussed on one of these message boards.
I guess the original aim was for pregnant women to share experiences and support each other, and they do appear to fulfil this role in certain circumstances, but I'm going to put forward an argument for why you might also want to be wary of them.
The allure of pregnancy message boards
There are many reasons why pregnant women seek out information from pregnancy message boards rather than from healthcare professionals, other "static" pregnancy or parenting websites, books, and even from the lived experience of friends and family members. Here I've outlined some of them, based on my own experience as well as a number of studies and articles.
Accessibility and availability (answers - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week)
Have a problem in the middle of the night? Don't know if it is urgent enough to go to the hospital? Or to bother a health professional with a 3am call (if that's even available to you)? Or to even wake your partner? What can you do? Google it of course! You don't even have to get out of bed. You suddenly have hundreds or thousands of stories from women who have gone through a similar experience at your fingertips.
In an article on the use of pregnancy online forums, Hesper Desloovere Dixon echoes this very real need, explaining: "I quickly understood the primary reason women take to the boards: getting a hold of a doctor is too annoying and takes too long."
Another study of pregnant women in the USA reinforces this issue of the lack of availability of medical professionals, arguing that "the first doctor's visit came too late and they [pregnant women] had lots of questions at the start". This was not as much of a problem for me in Germany where I had regular doctor's visits from 5 weeks pregnant onwards, but I still had many questions in between visits and my doctor did not provide me an out-of-hours number to use if I needed extra support.
Okay, but this still doesn't explain why someone would end up going to a message board, rather than a static pregnancy website. So, onto the next point....
Surveying real experience
Often I would find advice on static pregnancy websites (for example: the NHS or The American Pregnancy Association) but would quickly click away - feeling that it didn't go into the depth or specificity that I required to suppress my fears and anxieties.
In addition, a lot of the time, the advice of these websites was simply: "call your healthcare provider," something that I didn't always want to do (or couldn’t do) for a number of reasons. This sentiment is summarised nicely in another study: "First, pregnancy literature typically provides women with information about common symptoms and body changes, such as weight gain, nausea, stretch marks, abdominal and back pain, and energy levels. There is little information, other than “call your doctor,” regarding pregnancy complications, such as miscarriage, pre-eclampsia, or abnormal ultrasound results"
Pregnancy message boards, on the other hand, provided a wealth of detailed, lived experience. And not just from one woman or one perspective, but from hundreds or thousands of perspectives. I found it really comforting to read through the answers to a certain question and kind of take a mental stock of the themes that were emerging and what the experiences of all these women might suggest about the outcome of my situation. I saw these pregnancy forums as treasure chests of real advice, from real women, and that these would be the real answers to my questions.
Another study suggests that "The main reason [that women seek out pregnancy message boards] was to find information and read about people in the same situation.” I think this must not be discounted - lived experience can easily trump medical experience, especially if the medical professional is male, or is a woman who has not been pregnant. The lure of experience and camaraderie is strong, even if it doesn’t always appear to make logical sense.
Specific information
Mothers in one study concluded that educational materials received from healthcare providers were "unhelpful". I found this to be the case too. Over the course of the whole pregnancy, I received just a couple of printouts talking about avoiding raw meat and the like, but that went nowhere near answering all the questions I had.
Women often suggested that they went to message boards to "fill knowledge gaps".
One participant in a study speaks of the specificity of information provided by pregnancy message boards: "While the doctor could tell me that I’d probably be nauseated during the first trimester, women on the forums told stories: throwing up at work, throwing up during sex, throwing up on public transportation. I learned that I was not alone in carrying a plastic vomit bag in my purse at all times or having a bedside stash of Wheat Thins to stave off morning bouts of nausea."
Anonymity
Anna Wexler in her article for the Washington Post puts it nicely: "It was pregnancy advice on steroids. And the anonymity allowed for the sharing of experiences too embarrassing to discuss in casual conversation." There are a lot of embarrassing things that pop up during pregnancy - some that you may not even feel comfortable discussing with your healthcare provider - after all, especially at the beginning, they are little more than strangers to you.
Presumably, the ability to ask about somewhat more embarrassing things may help pregnant women gain information that they might otherwise not have had access to, and perhaps even to seek support and advice if they feel something is truly wrong.
The mental health of pregnant women is not addressed by medical professionals
My doctor, while extremely proficient at physically examining me and my unborn baby (there is an ultrasound performed at each appointment here in Germany), did nothing to explore my mental health during this time. Actually, there was no mention of it at all.
