Mum’s the world for blogging communities
YOU’RE a new mum of a two-month-old baby living in a suburban town. Your neighbourhood 9am-5pm isn’t so much a housing estate as a ghost estate. You feel isolated.
Just like the mum who’s working a demanding job with colleagues whose minds are on the next board meeting — so there’s no one to talk through her worries about her shy 10-year-old who’s being excluded at school.
Marry the isolation of today’s parenting landscape with the easy connectivity of online forums and it’s not hard to see why mums are logging on in their thousands to sites such as Rollercoaster, MummyPages and Eumom.
It takes a village to rear a child — today’s village is a virtual one. Parenting sites, accessible at any time of day or night, have become the go-to place for mums in a crisis as well as providing them with a rich social network.
We profile a sample of Ireland’s online community of mums, asking: who are the women behind the sites? And what got them hooked on the digital mum market?
Life changing: Sylda Dwyer said motherhood a shock
Full-time public servant, Sylda Dwyer, 34, started www.mindthebaby.ie two years ago after she’d had baby Jonah because becoming a mother was “such a positive but overwhelming” experience.
“I’d read more books than you can shake a stick at but nothing prepares you for the reality. People say the first six weeks are the hardest. There’s this promise — after that you’ll be on top of everything and he’ll be sleeping through the night. But I wasn’t back to myself and he was still tiny and not sleeping.”
She started mindthebaby.ie as an honest record of everything she had learned about pregnancy, birth and having a baby — “to give other mothers the heads-up on alternatives to what they’d read elsewhere.
“I think I offer an alternative view to mainstream sites. Bigger parenting sites talk about a certain style of parenting. You get articles on how baby should be sleeping through the night at a certain stage. They wouldn’t present solutions other than crying it out. It’s unusual to find mainstream sites talking about co-sleeping or long-term breastfeeding,” says Sylda, who’s also a doula and GentleBirth instructor.
Mindthebaby.ie gets about 50,000 visitors a year and isn’t a money-maker. “It’s a creative space. I don’t take advertising.”
Her blogs about the challenges of being a mum — like her son going through separation anxiety — get most feedback. The site appeals because “you have Irish women talking about their experience in Ireland, using the same services and products as you and living in the same kind of communities — it’s that feeling of local and it’s online”.
Reaching out: Lisa Healy, with her one-year-old daughter Olivia, started blogging as an outlet “for those daily stories that only a parent finds cute”.
Lisa Healy started blogging (www.mama.ie) in 2010 shortly after returning to work as a trainer with an e-learning company, having had her first baby, Alex, now four and a half. She needed an outlet “for those daily stories that only a parent finds cute — things my child said and did, new things he’d learned”. At the time most of her colleagues didn’t have children.
From the archives:: A year in the life: 2010 http://t.co/QadQQWCyus
— Lisa | mama.ie (@mamadotie) March 25, 2014
Initially, her blog was only read by her mother and sister-in-law. Then Lisa, 35, realised there was no Irish network for parenting bloggers. “One day when a group of us were chatting by email, I set up a Facebook Group to allow us chat more easily.”
Just over a year ago, she set up www.irishparentingbloggers.com, which hosts a directory of 65 bloggers.
“People joining the network must have been blogging regularly for at least two months and have at least 10 posts. We’d heard the average blog only lasts six weeks and we didn’t want a group that fell away after a short while. It has turned into a blogging and parent support group.”
Lisa, also mum to Olivia, aged one, enjoys most the blogs that tell the reality of parenting.
Her online work doesn’t earn her any money. “It’s an expensive hobby.”
Recently she and 10 others from IrishParentingBloggers collaborated to launch new site www.parent.ie.
“Parents had become very isolated. No longer living close to extended family, the traditional supports aren’t there. But they turn on their smart phone and suddenly they’re accessing people who can relate to what they’re going through.”
10 Stereotype Dads at your School Gate http://t.co/U1sOyF2b6t
— Lisa | mama.ie (@mamadotie) March 10, 2014
Website plan: Rose Kervick, owner of www.eumom.ie.
One of Ireland’s earliest parenting websites, www.eumom.ie set up in 2000 as a resource for mums to share parenting experiences and access advice from expert contributors.
Rose Kervick, 43, joined the company over four years ago and took over as owner a few years later. “I haven’t been fortunate to be a mother but I have 21 nieces and nephews and four godchildren. I appreciate all that mothers do.”
