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From KQED.

Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. Amanda Hess remembers when her relatively positive relationship with technology changed. It was when she was pregnant and having a routine ultrasound that detected a potential abnormality. I reached for a sense of control and grip tightly to my phone, she says. It would not give me the answers I was looking

for, but it would feed me wrong answers from its endless supply. It would serve me facts and conspiracies,

gadgets and idols, judgments and tips. Amanda Hess writes about navigating technology through

pregnancy and early parenting in her new memoir, Second Life. Listeners, what digital

tools did you turn to for advice during the stage? Did they help? Stress you out? Both?

Hess, a critic at the New York Times, who writes about the internet and pop culture joins me now. Welcome

to forum, Amanda. Thank you so much for having me. Glad to have you. Gosh, your book brought back

so many memories because I had my last one in 2018. So I want you to take us back to that

ultrasound in the summer of 2020 when you were 29 weeks pregnant. What happened? Well, I thought

that I had gone in for a pretty routine ultrasound,

...