My Biggest Blogging Failure Yet
- August 2, 2013
- by Melissa Lawrence
We grow up hearing a lot of cliches about success and failure. Things like “if at first you don’t succeed, than try try again” and “you learn more from failure than you do from success.”
Well, that’s all well and good but we all know how absolutely miserable it feels to confront the fact that you have truly failed at something.
Today I’m writing to tell you all that I and the CloudMom site have failed you. It’s not something that I meant to do, and it’s not even something I knew about or realized, but we have failed you. After a night of teariness, I’m now trying to put the tears aside and move on.
Since we launched last summer, I have done my best to answer the comments from you readers on the site. Many were questions from new moms and dads about their young babies and feeding or sleep schedules; others had to do with first foods; still others with bottles, strollers, chux changing pads or hospital burp cloths. Most of these questions — as is the rule of thumb with babies — needed immediate answers. When you have a baby that isn’t sleeping or feeding they way you want them too, or is getting poop all over your changing table cover, time is of the essence!
This week we launched a contest for Alaffia skin products and we were delighted to get a ton of comments from moms. We asked how do you find time to care for yourself and moms wrote in with their daily or weekly rituals for self-care: nail painting, bubble baths, body cream, evening walks with music. It was so lovely to hear what moms do to make themselves feel good when they have so little time.
As I try to do, I wrote back to most of the moms to compare notes. By yesterday, I realized that out of more than 20 replies back not one mom had answered me back! Not one! Then I realized that over the past year literally NO ONE has answered me back. EVER.
I set up a gmail account for one of my sons and posted to see what would happen. Lo and behold, he commented (don’t worry, we’ll make sure he doesn’t win the Alaffia contest!), but when I replied, he never received a email notification letting him know that I had replied.
MY ENTIRE SITE HAS BEEN BROKEN FROM THE GET-GO AND NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD BACK FROM ME.
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! If you were anywhere near me last night, you might have felt the Earth tremble with how completely frustrated (and angry) I am that our comment notification system has never worked.
You might be saying to yourself “how could this happen” – well, welcome to the brain of a mom — or at least of this here mom!
We are now trying fix this slightly small problem, but I wanted to say to all of you that I am deeply sorry. I launched Cloudmom to try to share experiences and ideas and help other moms, and I failed at doing that my not making sure the technology was working properly.
If you remember your comment and go on the site, you will likely see my reply sitting there, but you never would have known it was there because WE DID NOT TELL YOU. Again, UUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!
To anyone who has ever written in on the site, please forgive me and know this was an unintentional mistake. I do care about you and your babies and kids and want to be helpful in any way I can. There have been ups and downs, and highs and lows, but I have loved doing this site and hearing from all of you and trying to help in any way I can.
I just hope to do a better job of it in the future.
Love,
Melissa
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