MOMS, CAN WE TALK FOR ADVICE, COMMUNITY AND A SYMPATHETIC EAR, THEY TURN TO WEB.

Byline: Valerie Kuklenski

Staff Writer

For hundreds, maybe thousands of years, new mothers have sought the advice and comfort of experienced women in their midst. The midwives, the grandmothers, the older sisters and the dear friends shared their wisdom with a pat on the hand or a reassuring arm around the shoulder.

In the computer age, though, moms are turning to technology, hammering their keyboards with midnight rants and gazing at their glowing screens for sage tidbits on a variety of infant-rearing subjects.

Beyond the well-known, advertiser-friendly sites such as askdrsears.com, www.babycenter.com and www.parents.com, there's a below-the-surface system of Web member groups where women cluster in small numbers to have the kinds of exchanges their mothers may have had over the back fence while diapers dripped dry on the clothesline.

One highly successful local group emerged in 2004 from a breast-feeding support clique in Silver Lake. They called themselves the Booby Brigade because their e-network was formed to coordinate when they would gather for walks around the Silver Lake Reservoir.

While its core members have since moved on to topics such as toilet training and preschool selection, Booby Brigade's invitation-only chat room has mushroomed to nearly 400 members who today are every bit as consumed with colic and sleepless infants as the founders once were.

Founder Erika Clowes, 34, of Oakland was living in Silver Lake in April 2004 when son Charlie arrived while her husband was working on a five-month film shoot in L.A.

Type it like it is

Her problems with breast-feeding drove her to a prolonged relationship with a lactation consultant who then connected her with other moms in her neighborhood seeking similar support. On one particularly tough day, with a son afflicted with colic and a husband working long hours, Clowes turned the moms' mild-mannered Yahoo! group into a place to unload.

"There was this sort of 'moment' on Booby Brigade," she recalls. "One day I went on and said, 'OK, I'm going to just vent. I had a terrible day, and I said all this stuff -- I hate this and I hate that.' And I thought people would be sort of put off, but then everyone else put in theirs, too. That's what everybody wanted to do. It was like this powder keg. They were just waiting for somebody to say it's OK for them to talk.

"There's something about e-mail -- it feels a little more OK to say what you want to say."

The postings of late include tips on toddler snacks, concerns about the suspected lead content of plastic baby bottles and a discussion about where to hold an Easter egg hunt.

It's become a gathering point unconstrained by nap times, doctor's appointments and weather. A group of go-to girls, day or night.

"The Brigade is a fantastic network and makeshift community that fills a badly needed gap in our society," said Julien Kern of Los Feliz, whose daughter Sean Lee is 5 months old. "No one in L.A. is really from here, and since many of our moms, aunts and friends are far away, it's hard to find like-minded people and mommy mentors to help us get through the terrifying and terrific challenges of motherhood. I feel lucky to be a part of it."

The notion of it being "like-minded" moms was a driving force behind the Booby Brigade at the outset, Clowes says, and it's one of the struggles in maintaining it as it grows.

"It's a totally evolving thing because you only need it in a certain window of time," she says. "It was designed for breast-feeding support, and then as it got bigger and bigger, there were people on there saying, 'What kind of formula do you use?' We're like, 'Formula?! What the heck happened to our Web site?"

The mommy tribe

Yvonne Chotzen, an attorney who lives in Hollywood, was a founding member of the Booby Brigade. She says she was very determined to breast-feed her twins, Alana and Samantha, now 2 1/2, and it was the support group and the chats on the site that made it workable when four lactation counselors left her feeling it was impossible.

Clowes, Chotzen and the eight other founders have since branched off into a closed-membership online group addressing their toddler concerns, but they still keep tabs on the Booby Brigade discussions.

"In the middle of the night, you can put out a health call, and in a short time you'll have 10 to 15 responses," Chotzen says. "A mom went back to work and is sharing that she's falling apart. They have a place to share it and get comfort for it. Another mom shared that she had violent feelings toward her child. People were able to get her the help she needed."

Naomi Scott of Hollywood turned to the Booby Brigade for breast-feeding advice and for input on handling 5-month-old Graham's reflux problem.

"It was impossible to get out. The one thing I was always able to do was go online," the 34-year-old mom says. "I (check) it during his nap time, sometimes early in the morning before he wakes up, and then always late at night when he's asleep. That's when I search the archives."

Scott says she tried New York-centric urbanbaby.com and West L.A.'s peachheadfamilies.com, a Yahoo! group that has been adapted to a stand-alone site, but she has found the local angles in the Booby Brigade more helpful.

Clowes sees intimate online communities as a haven where you can laugh at the tough times and even bare your soul about those gut feelings that make you feel as if you may never be worthy of a Mother's Day bouquet.

"That's one of the reasons I started the group," she recalls. "It was hard to find people who are willing to open up and criticize motherhood. It's so taboo to say you don't enjoy it. You're just supposed to be infused with this Madonna-like glow of motherly competence and joy."

The lesson of online parenting support seems to be that the good times are more memorable and the bad times more palatable when shared.

"There's nothing like meeting other people who really know what it's like in that moment," Clowes says. "There's nothing like that little window of time, and there's nothing like talking with someone else who's in it."

Erika Clowes, who's working on her doctorate in English at UC Berkeley, has authored a site about her own early months with Charlie,

which she calls Cranky Little Man -- http://www.home.earthlink.net/ ekclowes/index.html

Valerie Kuklenski, [phone]

[e-mail]

START A GROUP

The Silver Lake-based Booby Brigade is now restricted to current members and their close friends. But founder Erika Clowes encourages new mothers to establish their own online networks with their trusted friends and neighbors.

"What I did initially is I had these little calling cards that I would carry, and when I met other moms at the park I liked, I would give them my card," she says. "It would be very easy to start your own group with 10 people, and then at least you have that for your midnight crisis."

To organize a group through Yahoo!, set up a free user account and then click on the "groups" link and follow the steps through the descriptive subsets.

"It doesn't take much investment of time or energy to start your own group," Clowes says. "It's not hard to find (the members) because there are panicky moms everywhere. You just look for strollers."

-- V.K.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Cyber mamas

Local moms turn to online support groups for baby advice, day or night

(2 -- color) Naomi Scott of Hollywood, with 5-month-old Graham, has used the Booby Brigade site for breast-feeding advice and tips on her baby's reflux problem.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer

(3 -- color) Yvonne Chotzen, one of the founders of the Booby Brigade, went through four lactation consultants before her online friends helped her learn how to breast-feed her twins, Alana, left and Samantha Chotzen-Jenner, now 2 1/2.

Box:

START A GROUP (see text)