Creating the New Mom Community I Never Had

Myopia, the subtle misogyny of some (not all!) postpartum groups, and Mom Brain

Photo by Helen Thomas on Unsplash

At my six-week postpartum OB checkup, I clearly needed help. I was not doing well, and it showed. At the end of the appointment my doctor pulled out her list of new mom groups and tried to sell me on Getting Out There and Making New Mom Friends. She talked up mom fitness classes and support groups and gave me a bunch of brochures. After I left, I threw them all away. I could not think of a worse fix for the state I was in than to be around other moms. The fitness group, I was sure, would be full of people whose sole concern was losing baby fat. I could already feel the judgement oozing out of me—I had resolved to never become one of those moms even before the kind of birth I’d experienced, which had made that transformation more unthinkable. I was just as certain that the support groups were going to be a bunch of parents comparing milestones (which my baby was at risk of not meeting) or talking about regular old postpartum depression, for which, in my whiplashed state, I had no tolerance. One place had specialized support groups for things like infant loss, but I didn’t fit into that category either. My baby had been injured, but he was here with me. I wasn’t a normal mom and I wasn’t a grieving mom, at least not in any straightforward way. I felt stranded.

Trauma can isolate and impinge on the capacity for generosity. I thought what had happened to me was the worst thing imaginable, and I bandied my self-pity about freely. But I also think my discomfort with the offerings on display pointed to a real flaw in the system (if we can even call it that, because it’s basically a patchwork web) that we have for new parents. So much of the infrastructure assumes parents are suddenly jumping out of their old lives and into this new identity of parent. They bring together people based on little more than the date when they gave birth. They are not designed to honor the pieces of ourselves that we might feel have been left behind in the delivery room. (Before the birth, I was in the middle of grad school and after delivery It was as if I’d suddenly been severed from that part of my life; no mom group appeared up to the challenge of addressing that chasm). They depend on the assumption that women are readily shedding their old selves and identities as they step into new ones concerned solely with their new babies. After all, they are now “mamas.” It’s easier to market to a conglomerate than to a diffuse set of individuals. I might have bought into this more unquestioningly if I hadn’t been through the wringer during my son’s birth. But I knew, without a doubt, that I couldn’t pass as a regular “mama” as much as I might want to. None of this was designed for me.

As I wrote my book, FRONTIER, I began to conceptualize the landscape of pregnancy and delivery as a multi-pronged corporate conglomerate, and now I see much of the postpartum landscape as another tentacle of “Big Birthing.” Pregnant women are inundated with a whole commercial framework promising to buy them a seamless entry into parenthood, from expensive birthing classes and prenatal yoga memberships to the designer baby products advertised as musts. The system continues and evolves after the baby is born. Pay to join this fitness group which will somehow solve the problems of modern maternal isolation! Purchase this expensive toy subscription to ensure your baby stays on track! Patricia Zaballos recently wrote a deep-dive essay about the origins of Baby Center and the unholy marriage of capitalism with motherhood support and advice. I could go on and on. But suffice to say, entrepreneurs small and large, some with good intentions and legitimately helpful offerings and some without, have tried filled the gaping holes left by an inadequate healthcare and social service system.

I don’t want to make it seem like I was completely alone during that first year of my son’s life. I had steadfast family and friends. One of my dear friends from college lived blocks away with his wife, and they showed up with meals and company and shoulders to cry on. Other friends took walks with me and fielded medical panic questions from long nights when I stayed up late googling and trying to unpack dense medical articles. Still, none of these friends had kids yet, and so I was no closer to forging ties with other new parents, to making the new friends that everyone says come along with a birth. Part of me craved those sorts of connections in spite of my self-imposed isolation. Birth and motherhood had shifted the ground beneath my feet and while these friends tried, they had never been through delivery or sleepless life with a newborn and could not fully understand what I was going through. I did know one fellow grad student who’d experienced a similar birth to mine, and this connection was key. When we spent time together I felt seen in a way that otherwise seemed out of reach. At the same time, we shared interests unrelated to our children and our births. We were both artists, we both read widely, we were both trying to figure out how to continue to nurture that side of ourselves while diving headfirst into the murk of parenting. We were both looking for art that spoke to the kind of parenting we’d been dropped into and the rupture we’d experienced in our sense of self.

About nine years later, I visited Astoria Bookshop as part of a mini-book tour. There I read for Nicole Haroutunian’s Caregiver Story Time, was immediately drawn to the way she created a space for new parents while honoring more than just their roles as caregivers (in spite of the name). Writers read work for the grownups in attendance, and these grownups got to discuss the work—what it meant to them as they parented, for sure, but also what it meant to them intellectually and emotionally as readers. They could bring their babies along and hold them and feed them, but they were not reduced to their identities as parents. They connected with other parents based on their shared stage of life, for sure, but also because they shared a love of reading, a curiosity, which predated the births of their children. They could connect on more than one plane. I started to think about how to bring something like this back to Chicago with me.*

A few months later I lucked into meeting two local moms (Caroline Calvert and Claire Seizovic) who were not only interested in creating something similar in Evanston, but who had the skills, connections, and energy we needed to bring it to life. In March, we launched Mom Brain, our version of Caregiver Storytime. The name is tongue-in-cheek, but it touches on a piece of the postpartum offerings that felt missing to me years ago. It’s been so special to see how it’s already created a vibrant space for new parents—particularly moms, though we remain open to people of all identities—to meet, talk about the hard things, and bond over both parenting and also the other parts of themselves that may be neglected by the postpartum scene in America. We offer books for purchase by our guest writers, but otherwise we aren’t trying to hawk anything at all.

Sitting in the Mom Brain circle two weeks ago with my two-year-old (my third kid), I realized I’d finally found the community I’d been missing back when I was newly postpartum the first time. With a guest author and her book as our centerpiece, people engaged thoughtfully with lofty ideas and also grounded the conversation in real and powerful details from their own experiences. They were mostly, but not entirely, mothers, and several brought along their kids, who ranged from newborns to preschoolers. I’ve seen this community growing and forming over the last few months, as we’ve brought in a variety of writers to discuss everything from birth trauma to postpartum depression to queer family building.

But, two weeks ago, maybe because I had my own kid with me for the first time, it struck me: this was the community I wish I’d had all of those years ago, dipping my toe into the scary waters of parenting for the first time. This was the group I wish my OB had given me a brochure about. A community that makes space for the divergent and often difficult ways we enter parenting. One that honors the enormity of the new roles we are stepping into but that doesn’t pretend we’ve left behind everything else that came before. A community that challenges dominant narratives around art and caregiving and shows that the two, rather than being in opposition, are mutually enriching.

*Patricia Zaballos, of Baby Center takedown fame, has also started her own version of this reading series in the Bay Area. It’s spreading!

Interested in learning more about Mom Brain?

Check out our Instagram (@mombrain.salon) and our website for up-to-date info!

Join us in Evanston for these scheduled events:

• July 10 @10AM @ Little Gems with Rachel León

• August 14 @10AM @Little Gems with Shayne Terry

• September 11 @10 AM location TBD with Kaitlyn Teer

AND if your work is related to parenting or caregiving (all genres welcome) and you’d like to be a featured guest, send us an email at mombrain.salon@gmail.com.