i knew something was up when i saw multiple comments to my post on The Great Midwife Controversy. you’ll note that the comments are not from random hecklers but from people who have actually had midwife assisted births. then the emails started arriving, as i sat scratching my head, wondering what great unseen force could instantly bring the “homebirth” demographic to my virtual doorstep. eventually technorati, revealed the source of the flow.

kottke remaindered the link.

i’m not one to normally wallow in such obvious backlink naval gazing, but it truly is amazing. between the comments, the emails and blog posts from people who have had an actual home birth, i’d say that jason has, for reasons unknown, gathered quite an audience of midwife/home birth types. amidst the many new “imaginary friends” [ kris’ term for my internet aquaintances ] that i discovered today, i’d like to take a moment to single out greg allen for pointing me to his excellent daddytypes site. he was far too modest to pimp the site in the comments so i’ll do it for him.

and while i might rightly be accused of engaging in the slightly sappy sentimentalism that soon to be fathers have license to engage in, i’d like to say a hearty ‘thank you’, with all sincerity, to everyone who took a few minutes out of their day either to send an email or post a comment or write a blog entry to share their own personal stories and words of encouragement. as david weinberger eloquently wrote years ago, “On the Web, however, strangers are the source of everything worthwhile. Strangers and their utterances are the stuff of the Web.”