At the next appointment after I had experienced some cramping and slight spotting during my second pregnancy, he simply said: "Let's see. If we see a heartbeat then the pregnancy is still viable." Not exactly the most nurturing words to calm my anxiety! It turned out to be okay in then end, but I don't know how much I would've been able to trust my doctor to truly care for me emotionally if it turned out not to be alright.
Taking control of your own health
This idea came up from participants in one of the studies I read and I think there's really something to this idea: I know I don't have too much faith in the medical system to truly look after my needs - how can it? How can my doctor really gain a full comprehension of what is going on with me and my baby on both a physical and emotional level, in a series of short 10 minute appointments? I experienced the pull to take matters into my own hands and get the information that I needed - away from medical professionals, and away from the limitations of modern healthcare systems. Sometimes I came across ideas from other pregnant women that solved my issue, but that my doctor would never have told me about.
One study concluded that "[t]he popularity of Web-based discussion forums among pregnant women suggests that this group needs additional sources of information and support to complement traditional consultations with the health professionals"
I would have to agree with this, but are message boards really the best additional sources of information?
I've discussed the some of the reasons why pregnant women may seek out message boards, but what's the dark side to all this?
The problems with pregnancy message boards
Frequenters and contributors of pregnancy forums
Are (often) neither medically trained, nor are they experts in pregnancy in childbirth. Again, based on what I've said above, this is not necessarily such a bad thing because these people are often talking from lived experience - which can perhaps provide you with information that would not be available from your medical practitioner.
But they are not your medical practitioner - which means that they don't know your medical history, and they don't know the details of your pregnancy - both of which may be important for people to know about if they're going to give you truly useful advice.
These forum participants are also not you friends - they may act like they care and use the words of someone who cares (and perhaps they truly do), but they don't actually know you and probably don't care about you personally or think about you very much.
Are generally frequenting messaging boards because they have a problem themselves. Some people may only be on there to help others, but some people are using it as a platform to vent their own problems.
Information on pregnancy message boards is largely unregulated
Generally people are only referencing their own (or others') experiences. While again this can be valuable in it's own way, this can also lead to unregulated information.
Other sources of information (books, static websites, scientific literature) are more likely to have gone through a peer review or regulation process, and these sources often also reference other reputable sources of information.
This lack of regulation can lead to mis-information. As Anne Wexler put it: "But they are also places where misinformation can proliferate: With enough communal support, anything can gain the aura of truth."
There's a lot of information - but not necessarily detailed information
Many of the answers on pregnancy message boards are short. Sometimes one answerer will come back again and respond to follow-up questions, but often they don't. As such, it can be difficult to get a complete account of someone's experience, and difficult to wade through the mountain of information and really determine what it all means.
This can be overwhelming. I know I often found this to be the case - I'd start with one question but never feel quite satisfied with the answers I found on these forums. This would lead me to keep on scrolling, keep on searching, for much longer than I had originally intended.
Which brings me to: message board rabbit holes....
As I alluded to in the beginning, once you get onto a pregnancy message board it is difficult to get off: I often discovered that there were no truly satisfying answers to my queries, and that often, more questions would propagate from my original question after I started reading the responses. This led to a lot of wasted time on my part.
Much more insidious and damaging than just simply wasting my time, these message boards spurned anxiety rather than quenching my fears.
I found them to be full of horror stories. When I went to find out what my brown spotting could mean, I stumbled across a thread of women exchanging stories of how their brown spotting was the first sign of their miscarriages. Of course, after reading so many examples, I was panicked and depressed, convinced that my brown spotting was a sure sign that my own miscarriage was imminent.
Other women have echoed this in studies about their use of pregnancy message boards. One woman says: "Sometimes you can Google something, like when I was having my round ligament pain for the first time…some things that came up were terrifying…you want to go to the ER right away! You definitely have to be careful and smart about your Google searches.” Most women in one study agreed that it was difficult to find information that was helpful instead of scary. Another study found that the majority experienced worry because of something they had read.
Less information = better?
I think the plethora of information available on pregnancy message boards (and arguably, on the internet in general) can lead to overthinking, overanalysing, as well as undue anxiety. Looking back to how I felt when I was pregnant and how I felt in response to spending too much time on pregnancy message forums, I think that often it would have been best to just get a simple answer, put a plan of action into place, and then try not to think about things too much.
