I teach adult education full time. It’s a pretty awesome gig. I love teaching and my students, overall, are actively choosing and wanting to learn. Not every teacher is blessed with that kind of situation. The other thing I love about my job is that it’s allowed me to meet a really wide variety of people, including young, struggling parents and expectant parents. They’re parents who so often want to do the very best things for their children, but aren’t sure where to start. They’re need for resources can stretch from where the local WIC office is all the way to having heard about cloth diapers and how much cheaper they are, but not having a clue as to where to get them and what do once they have them.
And I know it’s not just my students who need resources or have a difficult time finding them – it’s every first time parent. It doesn’t matter how much preparation or education you get before hand, no one is quite every prepared for all the moments that come after the one when your child is in your arms for the first time. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were a place that had the resources and support every parent, new or veteran, needs?
This is the little dream in my head: Conception, pregnancy, birth, and the bringing up of our children has so far been taken out of our hands that often knowledge that was so common and so willingly shared, has been lost under the buzz of technology, insular, nuclear family life, and “mommy wars”. I think parents often forget just how much they know and also how much they can learn from each other. With all this in mind , I can’t help but hunger for a place, a real, physical place, where parents come together and share what they have, both knowledge and actual items.
It starts, maybe, as a support group, but eventually, it grows into it’s own place – maybe a midwife’s practice is housed there, doulas, birth and postpartum, running in and out, off to attend to exhausted and giddy new mothers. There is space available for birth, parenting, breastfeeding, and sibling classes. There would be meeting spaces for parent groups, open for those who stay at home and for those who go to work (there are NEVER groups timed well for parents to work – this makes me nuts). There is a lending library of books, baby carriers and slings, maybe even cloth diapers (washed well, of course). Need a breast pump, maybe just for a night away or even for several months? Those would be there, too.
The goal would be to create an environment free of judgement, regardless of how you choose to love and parent your child. I know talks of cloth diapers and baby slings lean towards the crunchy end of the parenting spectrum, but I would want the reality of this space to embrace the mom who happily pushes her baby down the street in a stroller as much as the other who throws on a sling. Without this willingness to embrace every parent as they walk down every road to loving their child then we lose out on the benefits that come with knowing many different kinds of moms and dads and we lose out on the information so many parents lament not having, though so many before us seem to have known.
In the end, I want to build a community that brings out the best in ourselves by bringing out the best in our community’s children, by admiring the strengths we all hold in ourselves that can sometimes only be glimpsed until we are doing our best to care for the most vulnerable in our world.
Mama Baby Bliss Postpartum Doula Care 