Sharing advice between sleepless nights makes motherhood a little easier for a group of Faribault mothers.
At 10:30 a.m. every Thursday, several mothers and their newborns up to 12 weeks old gather at the Faribault Education Center for a free class called Baby Stop, where they offer and receive advice from a nurse, an educator and each other.
Faribault Public Schools Early Childhood Family Education Parent Educator Anna Runestad leads the class. She has worked for the district for four years, but said she has 20 years of experience in early-childhood education. Rice County Public Health Nurse Bre Macheel also attends, offering medical advice and weekly weigh-ins for new moms and their little ones.
“One of the great benefits of coming is having the public-health nurse weigh your baby,” Runestad said. “Because you can get a lot of information about the health of the baby, like how much they’re eating and if they’re eating enough or not enough, and how they’re growing.”
This week moms filed in with their babies and sat in a circle to visit and discuss the latest challenges or victories they’ve faced in the last few days. The moms took turns having their babies weighed before settling in for the discussion.
After each mom introduced herself and her baby, Runestad opened up the floor to any questions or concerns anyone would like to ask the group about. Many of Thursday’s questions had to do with breastfeeding.
“To have access to a nurse for free once a week is really quite amazing, especially for first-time parents,” she said. “You can go down the Google world and get a million different answers on parenting issues or health issues. Some of them are scary. Some of them are unhelpful. Some of them are conflicting. So sometimes people will come and just ask ‘Okay, like, what’s the right answer?’”
Recognizing a baby’s cues that they’re hungry or sleepy was the main topic of discussion this week.
“They feed on demand,” Macheel said. “That’s a big switch in feeding culture right now. It’s an older-age practice, where we say ‘feed your baby every two to three hours.’ And that’s great to get a baseline, to get you started. But then as you go on for your feeding journey, you are feeding on demand.
“We might have a cluster feeding, where we’re feeding every hour, and then we have like a five-to-six-hour break. And we’re honoring those cues and following that. So it’s more viewing like ‘Okay, are we hungry? Are we not?’”
Jenna Wittman, of Faribault, brings 8-week-old Braxton to Baby Stop. She said she wishes she had also come to the class with her first baby.
“It’s awesome having people that are going through the same things you are, but different,” she said. “You might be able to give them advice; they might be able to give you advice. I love it.”
Maddi Ohnstad, of Faribault, brought 3-week-old Harper. It was her first time in the class, which she found out about through her sister-in-law, Faribault Adult Education and Facilities Coordinator Cassie Riopelle.
“We’re getting no sleep,” she said. “But I just wanted to come feel it out and see what advice the other moms have. I am curious to hear what other people have to say and what their experiences are like, what questions they have.”
The group quickly became engaged in the class, so much so that it ran about 15 minutes over the scheduled end time.
Several of the moms, expectant parents and parents with babies up to a year old will meet next Saturday for a community baby shower at the Education Center from 9:30-11 a.m. April 27, where they’ll have access to community resources and giveaways.
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