Every twinge and spasm sent me racing to the phone, calling my doctor for advice. Should I be feeling that? Is it normal to have to go to the bathroom THIS MUCH?

On one of my many doctor visits, the OB snidely asked if I were trying to get frequent flier miles. Enough was enough. Something had to be done. I needed a support group.

And where else would a '90s woman go to find support but the Internet?

On the Web, I was surprised to see that there were dozens, maybe hundreds, of areas devoted to mommies. After checking many of them out, I found what I was looking for: It was a posting from a woman named Laura from Maine. She was pregnant and due in March - just like me. And she was looking to form an e-mail loop of women all due that month.

Soon, the "March Mommies'' e-mail loop was born. More than a dozen of us from all across the nation - from Florida to California to Michigan to Texas and Indiana - were sharing our most intimate secrets with strangers.

I guess it was inevitable that we would eventually meet face to face. But that would be months away.

Our loop was quite active. It wasn't unusual for me to get 30 to 40 e-mails in one day. Boy, did we have a lot to talk about. We compared notes on virtually every aspect of our pregnancies: weight gain, nausea, the first kicks we felt.

But we didn't stop there. As we grew more comfortable with each other, our e-mail became less restrained. Let's just say we argued. A lot.

I was indignant when, in our last trimesters, one of the women said she was going to borrow her grandmother's disabled parking pass because she wanted to park closer to stores! And the e-mail over whether to be a stay-at-home mom or to continue working was voluminous. The breast vs. bottle debate raged for months.

Communicating through e-mail makes it easy for comments to be misinterpreted. Throw in our raging hormones, and things could - and did - get touchy.

Yes, sometimes, I hated those women. I provided quite a lot of entertainment for my husband who would watch, bemused, as I stomped away from the computer complaining about the "idiots'' I was corresponding with.

But my anger was always fleeting. We had a common bond, and if Kathy planned to breast-feed her child until he was 4 years old, who was I to argue?

As our pregnancies wore on (and on and on), we learned more about each other, and I was surprised when I truly came to care about these women I had never met.

Some of us were in our 30s and giving birth for the first time - typical career women putting off having families until the last minute. A couple of the loop mommies were still in school; one was just a teen who didn't plan to get pregnant but was thrilled that she did. A marriage quickly followed. Another soon-to-be mom was in her 40s, single and unemployed. Money problems plagued her, and, sadly, she left the loop because she was losing her home and didn't know where she would be living.

I became known as the one who would never hold her tongue; Krista and Donna were the pros who already had children and could give us advice. Gina was the glue who kept the group together, smoothing over disagreements with her Texas charm. Yes, we were friends. Good friends. Even though we had never met.

So it shouldn't have been a surprise to my husband when I raced (OK, waddled) to the computer after my water broke to send e-mail letting the loop know I was in labor. Only after that could we head to the hospital so I could deliver my son, Christian.

Most of our pregnancies went according to plan. But there were complications for some. Donna from Indiana, who was expecting twins, had Rachel and Rebecca prematurely in December. Ursula had to be rushed back to the hospital after giving birth, suffering with pre-eclampsia. Gina's son, Matthew, was born three weeks early and had breathing problems. Throughout these crises, we checked our e-mail daily - sometimes hourly - for updates.

You would think that once the kids were born, our loop would have fizzled. But no! Through the haze of sleepless nights and crying babies, we still wrote vociferously. We scanned photos of our precious infants for the others to see. We talked about everything from the best diapers to President Clinton's problems to the McCaughey septuplets born in Iowa. ("Foolish woman,'' I e-mailed the group. "She's a saint,'' Kathy huffed in reply).

Now that we had these creatures who seemed to only cry and poop, we needed more support than ever. But the loop had its lighter moments, too. When Susie, who lives in Missouri, got breast implants, we all cheered her on - and asked for details. And in our Thelma-and-Louse moments, all husbands were fair game.

So it was just a matter of time before we wanted to make our "virtual'' friendship more real. One day, the thought was raised, at first tentatively: We should meet in person. The idea gained momentum, and soon we were tossing out suggested locations. Come to Disney World, I urged everyone, thinking of my bottom line. But I was shot down. We settled on Vegas. Then disaster struck. Patty from Rhode Island tearfully e-mailed the loop that she was pregnant - again - only two months after giving birth to her daughter, Nikki. We all tried to bolster her spirits, which really need lifting after she found out she was expecting twins. ("It's a blessing,'' I e-mailed her. "It's a nightmare,'' I told my husband.)

So plans were changed: We would surprise Patty in her hometown. And we would do it this summer.

"Rhode Island?'' whined my husband, dismayed that our Las Vegas trip was off.

In the months leading up to the trip, we all voiced our trepidations: Would we get along? Would we even like each other in person? What if, after sharing our most intimate secrets online, we discovered we really had nothing in common? What if, after meeting in person, we realized we knew TOO MUCH about each other?

My husband, meanwhile, who secretly thought my "relationship'' with the loop mommies was a bit odd, was predicting the trip would never come off.

Wrong. With Gina taking charge of the planning, the hotel reservations were made, and Patty's surprise was planned.

In fact, a couple of the women whose husbands weren't making the trip decided to share a hotel room. A pretty gutsy move, I thought, seeing as they didn't even "know'' each other. But I was wrong. When we all met, it was like being at a family reunion. It was exciting, yet strangely comfortable. We were hugging, cracking jokes and kissing each other's kids as if they were our own.

And we pulled off the surprise for Patty, now with a 15-month-old and 3-month-old twins. When she walked in, it took her a moment to take in all the mommies and their toddlers running around before she realized who we were. Then the tears flowed - from all of us.

So what did we do during our New England weekend? We spent a lot of it holed up in our hotel. We had a block of rooms, and after the kids were in bed, the mommies would gather in the hallway and talk until the early hours. We giggled like schoolgirls at a slumber party, especially when Susie shared before and after photos of her breast enlargement.

It seemed like we were together for a minute, and then it was time to go home. Within days, our e-mail loop was humming along again.

Most nights, after our babies are in bed, we still "meet'' by the glow of the computer, and talk about our day. Even more than before, these women are my friends.