As a rebuttal for other (perhaps more reliable) resources of pregnancy information not going into a large amount of detail (especially in relation to complications), it's argued that "given that the majority of women will not experience these complications, this strategy may avoid causing undue concern." I do think there is something to this, but this line of thinking can be problematic on a number of levels: Do pregnant women really need "protection"? Shouldn't a woman be able to decide for herself what type of information or level of detail will cause "undue concern"? Can't a woman have the opportunity to take her health into her own hands outside of the constraints of a (sometimes lacking) traditional healthcare system? These are all thoughts for another article that would be too much of a digression to get into here.
So, with that being said: if you're pregnant, where should you go for information? Here's my advice.
Use pregnancy message boards with caution
If you find the information on pregnancy message boards provides you with comfort, support, and helps you make better decisions regarding your pregnancy, then please go ahead.
If, however, you start feeling anxious, worried, or upset then step away (either to nothing, or to one of the resources I mention below).
Consider using pregnancy message boards primarily for emotional support rather than medical advice or diagnoses
One study suggested that pregnant women "are turning to online forums to discuss their health" rather than just for "emotional or peer support". I think this is problematic (for the reasons I've outlined above), but, I do think that pregnancy message boards can be valuable sources of emotional support for pregnant women.
Another study has suggested that "message boards helped them [women who have suffered pregnancy loss or stillbirth] feel less isolated in their loss and grief and they appreciated unique aspects of internet communication such as convenience, access, anonymity, and privacy."
I think this is an important point to raise here, because there are certain benefits to message boards and they may give women in need of support, access to that support (that may have otherwise remained unavailable). I know, at least in my circles, people do not often speak about miscarriage or pregnancy complications. Even in this day and age, it's still considered quite taboo. This is propagated further by the fact that it is common practice to resist announcing your pregnancy (in some cases even to anyone other than your partner) before the end of the first trimester. This means that many women will probably miscarry in silence, sometimes even without their close friends and family knowing that they were ever pregnant. This is a big topic, and one that requires its own post, but I can see why women in this situation may be seeking out the anonymity of a pregnancy forum in order to receive the emotional support that they require.
Hesper Desloovere Dixon in her article puts this idea nicely: "This extreme discomfort with any deviation from an idealised version of pregnancy — let alone any discussion of it — is what forces women underground, to unruly forums for unruly bodies."
Seek support from experts or professionals (either in addition to advice you find on message boards, or instead)
This could (and probably should, at least at some point) involve your medical professional.
But, as we've already discussed, there may be times when support from your own medical professional is not available to you. What then? It's difficult for me to provide exact resources, because some will be regional, but perhaps you can get some ideas from here and see what is available to you where you live:
Germany has a pregnancy support platform, which includes a hotline, online chat or email options, as well as face-to-face support. I imagine many countries would have similar platforms.
There are also websites where you can ask questions of maternal health experts such as this one, or here.
Here are some internet resources that are alternatives to pregnancy forums (that I personally found helpful - this is by no means an exhaustive list!)
Alpha mom - specifically the pregnancy calendar
Amy goes through each week of pregnancy and describes things that cropped up for her as she was pregnant with her second son.
I actually found this guide to be a breath of fresh air - it's informative, yet hilarious at the same time. She describes pregnancy so accurately. Reading the short post each week really helped to reduce my pregnancy anxiety.
Miscarriage odds reassurer
I was really nervous about miscarriage during both of my pregnancies, but this little app really helped me to see that "while miscarriage is common, it is not the likely outcome. Once a woman becomes pregnant the pregnancy is more likely to result in a baby than to end in a miscarriage."
You can simply plug in some basic information, most notably, how many weeks and days you are pregnant, and it will give you the odds of not miscarrying (reassure me) or miscarrying (give it to me straight).
It's nice to see that by around the 10 week mark your chances of miscarrying are only around 2%.
This might not be for everyone, but I found it reassuring to see the percentage chance of miscarriage decreasing day by day.
The Pregnancy Podcast
I just discovered that Vanessa also has a whole website and blog associated with the podcast. She aims to provide "evidence-based information" about pregnancy.
There are episodes on a whole range of topics and she really digs deep with her research.
Very interesting listening and very helpful in making informed decisions.
Natalie Bennett's pregnancy updates on Youtube
Here, Natalie documents week-by-week her experience through her second pregnancy (her first pregnancy was a twin pregnancy).