Rose says one of Eumom’s big pluses is its non-judgmental approach. “Breast-feeding, for example, can be very contentious. Everybody knows it’s the healthiest way to feed newborns. But some mums feel they can’t, don’t want to or don’t have the support. If a mum says she’s going to stop breastfeeding after four weeks, it’s not up to our online community to judge that. We encourage a supportive environment.”
Most popular on Eumom are forums where expectant mothers set up a thread based on their due date.
Eumom encourages mums to meet in real time and holds coffee-mornings and kid-entertainment events. The site’s aimed at expectant mums and at those with babies, toddlers and primary schoolchildren. A panel of experts responds to mothers’ queries about pregnancy, behaviour, fertility, feeding and fitness.
Is your baby nearly ready for arrival? Make sure to have your hospital bag packed! http://t.co/pDDYAMT4u0
— everymum_ie (@everymum_ie) March 26, 2014
Eumom has the largest subscription membership in Ireland — 130,000 receive weekly emails and updates. About 200,000 visit monthly — more than half from a mobile device.
Based in Monkstown, Dublin, the company makes enough to pay a team of 12. Eumom gives a free gift bag of goodies to all pregnant women in Ireland. The bag can be got at SuperValu — download collection card from www.eumom.ie.
Eumom has won the Maternity and Infant Award for Most Family Friendly Website for the last four years.
New career: Sandra McKenna — with her daughters Alexandra and Tallula — quit her job and in 2009 started a blog, MummyPages.
Working as a marketing strategist with large organisations, Sandra McKenna had a high-powered, deadline-driven job. She didn’t expect motherhood to change this — until daughters Talulla, nine, and Alexandra, six, arrived and she began equating being a good mum with time spent with her girls.
Sandra quit her job and in 2009 started a blog, which was “nearly like a diary” for recording “all those precious moments”. Within six months she had 5,000 followers and more than 5,000 Facebook friends. In 2010, along with husband Cormac, she launched www.mummypages.ie.
Mum of two, Laura Haugh has been mum-in-residence with MummyPages for the past 18 months. She wanted the job because it doesn’t feel like work.
Even before she joined MummyPages, Laura was an avid follower of parenting sites. “Wondering why the kids were behaving a certain way, it was much easier to search on the internet than in a book. You put in your key words. With a book you have to sift through lots of information.”
A teenager's open letter to any future men who want to date their mum http://t.co/tTrGdZRDYW
— MummyPages Ireland (@MummyPages) March 26, 2014
MummyPages gets more than 270,000 unique visitors monthly and has more than 72,000 Facebook followers. It makes money. “We have an apron-string reach of about 475,000 children,” says Laura. Mums are given “creative opportunities to connect with brands— everything from product trials to competitions and events”.
MummyPages features two navigational tabs — the pink ‘life-stages’ one for all stages of child development from baby to teens.
The blue tab has lifestyle content. “We talk to mum about everything from family holidays to birthday party ideas, relationship advice to family finance.” Most popular is the recipe section with its large range of nutritious recipes.”
New move: Anne O’Connor created Rollercoaster in 2000
Anne O’Connor’s son is now at university but when he was a toddler, she and husband John Feeley would have loved a site like www.rollercoaster.ie. “We weren’t living near our family network. Friends at the time didn’t have children. Until we moved close to family it was quite isolating being new young parents. Something like Rollercoaster — where you could ask questions you’d feel stupid asking anyone else — would have been a boon.”
The couple started Rollercoaster in 2000 after they moved to the West of Ireland. Anne, a clinical psychologist, had run a sleep clinic for pre-school children in Dublin and wanted to do the same again with internet support.
Rollercoaster has been hugely successful. “The ethos has always been to give people credible, reliable information. Our sources are clinicians working in various specialist areas.”
Two years into the project, they introduced discussion boards, which proved an enormous hit.
“It’s for parents of kids of all ages. It goes right through from trying to conceive and expectant mums right up to teens. Mums-to-be is a very big area — people can make contact with other parents who are expecting the same time as them.
“Our special needs section is very active, with parents seeking tutors for their children in particular localities. Our childcare section would also be fairly accurate. We have lots of fun stuff too — chit-chat, jokes board and regular competitions with lots of nice prizes.”
“It’s not my full-time job but we employ people – six, including me,” says Anne. The site gets eight million page views per month, 900,000 visitor sessions a month and 280,000 unique visitors.
Last year, Rollercoaster won ‘Best Website for Mums’ in the Families First Awards.
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