Pregnancy Today Mailing Lists are unmoderated discussion forums for expecting and new parents. It is not intended as, nor does it constitute medical or other advice. Readers are warned not to take any action with regard to medical treatment or otherwise based on the information found on this list without consulting the advice of a physician. Again: the messages posted to the Pregnancy Today Mailing Lists should NOT be used as a substitute for medical care by your doctor! If you have questions or concerns regarding your physical or mental health or the health of your baby, please seek assistance from a qualified healthcare provider.

2. Which lists are available?

In regular and digest versions, the following lists are available:

Monthly Mailing Lists
Lists by month and year of your child's birth or due date.
Example: jan98 (for those moms and dads whose children were born in January, 1998).

2under2 (for parents with or expecting 2 kids under 2)
bedrest (for moms on bedrest)
bfing (to discuss breastfeeding)
debate (to debate pregnancy/parenting issues)
preconc (for parents trying to get pregnant)
sahd (for stay-at-home dads)
twins (for parents expecting twins)

If you're looking for other lists, see this excellent page of Women-Related Email Lists Focusing on Motherhood.

3. Can anyone join the lists?

All expectant fathers and mothers are welcome on our list. While we encourage lively discussion (even if the discussion veers off-topic), if there are any problems with a person flaming or being cruel to any other list member, that person will be unsubscribed. We think of our Lists as a sort of cyber-family environment -- you are there to support each other. Traditionally "sensitive" subjects include circumcision, religion and politics.

Messages posted to the lists are received by all list members, whether or not those members are known to you. Please keep this in mind when posting to the list, especially in regard to sensitive or personal data. (In any event, electronic mail is not always a private form of communication - better to consider all e-mail messages as "postcards" rather than sealed letters - that is, potentially viewable during transport.) List posts are no longer archived on our server and are therefore not available for after-the-fact retrieval.

4. How do I subscribe?

To subscribe, send to your request to majordomo@lists.pregnancytoday.com, NOT to the list posting address (i.e. *not* march@pregnancytoday.com).

Type the following in the message body:

You may also subscribe to any of the Lists at http://pregnancytoday.com/lists.

We will remove you from the list if we get several bounced messages due to a full mailbox, autoreply "I'm out of the office" messages or if your mail comes back as "user unknown" or similar, but it makes our job much easier if you would handle this yourself. If you subscribe from a work address, please unsubscribe before leaving on vacation or on maternity leave.

5. How can I unsubscribe?

To unsubscribe, send an e-mail from the e-mail address from which you are subscribed to majordomo@lists.pregnancytoday.com, NOT to the list posting address (i.e. *not* march@pregnancytoday.com).

Type the following in the message body:

Although unsubscription requests delete your name from our server quickly, there might already be messages on the way to you. If you received a "succeeded" notice but still think you might be subscribed, please wait one full day to clear out the system before contacting me.

Whenever possible, *please* unsubscribe from the e-mail address from which you are subscribed. If you somehow cannot, type your message as above, but add in your e-mail address after the month notation. Be warned that unsubscriptions from alternate addresses must be confirmed by the list owner, and may take longer.

6. Are digest versions of the list available?

Please note that the Lists can be high volume (upwards of 100 messages a day in many cases), so you may prefer to sign up for the Digest list, which consolidates a group of messages in one e-mail before sending them to you. You may switch to or from the Digest list at any time.

To switch from the regular list to the digest version, send a message to majordomo@lists.pregnancytoday.com with the following in the message body (subject line ignored):

You must subscribe with the address from which you will be posting. The server will only allow list members to post messages to the lists, and the program decides which people are members by comparing the e-mail address on their outgoing message to the list of subscribers. If the two addresses do not match EXACTLY, the message will be bounced instead to the list administrator and will certainly be delayed.

Some companies and universities add a machine or service name to outgoing messages (such as yourname@mail.pregnancytoday.com or yourname@pop.pregnancytoday.com), or assign a numeric e-mail address. This should not be a problem if you have subscribed via e-mail from your account (not through the auto-subscribe feature on this site) or were very careful to use your complete e-mail address when you subscribed.

To check your subscription, send a message to majordomo@lists.pregnancytoday.com with the single-word which in the body of your message. The server will return to you a message with all lists to which that address is subscribed. If you get a message saying that your e-mail address is not recognized, you can either subscribe with your complete address and then unsubscribe the other address (best) or subscribe again, and set one of the confirmed subscriptions to nomail. Nomail, as the name implies, allows you to stay a list member but means no mail will be sent to your e-mail address.

