The New Moms Support Group meeting gets off to a late start on a recent, rainy Thursday.
For a time it looks as though the meeting may have to be canceled. Group co-facilitator Allison Montiel has already taken calls from a couple of mothers who said they wouldn’t make it that day. She speculates that the weather is affecting attendance.
Eventually, two mothers show up with their babies. One, Dr. Rebecca Jones of Little Rock, is a regular. The other, Amy Dougherty of Maumelle, is a newcomer.
Two attendees are good enough for today. The women, Montiel and fellow facilitators Barbara Baldwin and Sharon Long gather in a playroom at the Centers for Youth and Families’ Parent Center in Little Rock. Blue walls dotted with quilted sea-creature figures overlook a bookshelf, bean-bag chairs and a large floor mat with multicolored squares.
Jones’ 7-month-old son, Eli, becomes the center of attention as he attempts to crawl. He eventually wiggles up to a thick stack of cellophane-enclosed support-group brochures and tries to chew on it.
Dougherty’s son, 7-week-old Rowan, is in a carrier. The women marvel at his already long legs and predict that he’ll be tall.
The class starts with introductions. Montiel asks Dougherty what her biggest challenge has been so far as a new mother.
“Sleep,” Dougherty answers promptly. “I had no idea. I mean, it was one of those things where you hear from people, ‘You’re not going to sleep; the baby’s going to be up.’ You really do not understand until the baby’s here. ’” Luckily, Rowan has slept for seven hours straight for the past couple of nights. Jones, then Dougherty, talk about how they miss adult contact but feel too anxious to allow anyone else to watch their babies for any length of time. Her children now grown, Long — parent education coordinator for the Parent Center — shares some of her experience. She recalls how difficult it was for her as a new mother who, although an educated careerwoman, felt overwhelmed.
Topics discussed this morning include everything from Web logs and chat rooms for mothers to Gymboree to books. Conversation flows easily; the women interact like lifelong friends.
It’s just how Montiel, founder of the group, hoped things would be.
The New Moms Support Group is a new, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciencessponsored group for new mothers and their babies. The group, which holds meetings 10-11: 30 a.m. each Thursday, is open and free to women who have become mothers in the last year. (Expectant parents, adoptive mothers and grandparents are also encouraged to attend. ) They are encouraged to “share their concerns, struggles and joys during the first year postpartum,” according to promotional material. The mothers may bring their babies.
SOMEONE TO CARE The group’s facilitators are all mothers. Montiel, a nurse at UAMS, got the idea for the group from a similar gathering in Austin, Texas, where she lived for a time. Montiel’s now-17-monthold daughter was born there. “My parents lived here, and I didn’t have any family around, and I had no friends who had kids,” Montiel recalls. She began looking for and found the group that, she says, “saved my sanity.” She continued to go to meetings for the next six or seven months. Then she moved back to Arkansas and learned there was no similar group here. She says she realized she was in a position to create one because of her job at UAMS, as well as her work at UAMS with the Antenatal and Neonatal Guidelines, Education and Learning System (or ANGELS ), a consultative service for physicians in Arkansas.
“I’m a labor and delivery nurse. And I work on the weekends, so I have time during the week.... So I figured I’d just start one,” Montiel says.
The first meeting was held May 1.
The New Moms Support Group can prove valuable to those who, as Montiel did, move to another town and find themselves with no support system. “Especially when your mom and your friends... are miles away. It’s different to call and say, ‘Hey Mom, what would you do... ?’ versus going next door,” she says.
For the first couple of weeks, those attending meetings consisted of several of Montiel’s friends who had small children. “But now it’s really grown into people from the community.” News of the group has gotten out via fliers included in the discharge packets of new-mother patients at UAMS and mail-outs to pediatricians and obstetricians in the city. “Hopefully women are starting to really hear about it [through ] word-of-mouth advertising,” Montiel says.
As a social worker with ANGELS, Baldwin works with women who have post-partum and perinatal depression. She believes a group such as this can make a major difference in their lives.
“These women are just starting off a new part of their life,” Baldwin says. “It’s really sort of an honor just to listen to them and participate in that.” NO HASSLES The meetings are unstructured and women attend as they can. “We wanted it to be a really comfortable environment where if your kid is really in a bad mood that day, you don’t have to feel like you can’t come,” Montiel says. If a participant needs to nurse, feed or change her baby, no problem. “It’s just real casual. And if you don’t need it that week, then don’t worry about not coming. There’s no class roster or anything like that.” Montiel hopes to keep meetings small — “When you get much bigger than 10, I’ve seen it get really depersonalized” — but says that if enough people become interested in the group on a consistent basis, a second meeting will be added.
So far, breastfeeding and sleeping are the hottest discussion topics. These “pop up time and time again,” Montiel says. “And then probably secondary to those are day care and going back to work.” Another topic of interest is making the transition to motherhood.
From Montiel’s observations, women usually join the group when their babies are 6 to 7 weeks old, stay for a couple of weeks, taper off once they feel they’ve gotten their bearings, and perhaps reappear when their babies start entering “that new, crawling stage.” The bewildered new mothers who attend meetings are not all younger women. Quite a few are in their late 30 s. “Most of those women are very accomplished in their career.... And then they have this baby and it’s like this huge adjustment,” Montiel says. “It’s almost harder for people in that stage of their life to shift and be able to accommodate a new baby versus somebody who’s young.” Jones, 29, resigned a medical residency to be a full-time mother. When Montiel told her about the group in Austin and her plans to start one here, Jones was interested.
“After I had the baby, I was struggling with breastfeeding, and he wasn’t sleeping well,” Jones says. “After I first had Eli, I just wanted to talk to everybody because I knew nothing.” At the first meeting, Jones had many questions. “It was just nice to get everyone’s opinion.” Now, she says, she probably won’t need to go to group meetings as often. “I’ve just been doing things around town with Eli, and I’m getting more mobile finally. Before, I was afraid to do anything.... I’m feeling like I’m at a good place right now.” She’ll return to the meetings whenever she needs more help and advice.
‘ADULT INTERACTION’ Dougherty, 27, resigned recently from her job as an account manager for an information-technology company to become a stay-at-home parent. She got word of the New Moms meetings through a friend and came hoping to get involved with women who were having experiences similar to hers.
“My recent transition... is probably why the group is so beneficial for me,” she says. “It allows me to have adult interaction, which is very important.” Her first meeting was all she’d hoped for. “The atmosphere felt very warm and inviting,” Dougherty says. “I felt very comfortable sharing my experiences.... I was very impressed with everyone that I met.” It was also good to find out that the issues with which she’d been dealing were not bizarre.
“I feel very fortunate that we have such a great support group for new moms in our community.” In addition to getting and sharing parenting tips, group attendees can also take advantage of the Parent Center’s resource library, which has a wealth of books for new mothers. Jones recalls Long giving her a book that helped her and her husband deal with the problem of Eli not sleeping through the night.
“We read it, and it took a week for it to work,” Jones says. “But we sleep-trained Eli and now he sleeps through the night. That was the biggest gift ever.” Jones says she would not only like to see more people attending the meetings, but would also like to see them form a play group, coming together to support each other and take turns baby-sitting, as well as have their children socialize with each other. “I feel like it would be such a huge resource,” she says. “If more people would go and it was just consistent, you could meet some great people and have some great contacts.” For more information about the New Moms Support Group, call Montiel at (501 ) 225-4627.
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