I enjoyed listening to her perspective each week - she was very calming (even when she experienced some bleeding towards the end of the first trimester).
She went into quite a lot of detail about symptoms etc, but always in a calm and friendly way.
The Birth Hour Podcast
When you're getting closer to giving birth, you might want to give this one a listen. I've mentioned it before in my article about my precipitous birth experiences.
In each episode, one mother tells her birth (or multiple) experience.
I found it really interesting to hear about other people's birth stories in-depth, and it helped me mentally prepare for all types of possibilities.
Again, this might not be for you, but give it a try if you think it sounds interesting.
BodyFit by Amy Prenatal Workouts
If you've read my article about exercising at home you'll know that I'm a big fan of BodyFit by Amy.
She offers free prenatal (as well as postnatal and other) workouts on YouTube.
There are a variety to choose from, and she gives options for all different fitness levels. She also does them while pregnant herself!
Non-internet pregnancy resources (let's go old-school)
I remember reading somewhere that the best thing you could do during pregnancy was to get a book about pregnancy and, anytime you had a question, consult the book instead of googling. I think this is great advice if you find the overwhelming amount of information on the internet to be anxiety-inducing.
Here are some books that I recommend:
The Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy
It calls itself "a straightforward, nonjudgmental, scientific reference book for pregnancy." And this is just what it is: it covers pregnancy week-by-week, labor and postpartum, as well as some specific issues or considerations that might crop up.
I think if you're going to have one book to reference during your pregnancy, then this is an excellent option.
The Birth Partner by Penny Simkin
I've mentioned this one before in my article about my precipitous birth experiences, but I'll mention it again here. It's written for the birth partner, but I think it has very relevant information for the pregnant woman herself.
This book is more about the birth experience, so it might be more relevant further on into the pregnancy.
Expecting Better by Emily Oster
I haven't read this one but really wish I had (I didn't even know about it until after my second pregnancy).
In this book, Oster digs deep beyond pregnancy myths and "presents the hard facts and real-world advice you’ll never get at the doctor’s office or in the existing literature."
I think it would be great for those that want the "why" behind the basic information that is routinely supplied to pregnant women.
It doesn't end with the pregnancy
In a lot of places around the globe, traditional pregnancy care just doesn't cut it.
But it doesn't end with the pregnancy. Anna Wexler in her Washington Post article states: "In my own experience, the postpartum care was the weakest. Women are typically examined by their obstetricians six weeks (at the earliest) after enduring the most physically traumatic experience of their lives."
I also found this to be true of my own experience. I discovered at my 6-week postpartum check-up that the pain I'd been feeling was not normal, and that my second degree tear had not healed well and was, in fact, infected (more on that in another post). While my baby had been to numerous doctor's visits since the birth, no one had checked up on me in that time.
This sentiment is also echoed by Elizabeth Howell, who is a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Mount Sinai Hospital, NYC. Howell says: "When women are discharged, they routinely receive information about how to breastfeed and what to do if their newborn is sick but not necessarily how to tell if they need medical attention themselves...It was only when I had my own child that I realised, ‘Oh my goodness. That was completely insufficient information...The way that we’ve been trained, we do not give women enough information for them to manage their health postpartum. The focus had always been on babies and not on mothers.”
I don't know how to solve the problem of inadequate postpartum care, but I can offer this: be aware that you will probably get even less care postpartum than during pregnancy, so arm yourself with resources to prepare for that. Many of the resources listed above also deal with postpartum care. If you're after something more specific, perhaps try a book specifically dedicated to the postpartum period, such as: "The Fourth Trimester: A Postpartum Guide to Healing Your Body, Balancing Your Emotions, and Restoring Your Vitality" by Kimberly Ann Johnson. I haven't read it, but it sounds like it would be very helpful and nurturing.
Final words
This article expanded in all sorts of directions that I didn't necessarily expect when I first started it. I've realised that the reasons why pregnant women find pregnancy message boards so alluring are complex, and perhaps point to inadequacies in traditional medical care provided to them. While I originally wanted to title this article: "why you should steer clear of pregnancy message boards", I now don't completely agree with my original statement. Instead, I now say: be wary of pregnancy message boards, use them with caution (if you want to), and consider other sources of information.
Do you/did you consult pregnancy message boards when expecting? What has your experience of them been? Do you have any further resource recommendations? As always, leave your comments below.
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