How to use threads and search

[MommaSmith]

I am a novice to searching stuff on here and I’m just trying to find my birth group but any time I search it says that the thread is full up and that there’s another one and then I can’t find it

Can someone give me the basics on how to find things?

I always find this tricky - I put what I want to search for plus the word Mumsnet into Google and find that works better than the search function on here!