Keira McNeill has specific ideas about how to mother her two daughters -- cloth diapers preferably -- and specific problems, such as her struggle with postpartum depression.

With 6-month-old Campbell and 2 1/2-year-old Teaghan to handle, she finds it hard to go out looking for other like-minded moms in the Triangle.

So McNeill, who lives in Knightdale, has found support and advice on the Internet.

Her blog, "Mom on a Stick," -- meant to evoke her feeling that she's flying by the seat of her pants as a parent -- documents her life as a mother. At http://momonastick.blogspot.com, she has written about her depression, her younger daughter's sleep troubles and life as a "tandem" breast-feeder, nursing her infant and toddler at the same time.

And she has developed close relationships with women in Canada and Utah.

"It's nice to hear from other moms that everyone is not sailing through this," McNeill says. "It's hard. But it's OK that it's hard."

Whether they are connecting with family, need a break or are searching for advice, McNeill and other parents see blogs (short for Web logs) as a way to reach out to a broader community. How many parents? In 2005, Technorati, a San Francisco company that tracks blogs, counted about 8,500 people writing blogs about their children. Today, that number is up to 28,000, and that's just those written in English, according to Technorati's vice president of marketing Derek Gordon.

Mary Madden, senior research specialist for the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Internet & American Life Project, says, "Frankly, blogging fulfills a very natural and strong instinct that parents have at the time of their child's birth to share every aspect of the child's development and life with family and friends, but also to be able to chronicle that time for themselves."

According to the group, about 12 million American adults keep a blog and about 57 million read them. The average blogger, is under 30 and living in the suburbs, according to a survey of bloggers, which the group conducted between November 2005 and April 2006. About a third are writing about their personal experiences.

For parents who blog, that often includes life with the kids.

It's a ubiquitous topic, Gordon says. "Almost everybody who blogs has had the experience of being a parent or is a parent."

Gordon breaks the category into three groups. There are moms and dads, usually middle or upper-middle class tech-savvy people, who start writing blogs to record the lives of their growing families, creating a kind of newsletter. Most are written for relatives and friends. The blogs often feature photographs of children, time- and date-stamped diary entries, and links to other sites.

Sometimes blogs take a wider view, looking at the art or science of parenting and offering tips and advice.

And then there's the last group, women who find themselves parenting full time who start blogging to reduce their sense of isolation. Readers start following these personal stories. Blog writers and readers talk online, providing comfort and advice.

Making friends

The Trixie Update, (www.trixieupdate.com), a popular blog written by a then stay-at-home dad in Chapel Hill, drew as many as 4,000 readers a day at its peak. The dad, Ben MacNeill, started the blog so his wife could keep track of his daughter's daily activities, including diaper changes and nap times.

He stopped updating the blog regularly last fall as his daughter grew older and he began working outside the home more.

But readers still return, craving updates. Several wished his family a Happy New Year on the site this year. He's also among the lucky few who have parlayed the blog into a business opportunity. He's developed software, called Trixie Tracker, which he sells to parents who also want to chart poop output and sleep cycles online.

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