For the past 32 weeks, I start my Wednesdays off with a Google search: "[whatever week we're in number] week pregnancy" (here's this week's results). Then I go through all the links reading the various pregnancy calendars to find out what the baby's got going on now. Have the feet formed? Are the eyes open? Is that tail gone yet? What size of fruit most resembles my baby now? (This week we hit the "bunch of bananas" measurement -- it's all very scientific.) I also get to learn what's happening to Jeanine and am able to preemptively compliment the body part(s) currently under attack.

So this weekly exercise is fun. It is a good use of the Internet. As long as you stick to the links that mention "calendar" or "ultrasound photos," everything is just dandy.

However, the Internet can just as quickly turn on you. Here's how not to use it: The Internet is not designed to be the place you turn when something seems off. If something is hurting or not doing so well or is otherwise unexpectedly scary, then doing a search on that thing is going to lead you into a spiral of evil Internet darkness. You'll inevitably end up on one of the message board dealies where everyone talks about how horribly wrong everything has gone. There are entire sites (that, thanks to the beauty of HTML, I could link to so very easily here -- but won't because you might be pregnant right now yourself) devoted to the completely noble effort of bringing people together who've all experienced horribly devastating things in their pregnancies. These places are not the place to turn for problem diagnosis, though. Stay away. It's tough. You'll want to go and then you get sucked into madness. When something is weird or funny, do these things instead: pray, call the doctor, listen to the doctor, follow whatever advice she or he gives you, and then pray some more. You'll save yourself a world of what-if? craziness and nothing will be any different than if you went and read the madness. Because the bottom line of the [D]evil side of the Internet is that you rarely learn anything that would actually help matters -- you just learn all the stuff that might go even worse. NOT FUN.

Okay. That's a pretty heavy entry [and yes, everything is just fine -- this was more of a general warning shot]. Also, I'm not a doctor nor expert on these things. I don't even have one complete pregnancy under my belt. So let's pull back up and out of that mess and get back to the friendly side of things:

Back when we didn't know the gender and I was still trying to find convincing arguments for why we should wait and not find out, I did my week 16 Google search. Since I don't really pay much attention to the search results links that I'm clicking, I really have no idea what sites I'm actually going to. This one happened to be in the mix. Before I noticed where I'd landed, I was completely freaking out excited with the wonderful ending of the 4th paragraph. Then I realized what site I'd landed on. Oh well, too late to move.