To set your account to nomail, send a message to majordomo@lists.pregnancytoday.com with the following in the message body:

8. How do I respond to a post from the List?

To send a message to your list, simply send an e-mail to listname@lists.pregnancytoday.com.

Before replying, please decide whether or not it would be appropriate for this reply post to be seen by every one of the people on the list or if it should be sent privately to one person.

If your response would be of benefit to more than one or two members of the list, send your message to the list, but if it is a personal message, please do not send it to everyone. (This is especially a problem around delivery time -- a few thousand "congratulations!!!" posts to the whole list is a lot to wade through.) Likewise, do not send "me too" one-liner posts to the list : either think of something else to say or mention it in a message when you reply to other posts.

Please "quote" the message to which you are responding in your new (outgoing) message - but ONLY the pertinent parts. The pertinent parts would be the original sender's name and the sentence or two to which your new post applies. You do not need to repeat the whole "conversation," but you should give people a clue as to what you're talking about.

DIGEST MEMBERS: Please change the "month-digest" header on your message to reflect a more descriptive subject when replying.

9. Can I send an attachment (photo, video clip, etc.) to the list?

No - attachments and long files of ANY TYPE are strictly prohibited. Many people cannot read or view these files, and they take up a lot of space. Any file over a certain size will simply not go through the system. If you have a great photo or long file you think others would like to see, ask members to email you privately to let you know they'd like it sent to them personally, or post it to a website (free sites are offered by GeoCities) and post the URL instead. Also, please set your mailer so that it does not send automatic attachments.

10. Can I use the words 'subscribe' and 'unsubscribe' in my posts?

No. To avoid the individual lists receiving erroneous 'subscribe' and 'unsubscribe' messages (among other commands intended for the list owner), the server will automatically pull all messages with commands in the body of the message. (This is not the correct way to subscribe or unsubscribe, and will result in a delayed response or no response at all. Similarly, your post may never make it to the list.) If you would like to ask if so-and-so is still subscribed to the list, please use asterisks in place of one of the letters of the offending word - such as "subscr*be".

11. Who's paying for these lists?

These lists are brought to you free of charge by Pregnancy Today -- the only pregnancy journal both online and in-print -- created to provide moms-to-be (and dads, too!) with information, resources and inspiration during this unique time.

As well as participating in the Lists, we hope you will be a part of our community and visit the rest of our website (just click here) or try out the print journal.

12. How can I find out find out who is on my list or get more help with Majordomo commands?

In order to combat spammers, we have disabled the "who" command, which made the e-mail addresses of all subscribers available to anyone. If you are an active list member and require a copy of your list's "who" list, please e-mail lists@lists.pregnancytoday.com with the name of your list and a brief explanation.

If you want to know all the Majordomo (mailing list server) commands available to you, send an e-mail message to majordomo@lists.pregnancytoday.com with the following in the message body:

13. Important notes about list policy

These are privately-owned publicly accessible, unmoderated, community lists, and we expect list members to abide by common standards of decency and to refrain from explicit profanity, vulgarity, personal attacks and/or other inappropriate behavior. Things getting strange? Have a look at this humor piece: The Natural Life Cycle of Mailing Lists.

The server administrators and/or list owners reserve the right to deny or revoke access to this or any other mailing list carried on these servers for any reason at the discretion of the list owners, including, but not limited to, gross violations of the above code of etiquette, reasons of privacy, security, and/or operation of any services offered at this site.

Only list members may post on the lists. To join the list, you must be an expectant or new parent (depending on the list). No commercial or personal advertisements, solicitations, requests for interview subjects, chain letters, get-rick-quick schemes or virus warnings (most all of which are false or way out of date) may be posted to the list without express permission of Pregnancy Today / Babies Today / All Communications, Inc. We agressively pursue spammers and advertisements are NOT ALLOWED and you will be invoiced $200 for each violation. This amount will be donated to charity.

Messages posted on the lists may not be forwarded, quoted, copied or distributed without the express written permission of the author of the post.

14. Disclaimer

Statements and opinions expressed on the Pregnancy Today mailing lists are not necessarily those of All Communications, Inc. and should not be considered facts. Pregnancy Today / All Communications, Inc. offers these mailing lists and the information contained therein without warranty, express or implied, and accepts no responsibility for the accuracy of the material presented therein or any errors or omissions.