I'm going to write two separate posts about my trip to Philadelphia to visit the GlaxoSmithKline vaccination production facility.  The first post will be about my personal experience with meeting other bloggers for the first time, and the second post will go into greater detail about what I learned at GSK.

I have never met any other blogger, twitterer, or cyber friend in real life before.  For the most part, the idea makes me a bit uncomfortable.  I generally provide full disclosure here, and also write some very opinionated, polarizing statements that I know other people fucking hate me for.  Online, I can simply hit "delete" or "unfollow" if I don't like the 'tude I'm getting from somebody.  In person, I'm forced to be my most diplomatic self.  We (me, my husband, my friends) call it "The Gina Show."  It's not that it's a fake persona, it's just me on my best behavior.  I think we all do this.  When you're a fucking asshole like I (sometimes) am, that can be soooo exhausting.  I also tend to take things pretty personally, and where others can fight with someone one minute and be shaking their hand the next, I don't operate like that.  Yeah, yeah.  I know.  I'm an immature little snot.  Tell me something I don't know.

I certainly had my diplomacy work cut out for me on this trip because I wasn't meeting any bloggers who share my interests, or rant irately about cesareans and breastfeeding the way I do.  I wasn't even meeting anyone whose blog I'd ever read (aside from Kristen, who was present for the tour only, but not at the hotel, so we hardly saw her.)  If I were meeting Melodie from Breastfeeding Moms Unite, or Amber from Strocel.com, or my Cyber BFF from Unnecessarean (or a bunch of others) I'm sure we would have gushed about all the same topics and been brushing each other's hair by the end of the day.  That's not to say we all have the same exact opinions on things, but we are certainly very, very passionate about some of the same things, and that provides a lot of common ground to stand on.  Also, by sheer virtue of having read each other's blogs on many occasions, we all (I think) feel a certain warmth and respect for each other that would facilitate conversation, empathy, support, and instant bonding in real life.  Well, I could be totally projecting my feelings onto those three particular bloggers, but I would be very surprised if they'd disagree with me on that sentiment.

But this was very different.  I had never read any of these other bloggers, and they run in a very different "scene" than I do.  Here's the list of women I met:

Steph at CreatureBug

Cecily at Uppercase Woman (thanks to her for the lovely picture of us all in the GSK parking lot)

Kristen from Motherhood Uncensored (who is 8 feet tall and 10 times hotter in person. Rowr.)

Devra and Aviva from Parentopia

Sarah from Sarah and the Goon Squad

Lori from Avacado8 (who didn't come on the tour, only to dinner, she lives in Philly.)

I was nervous enough about the whole trip, but I was trying to put me crazy-ass social anxiety aside and try to make the best of it.  I was off to a great start too.  As soon as I landed I got a text from Steph at Creature Bug asking where people were meeting.  We agreed to meet at the shuttle and travel to the hotel together.  She was quite friendly, I think we hit it off right away and we had a good 90 minutes of getting to know each other before we got to the hotel.  She had also never been to an event like this, so I didn't feel like I was the only person who didn't know anybody.  I was starting to feel a little more relaxed.  As soon as we checked in, we had to meet the other women for dinner right away.  All the other women we met knew each other very well, and had either been friends for years and years, or were at least very regular readers of each other's blogs and had met at previous blogging events.  They were also seasoned "monetizers" (a word I learned on the trip) meaning that this whole blogging thing was paying some bills for them.  That alone made me start to feel a little out of my league.

We sat down to dinner and before most people had their menus open Devra from Parentopia and I started talking about the GSK tour.  She made a comment about Big Pharma being "evil" (which, in retrospect, I think may have been sarcasm) but also mentioned that they can sometimes save some lives as well.  So I said that I felt the same way about cesareans; I love them when they're necessary and don't so much love them when they aren't.  Oh Gina.  Why don't you just keep your fucking pie-hole shut. (<-rhetorical question.)  So from across the table, Lori says "What was that?" and I am forced to repeat myself, knowing what was coming next.  She immediately stops the table and says "Okay, raise your hand if you have had a cesarean" and everyone except one person at the table raises their hand. 

