As we enter the late-fall stretch of the year, the time when both of my kids have birthdays, I find myself thinking about the days when they were “fresh out of the oven,” in those sweet, early days of postpartum. Only now, with the benefit of the wide-angle lens of nearly 8 and 11 years, can I look back on those moments: the late nights and endless breastfeeding, the wicked diaper blowouts, trying to leave the house with fifty bags of stuff that seemed crucial to bring, doing all the household chores one-handed while holding a baby, and the bleary-eyed, dreamlike state of life while chronically sleep-deprived. One of the things that helped me survive, and dare I say, even thrive, during this unique moment in life were the postpartum groups I was part of.
I came to the first group by happenstance. I had moved to Vermont deep into my first pregnancy to join what was then Addison Associates in OB/GYN, which became Porter Women’s Health and has now evolved into Porter Obstetrics, Midwifery & Gynecology (or Porter OMG, if you will). I knew no one other than my family and the people I worked with when I left, after just a few months of employment, to have my daughter. Still pretty new to both my job and motherhood, I struck up a conversation with a woman who came in for routine care. When she learned that I had just had a baby around the same time as someone in her family, she collected my contact information and passed it along so I might have someone else with a baby to hang out with. This single act had a profound impact on my social circle, one that has persisted for more than a decade.
I hosted my first hang out of the Floppy Friends, as they had dubbed themselves—a nod to our very small babies, who had zero motor skills or head control. I was delighted and surprised to find several people I had cared for during their pregnancies entering my home, along with several I had never met. One of them, I later discovered through the magic of social media, had gone to high school with my husband back in Maine in the ‘90s. We sat around nursing our babies, a few pumping, asking what each of our babies were doing, how they were eating and (not) sleeping, and, most importantly, “What the heck do you do all day with a newborn?”
All of us were first-time moms. All of us had babies within a few months of each other. We were all on our own, trying to figure it all out, until we were all together, perhaps figuring it out via the hive mind. And hey, if we didn’t figure it out, at least there were snacks and some good company from other mamas who understood the plight of the undone dishes, the house in shambles, and the sweatpants with many different fluid stains—some bodily, some otherwise—that we’d been wearing for far too many days in a row.
As the weather warmed and our babies grew, so did our adventurous spirit. We ventured out of each other’s living rooms and into the general public, cozying up in the spring grasses of Kingsland Bay, taking walks outside, or hanging, tits out, at Otter Creek Brewery, where we tasted beers while feeding the babies. We heard as one baby, and then the next, started to roll over, sit up, eat solid foods, crawl, and take those first tentative steps. We piled all the crying 10-month-olds adjacent to a hay bale in their fluffy Halloween onesies, dressed up as things that amused us. One of the families hosted an epic party to celebrate that we had survived one solid year of parenthood and somehow, just somehow, managed not to bungle it beyond repair.
Having been fully embraced by a group of random mothers thrown somewhat together by the arbitrary alignment of a due date, who understood the moment I was standing, was beyond affirming. It was a wonderful gift to have this group, able to understand and normalize the chaos of parenthood and infancy, never needing to explain why we weren’t showered, showed up late and asking to borrow a spare outfit when your kid had pooped through their fifth consecutive pants-and-shirt combo of the day. We were all living some version of the same fever dream of exhaustion from the grind, the joy and exhilaration of all the “firsts” and the gut wrenching doubts of “am I doing it right.” There was comfort in numbers.
As many of us returned to full-time work and our full-group hangouts became less frequent, these were still the people I sought out whenever I had a chance to be social. Our children were still growing, the milestone were still coming and the “what do you do for _____?” (enter random question about child-rearing here) were endless. Everyone was still just a text thread away. And now that the kids were a little more ambulatory, catching up while chasing down was the new norm.
And then there were the second pregnancies, which didn’t all line up quite as perfectly as the first. So, when I went on leave the second time, I knew I had to assemble a new group: Floppy Friends 2.0. One of the nurses I worked with had a baby a few weeks before me; there was one. Another friend, whom I knew was due around the same time, happened to go into labor before me, as I was nearly a week past my due date. Postpartum friend #2 recruited. Freshly de-pregnated and still admitted in the birth center, my husband chatted up another dad in the kitchenette, whose family had welcomed a baby the day before us. Turns out, they had a lot in common. We ran into them again in the waiting room for our two-week postpartum visit. Friend #3 locked in.
The group expanded after that by word of mouth. This time, we were a combination of first-time and second- and third-time parents. With the confidence of having been through it before, and with the newfound clarity that it was actually the toddler who was going to be the new challenge in my life, I set out on my second postpartum extravaganza like a woman with time on her hands. There were Haymaker coffee dates, postpartum yoga and baby groups to attend, walks up Chipman Hill, and a few attempts at cross-country skiing. Life was good. I had a posse of badass mamas, and we were doing it together: sleep-deprived, in pregnancy pants, with chapped nipples and all, but together.
Fast-forward to now. Our almost-11-year-olds are tiptoeing into puberty with their preteen attitudes (some actually in puberty), and I’m wondering, how the heck are we going to do this stage? I can still pick up the phone and group-text a handful of women who are right there with me, still trying to figure it all out. Because, aren’t we all? The challenges change. Less are the concerns of the nighttime feedings and sleep training. Now we are working on helping our kids navigate challenging friendships, classroom bullies and learning difference. But the community of women I have with me, alongside me, shoulder to shoulder, has been one of the greatest gifts.
One of the best pieces of parenting advice I ever received came from my wise and hilarious colleague, the illustrious Dr. Kate Howard. Before I had my first child, she told me, “Remember, the baby has no idea you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Turns out, that’s still true. Probably come the late teens, they’ll figure out I’ve been making up this parenting thing the whole time.
– Jodi Brown is the director of chaos for her New Haven family of four and OB/GYN at Porter Medical Center.