Late last week, I logged on to CityBaby’s New York message board.

What, you might be asking, is CityBaby’s New York message board?

I asked, too, when the Celebrity told me about it. She’d told me it was a great resource for pregnancy information and a great place to obsess about being pregnant without telling people you’re pregnant.

She also told me that Sarah Jessica Parker had told her about it at last year’s Emmys, which tempered my suspicion that, semantic distinctions aside, having typed conversations with strangers qualified as, if not pathetic, at least deeply lame behavior.

So, the other day, during that post-lunch, work-up-the-energy time I usually spent futzing around with personal e-mails or looking for random items on eBay, kidding myself that I was not procrastinating, but rather getting myself back in the groove, instead of searching for deals on designer maternity jeans, I decided to check out the CityBaby message board.

What I found was a veritable hidden world. Part coffee klatch, part confessional, the message board was a portal into the psyche of pregnant New York, rife with shorthand abbreviations that read like inside jokes.

“Am so depressed. Wanted dd sooo badly, but 20 wk u/s said ds. Anyone else in same boat?”

From the responses to this – namely, one that read “wanted dd so badly with 1st, but the had ds. Now can’t imagine life w/o the little guy, and hope to have another! Once db is here you will love him and forget you ever wanted dd!”- I realized that “dd” must meant “darling daughter,” “ds” “darling son,” “db” “darling baby.”

I also realized that people cared far more about their baby’s gender than I did – the post had at least 10 responses, some from people who wanted girls but were having boys, some from the reverse situation.

Then there were some from people who felt the whole idea of wanting anything but a healthy baby was greedy and, in the words of one posting “smacked of a sense of entitlement.”

A New York City message board, indeed.

“Possibly un-P.C. question: has anyone noticed gay male friends seem repulsed by pg body? What up on this?”

That was an easy one: pg must mean pregnant. And, judging from the responses, gay men do have a problem with their female friends’ pregnant forms. After a few lines of tangential debate, it was decided that this stemmed not from misogyny, but from the gay friends’ repulsion at the thought of straight sex.

But the one abbreviation that kept coming up was “dh” which, given the meaning of dd and ds, I quickly grasped meant “darling husband.” Only, given the content of some of the posts, the “darling” was often sarcastic.

“Dh driving me crazy. Acting like 8-year-old. Better grow up before db comes – don’t want 2 dbs!”

Or, this one: “Am SO ANGRY. Just found out that dh lost 10K gambling in Vegas (bachelor party) last weekend. Had promised not to gamble more than 5K.”

This generated a full page of response and counter responses. Some were about gambling, “does dh have a problem?” Others commiserated: “my dh lost 2K betting on football last weekend.” Still others chastised the responders and the OP (original poster) “how much $ do you have that 5K + Vegas weekend is normal for bachelor party? Prob is not dh, it’s that you have too much money!” My personal favorite: “are you sure dh spent the 5K on gambling, not on strippers/hookers?” There were a lot of posts about what not to eat, “SIL” – sister-in-law – says even cooked sushi is bad because of the knives. Is this true? Made peace with no raw fish, but can’t go 9 mos. w/o California rolls!” and many about weight gain, “have gained 22lbs at 26 wks. Is this horrible?” Both contained responses telling either the SIL or the OP to “get over it.”

There were posts about baby names, generally called “name polls.” The poster would write, “Name poll: Margot?” and responders would say: “love it” or “hate it” or “Kidder” or “Hemingway,” and the latter would be corrected “she’s Margaux.”

And then there were the blissed-out ones about the simple joys of being pregnant. Like this one:

“Just hit me that in 2 mos. I will actually HAVE A BABY. Ran downstairs and told dh, and we both got so excited he ruined the breakfast he was making us. Such a nice moment!”

That one got four responses: The first, “that is sooo sweet! You made me cry! “The second,” It made me cry too – because dh cooks you breakfast! “The third,”I cried too – because you have a downstairs!” And the fourth,”LOL!” – laugh out loud – “Cried about the downstairs too. We need to leave the city!”

I was actually LOL at that when I heard Andy’s key in the door.

“What are you doing in there?” he asked, entering my office. The rest of the apartment was totally dark. I’d had no idea how late it had gotten.

There was no use pretending I’d been hard at work; he could see my computer monitor.

“Reading the CityBaby message board,” I said, half-amused, half-sheepish.

“You’re sitting in a dark apartment on an Internet chat room?” He had a tone I was getting used to hearing, one that said, “You’re pregnant, so I’m sort of indulging you.”

“It’s not a chat room,” I said, turning back to the monitor. “It’s a message board.”

The Brooklyn Chronicles appears each Friday. Previous installments are available at www.nysun.com/archive_chronicles.php. The author can be reached at kschwartz@nysun.com.