  Many members have asked over the years what the official story of Pregnancy.org might be; how we started, where we came from and what we’re really all about. A couple of months ago, I posted the story on our bulletin boards. But in honor of our third anniversary, I’ve gone ahead and turned this into an article so that all members can read this at their own convenience. Way back in 1995, I got pregnant with my son Ezra (who is almost 8!). Back then as you can recall, the web was in its infancy. Netscape existed as a beta version and yahoo was for posting your homepage.
I was getting sick and tired of going through book after book, trying to get information about my pregnancy. Most of the books were dry and boring, using scare tactics and didn’t have any feel of peer mentoring at all. One Sunday morning, Minnesota, at the Golden Dome restaurant in St. Paul, our friends and I were discussing this very dilemma. Michael and Ted came up with the idea to create a urlLink pregnancy calendar that had a bit of information each day. Thus, the Olen Interactive Pregnancy Calendar was born. This calendar that we created doesn’t exist at Olen.com anymore, but it does as a part of iVillage.
By the time Ezra was born, the site was doing well (for back then) and we even made it on CNN as a cool web site of the day. They did that in 1996 -- because well, the web was still pretty cool and new. We actually have our 15 minutes of fame on video. We ended up being written up in magazines like Yahoo! Internet Life, the Wall Street Journal, various newspapers and parenting rags. So now we return to 1996.
In the parenting and pregnancy space there were a couple of competitors—these being iVillage and ParentsPlace. Our friend Sabrina had her site as well as Robin Weiss, the creator of Childbirth.org (she now heads up the pregnancy section at About.com). Parentsplace wanted to mirror our pregnancy calendar and so we let them. In 1997 iVillage was on an acquiring binge and ate up Parentsplace. iVillage realized after that purchase that the calendar wasn't theirs and asked to purchase our site to get full rights to it. So, begrudgingly, in October of 1997, iVillage purchased the calendar and it is still one of iVillage's top draws.
Well, with that purchase, we moved to California in December of 1997. I stayed home with Ez and Michael went to go work for a startup. This was just the beginning of the internet boom. We landed first in San Jose, and then Sausalito, and later Mill Valley in the Bay area. When Ez was 19 months, BabyCenter called Michael. They wanted him for his tech expertise.
While I was there with Ez hanging out (this is 1998 already) the then editor-in-chief Clare Ellis asked me if I wanted to head up and start their community part time. Well, I said yes. Thus, BabyCenter's community was born. I was employee number 20 or there about. This was when BabyCenter only had 4 million page views a month (btw – we’re at 5 million). I eventually became full-time and worked there for 3.5 years.
That is where I met some of you and my best friend Julie Snyder. Julie has been with me for over 7 years and if it wasn't for her, we wouldn't have most of the things you see on the site on a daily basis. Michael did not end up working for BabyCenter, instead did the corporate thing and eventually got hired at a fortune 500 in Southern California (thus our move down to Southern California). Fast forward to July 2001, we are in southern California—I left BabyCenter after weathering 2 layoffs and acquisitions. I was telecommuting and that was hard on me. After seeing all my friends let go and no one left that was innovative I did not want to be part of a corporate arm (Johnson and Johnson owns them now).
I split that July (it was very political—BabyCenter still pretends we don't exist) and on September 10, 2001, launched Pregnancy.org. I never wanted our site to be a "me-too" site—with Michael, and some others who helped build and support us, we launched and here we are, almost 3 years later, growing very quickly and actually in the black and making money. This is our third company and I think third time is the charm. So here I sit in beautiful Boca Raton, Florida. We moved our family and company to the East Coast in June. Pregnancy.org is thriving and we have all kinds of exciting plans for the site, including two expansion sites that will help round out the experience.
And that's the end of the story! For anyone that wants more information, you are always welcome to urlLink email me directly . To all of you who make this site what it is, thank you, for all of you who help us on a daily basis double kudos to you. As the proverbial saying goes, ‘You are what you eat.’ Apply that to us, we are what we make of it. 