(hint: If everyone at your table has had a cesarean, and you're NOT at an ICAN meeting, your cesarean-awareness-self is about to be hella uncomfortable.) 

And then of course the table broke into the "but-mine-was-really-necessary" stories and I felt like the Town A-Hole again.  This is where I shut the fuck up.  This is where I know I am not among my audience, and the kind of thing I write about (live, eat, breath, sleep, study, will-practice-law-someday-soon-for) is not going to be welcome conversation here.  Man, it's gonna be a looooooong night.

So I spent the next 15 minutes or so coming down from my social anxiety attack, and found a way to work myself back into the conversation (Gina, don't say shit about crunchy living.)  We ended up talking, joking, and discussing the world until nearly 11 pm, and it was a pretty good time.  I managed to blame my cesarean and formula feeding for my distance with my first son, a non-popular opinion again, but there was no spectacle made of it.

The next day we all boarded into a van and made the 2 hour trip up to Marietta PA for the GSK tour.  We had a lot of time to talk and joke about everything under the sun, and I was feeling more and more comfortable.  Perhaps I fit in after all.  I mean, these are moms, I'm a mom, we all have at least that in common, right? 

Well, don't worry, I put myself right back outside the circle when the GSK hosts asked us if we had any questions.  I asked about whether they had tested the vaccinations in groups, and if so, where could I find the results of that testing.  I asked about Thimerosal, why it was included in the Influenza and H1N1 vaccines.  I asked if they were aware of the study recently published that showed some devastating effects of Thimerosal, and I asked if they had been made aware of the recent findings by the Canadian Government that the flu shot was making people more susceptible to acquiring H1N1.  Of course GSK wasn't super jazzed about those questions, and I believe nobody else seemed to share my concern on those points.  (Oh Gina, you're such a trouble-maker.)  That line of questioning was talked about on the long 3 hour van ride back to Philly, and I was made even more aware that I was the only person in the vehicle who was still quite skeptical.  I was also the only person who felt that, if there was a real risk for autism, that should be enough to change the way vaccinations are made and/or administered.  The general consensus that I felt was that vaccinations save lives and there was no need to question the science.  Of course, being the advocate and analytic mind that I am, I say question everything.

Now, we all know I vaccinate my kids.  They've never missed one.  I do believe they have saved millions of lives and that vaccinations are a matter of public health.  But, I am also a die-hard believer in informed consent, and am sensitive to the reasons why some people don't vaccinate.  I would never suggest to one of my very best friends that it was okay her kid got autism as long as a bunch of other kids' lives were saved.  I think one case of vaccine-induced autism is too many.  I have a deep empathy for those who are raising special needs children, and I want to keep examining the science behind this until we know why this is happening to children, and we have stopped the epidemic.  So I spent a lot of time feeling like the only dickhead in the car who was beating up on those poor nice GSK folks (they were very nice, and I'll talk more about that in my next post.)

In summary, my first experience with meeting other bloggers was certainly a very interesting one.  I learned that I can participate in hours of conversation with mothers who are nothing like me, and I will not die of a panic-attack-induced stroke in the process.  I learned that until I know if everyone at the table has had a cesarean, maybe I should hold my cards closer to my chest while I test the water on that topic.  Not everyone can (or wants to) rattle off cesarean and infant mortality statistics the way I can.  And finally, I discovered a whole new subculture of this female/mother blogger community that I didn't even know existed, and in doing so, my awareness has been expanded.

So a big thanks to David Wescott for hooking me up with these women.  And stay tuned for the next post where I will put my head on a directly on the chopping block by talking about vaccinations.  As if people didn't have enough reasons to leave me nasty comments already, I'm gonna go and open that can 'o worms.

Duht-Duhnt-Duuuuuuhhhhnt.

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(and so you now, GlaxoSmithKline paid every dollar of this trip for me, so thanks again GSK)