Why did you start using mumsnet?

[BexR]

For me it was pregnancy advice and support. It was one of many forums I visited but I soon found it was the most active and more on my wavelength.

Then I stuck around for breastfeeding advice. Then the relationship board was a huge support to me during an awful separation.

Lately it's more general interest, getting a dose of company during this shitty lonely time.

Interested to know if my mumsnet journey is typical!

I had a mc on new year's eve a couple of years ago and posted on here drunk. People were kind to me and I stayed for aibu and chat.

It was the special needs board for me, I'd been googling for advice and it came up. I'd had to make so with forums that were dominated by Americans and Mumsnet was so much better.

Read the Contented Little Baby book and thought it was a pile of pish. Then read about MN kerfuffle with a poster suggesting SWMUBN(?) should be strapped to a rocket...2006
Are we allowed to name Gina Ford now?

I came here via Gransnet as I was about to become a grandma.

It was just around the time of the"screaming at the Sistine Chapel" thread which made me cry with laughter and I have been here ever since.

Came here for advice and support when expecting my first child. Stayed here for the Talk section and endless interesting threads on various topics.

Found the Christmas forum in 2012. Remember looking through the poncetastic Christmas thread thinking wow, I’ll never be this organised . It’s also where I discovered the elf on the shelf. It was super expensive and difficult to find at the time, nobody had ever heard of it.

I wasn’t allowed out and didn’t have real life friends. Life is very different now!

To everyone who keeps saying it’s not as good/funny on here as it used to be- where have the posters all gone? Is there some magical secret place I don’t know about?!

@Nestofvipers

To everyone who keeps saying it’s not as good/funny on here as it used to be- where have the posters all gone? Is there some magical secret place I don’t know about?!

Everyone's been saying that since 2008. At least.

YY indeed! 2008 was Moldies wasn't it?

But a lot of the older posters have tailed off here. Or got banned due to trans stuff.

@BertieBotts at the risk of sounding stupid, what’s Moldies?

I used the Bounty forums for a while. My then 3 year old and 4 month old went down with chickenpox and I needed online communication as I was going stir crazy. Just as Bounty decided to "upgrade" their system which totally broke it.
I stuck my nose in here, liked it and have remained.

Came over when TES imploded.

Stayed for FWR.

Moldies was a private forum some MNers set up end of 2008 and people went off to it. Caused a huge fight on the boards as some people weren't invited. It stood for "MN Oldies"

MN was universally sneered about on another website I used (Digital Spy) so I came over to see what all the fuss was about and I preferred it here.

A thread came up in a Google search, I can’t remember now what I was searching, and some of the comments were so funny and witty that I hung around.

My children were already adults, although my youngest is dependent as she has severe disabilities, so I wouldn’t have thought it was of interest. I’ve also never identified with professional mummy types and assumed most mumsnetters would be like that. I felt at home when I saw the swearing.

I stumbled across the feminism boards back in about 2015 and found them really interesting. After a while I wandered my way over to different part of the site. I signed up in 2017 when there was a Titanic thread going and someone posted about 'women and children first' and how deeply unfair it is to men. That is one of my greatest bugbears. I couldn't sit on my hands, I'm afraid - I signed up just to tell someone that 'women and children first' was not white star line policy, or any shipping companies policy, and that the (male) crew put women and children in the lifeboats first because they panicked and performed their jobs badly.

And then I never left.

I don't have children.

As a student, I read an article on The Vagenda Magazine, when that was still going. It was about how AIBU is one of the most feminist places you can find, because it's a group of real life women supporting and advising each other, but also not pulling punches, hunning or trying to pretend that all choices are equally valid. You come from all walks of life with so many different viewpoints and experiences.

I'm now in a position where my friends are a long way away, and because I'm an immigrant in a male dominated industry, I have no intergenerational female network. I have no other women to watch going through the menopause or pregnancy or all the rest of life. In effect, you're all my office mum/MIL/next door neighbour rolled into one and I love you all for it!

The living overseas board is also better than the average expat group. Most of you are getting on with life in a positive way, rather than simply using the board to moan about how shit your country is because you've only arrive 5 minutes ago and have no house/friends/employment/language skills.

(although I have to be a bit more careful now because I found out my dad is a regular poster! He found the site following a household disaster so bad my mum went to the pub and he had to google how to sort it on his own...)

Wanders off to find the Titanic thread @Icantreachthepretzels mentioned

I'd never heard about the moldies debacle. A splinter group! Wonder how that's going.

I was looking for school catchments when buying my first property last year- cos everyone said that if you planned for kids, you should. Mumsnet came up on google search.

as a londoner who doesn't actually know that many brits well in real life (DH doesn't consider himself british even though he is), it gives me an insight into the rest of the country.

I had had a miscarriage at 16 weeks and was googling to see how common it was. MN came up. It was so supportive for my next loss and the successful and premature baby. Now I just browse, don’t really have a topic I lean towards

I had just started a new job where I was going to be responsible for submitting claims to the council for the Nursery Grant (what the early years funding used to be called) and Googled a question. Mumsnet popped up so I clicked on it. I then became interested in some of the other threads, so I registered as a user. This was 16 years ago, when there were far fewer users and you used to see the same posters' names crop up all the time.

I joined for advice about bed wetting when DS was 6 or 7. He's 19 now and as far as I'm aware no longer wets the bed!

I normally just go on chat to occupy the time, occasionally style & beauty as I like seeing other people's outfits even if I live in joggers myself . Occasionally have joined health or diet threads - that's normally short lived though .