Information overload
I could read for a month straight and still never catch up on all of the baby/toddler/kid stuff out there. I could join every mommy's group in a 50 mile radius and still miss out on something. I could watch discovery health network parenting shows non-stop and never see a repeat episode. Why? Because there is too much out there!
From baby websites to blogs to forums, my free time is sucked up online. Books on month-by-month and topic sorted behaviors have replaced my normal pleasure reading. Chatting with friends about kid constipation, mealtime struggles and the best bargains on little clothes make a play date fly by. And yet, I always know there is more to discover.
I'm not complaining, but there does seem to be too much out there.
Google any baby topic and you will be instantly overwhelmed with the amount of information available. And then confused by how inconsistent the answers are and how they contradict each other. A simple query on any topic results in hours wasted and almost more questions than I had to begin with. And don't start me on the related links! If I'm on a baby center article, I'll see three more things on the side that I want to click on, which leads me to even more things, plus comment sections, and whoops, it's midnight and I don't even remember what I came on here for.
Speaking of oodles of links, I seem to be on a ton of baby/toddler update newsletter lists. These appear in my inbox almost daily and are full of things like: "Is your baby eating enough?" (damn, maybe not, better check); "The five best things to buy for a 17-month old" (do I have these?); "Your sock drawer can kill your child" (whoa, click first!). Yep, I'm sucked in.
Where do I go first? I do have some go-to places for questions and answers.
The first is always BabyCenter.com. I was an addict while pregnant and haven't stopped.
Every morning I read the Mamasource.com update. I love this - it's questions/answers in your local area and covers all sorts of topics, not just kid ones. Whenever I'm curious about something I just ask the mamas. Boy, do they come through! They just launched Mamapedia.com and I look forward to putting it to the test.
What comes in the mail? Parenting, American Baby and Cookie. Each has it's pros but Cookie is less advice oriented with more of a focus on, hey you are still a person and a parent.
My current books are What to Expect: The Toddler Years and Toddler 411. We also have the Dr. Sears book on the first five years.
The rest is a mix of blogs and other sites. I love CoolMomPicks.com for product recommendations, Mommytrackd.com for good articles and ideas, and Finslippy.com for a fun break.
So all this reminds me of multitude of emails backed up in my inbox waiting to tell me what I'm doing wrong with G-man and 65 simple steps to turn it all around. Guess I should get going...
