Support Groups
I lead two support meetings per month in Northern Manhattan. No advanced registration is required for these groups and each session lasts for 1½ hours. Please view the schedule to see upcoming support groups.
At drop-in meetings, we discuss whatever questions mothers have while the mothers sit and nurse their babies. I provide hands-on assistance with positioning and latch-on and I always bring my digital baby scale so that mothers can weigh their babies.
Pregnant women are welcome at these meetings and will get to see good latch-on technique and recognize effective sucking and swallowing at the breast.
Why Support Groups?
The first weeks and months after a baby is born are a wonderful, difficult time in a woman's life, and it's more enjoyable when you sit around and talk about it with other new mothers.
It's powerful to have the mother of a 2 week old baby in the same room with the mother of a 2 month old baby. Those babies are only 6 weeks apart and yet they are totally different creatures. The mothers are different too. The 2 month old is smiling at her mother, latches on easily and can be finished feeding in 10 minutes. The message at these meetings is consistently: "You are not alone in your concerns. Things will get better."
I always encourage mothers to exchange telephone numbers or email addresses so they can meet on other days as well. Some of these spin-off groups keep on meeting until the children go off to school!