Local women share their lives one post at a time

Having a new baby in the house can be the happiest time of life. But some stay-at-home moms start to wonder if there's life beyond another feeding or diaper change.

Some moms are taking a cue from the Facebook generation and turning to the world wide web to stay dialed-in with the whole wide world. They're blogging.

Wife and mother of five Cathy McCaughan didn't start out to be a blogger. She started keeping a daily journal online before anyone called it blogging.

Blog is a word that didn't exist twn years ago. Short for "web log," blogs are as different as the thousands of people who write them.

Cathy blogs at www.domesticpsychology.com

"I write about diapers, politics, whatever's in my life or my mind," she said. "When you go to a cocktail party, you just talk polite. You avoid the topics that might upset people. And when you're in a blog, you can just say anything. You can say what's on your mind even if you know people are going to say you're just wrong,"

Cathy has a special needs child and says that her blog helps her keep in touch with a community of women raising special needs children.

West Knoxville mother and psychologist, Dr. Helen Smith found blogging to be the perfect outlet for what was was her mind too. She said, "I've got a lot of opinions...I was always going around yelling out my opinion to friends and family."

For Helen, her hot topics are second amendment rights, crime cases, and the rights of men. "I'm very much into men's rights and I think this society is very anti-male. A lot of time we see boys at school or bash men, so I talk about some of the pro male things," she said.

Dr. Helen Smith blogs at www.drhelen.blogspot.com

A family face in the Channel 10 newsroom, Katie Allison Granju works as the online producer at WBIR.com. But away from the job, she's frequently got a baby in one hand and a mouse in the other.

"I mostly blog about my life and a lot of parenting issues... sometimes that can range from breastfeeding to pregnancy to reproductive rights to women's health issues, but there's a lot on my blog about my day to day life as a parent," Katie said.

Katie blogs at www.katieallisongranju.com