It’s easy for young moms to long for the stimulation of speaking with someone over the age of 10. There’s catharsis in talking through one’s feelings and problems with a person who no longer wears a diaper or a backpack.

Increasingly, mothers in Omaha, like mothers nationally, are turning to social media to connect, vent, or keep their writing chops sharp. They’re the “Mommy Bloggers,” a group that, by some estimates, now number in the millions.

Most blog as a pastime. But some mommy blogs have higher purposes. A blog can foster healing. A blog can be a purposefully permanent document for the family.

Omaha native Missy Cobb started her blog, The Cobb Mobb, as a way to connect with her three children.

“Every time I write for the blog, I think about my kids and how I am documenting memories for them. I tried scrapbooking for my older kids, but it was too time consuming,” Cobb says.

Cobb, who started her blog as a New Year’s resolution in 2012, found writing allowed her to capture milestones and memories in a more efficient and permanent way. “I’ve always enjoyed writing and I like knowing that this will always be there for my kids to read.”

Ashli Brehm’s blog, Baby on the Brehm, has played a key role in getting her through some trying times. After going through a miscarriage, Brehm (pronounced like brain, but with an ‘m’) dedicated a blog post to her experience and managed to connect with other women who had lost a baby.

“It was cathartic for me. Writing is how I emote. Tons of women contacted me, which then made me feel healed,” Brehm says.

When her subsequent pregnancy did not go as planned and her third son was born several weeks premature, she shared the highs and lows with her readers and received an overwhelming amount of support via Baby on the Brehm. That support carried her through the next six weeks while her son, Harrison, was in the NICU growing strong enough to head home with his parents and two brothers.

Fast-forward one year and Harrison is a happy, healthy 1-year-old and Ashli is still blogging about her boys, motherhood, and everything in between. And she still manages to maintain that connection with her audience.

“The people who read my blog are like a community to me. They are my life raft at times,” Brehm says.

Brehm, like Cobb, hopes that some day her children will read her entries and considers the blog a sort of legacy she is leaving behind.

“I want my boys to learn to be themselves and to have confidence. I hope that by blogging and doing it in an authentic and honest way I am showing them that.”