USE THIS PHOTO Blair Fowler holds up her daughter, Gracie, 3 months, during a Partners in Parenting meeting. DEBORAH CANNON / AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Their parents, who are new at this, joined the group when the babies were as young as 2 weeks. Their parents knew they would need a support network to get through these first months.
PIP — Partners in Parenting — started two years ago after moms Carolyn Opps and Krista Miller had their first babies. “When I was pregnant, I was the first one of my friends to get pregnant,” Miller says. She knew about a program in Seattle, where she had lived previously, that was for early parenting support. “I wanted it for myself, but there was nothing like it.”
Devin Price holds his daughter, Ada, 4 months old, prior to the start of a Partners in Parenting meeting. DEBORAH CANNON / AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Opps and Miller found their own support groups out of their birthing classes or from acquaintences, but those were informal groups, and often they didn’t talk about what was really going on at 2 a.m. when no one was sleeping.
The idea for a more formal support group kept circulating in their minds and when their babies were 18 months old, they decided to do something about it. They put their skills in marketing (Miller) and teaching (Opps) and launched PIP.
One of their first steps was to go to Seattle to meet with Programs for Early Parent Support, which had been doing it for 30 years. PEPS shared its resources with Opps and Miller, who later adapted them to be more Austincentric.
They created a couple of different groups: Newborn PIPSqueaks for parents of babies age newborn to 4 months and a Baby PipSqueaks for parents of babies 4 months to 10 months. Each group has a trained facilitator. The newborn group meets for 12 weeks and chooses from 35 different topics based on the group’s interest ($150), and the baby group meets for eight weeks and chooses from 30 topics ($100). Sometimes the topics come with guest speakers, other times a member of the group or the facilitator will lead the topic.
Often some of the best information comes from what parents share with one another, Opps says.
The dynamics of the group also dictates whether they also do things with their babies such as learn songs together or whether they share a meal together. Some groups meet during the daytime with just primary caregivers and babies. Others meet at night with both parents and baby. Each session is 90 minutes and many groups meet in one another’s homes or in the facilitator’s home.
Blair Fowler, bottom right, speaks to the group during a Partners in Parenting meeting. DEBORAH CANNON / AMERICAN-STATESMAN
“It’s a nonjudgmental space,” says Rachel Ladov, PIP’s new executive director. Some parents are co-sleeping others are using cribs; some are breast-feeding while others use formula.
“There’s no agenda,” Miller says.
Each week parents give their highs and lows. “It’s a place where you can be honest,” Ladov says. “Online you can’t be as honest. You present a pretty picture.”
PIP places families into groups based on where they live, with the hope that after the program is over, parents will continue to get together for play dates.
PIP is starting to get some alumni to join the board or to become facilitators. Meera de Mel was in a group a year ago and is now facilitating the Allandale group for Willy, Gracie, Ada and Farryn’s parents. “It’s really, really brilliant,” she says. “They are here in the trenches together.”
While de Mel comes armed with information, this group really has taken on a life of its own and now the parents rotate who hosts and cooks dinner and who leads the conversation.
Gracie’s mom Blair Fowler joined the group when Gracie was 2 weeks old. “I feel like we have gone through the worst of babyhood with support,” she says. For her, saying her highs and her lows each week has been helpful “just to get that out.”
When Laine Hardy shares her low that Ada doesn’t sleep, the group offers tips they’ve tried such as different swaddle blankets, but mainly they are her reassurance that it’s going to be OK, eventually.
Her partner Devin Price says “it’s great just to be able to socialize with people going through the same thing in life.”
PIP has plenty of room for growth from adding more groups at different parts of the city to starting a group for second-time parents to starting a group just for dads.
PIP is also working on creating a model that funds itself. Right now, it has a grant from the Burdine Johnson Foundation to help offset some of the cost and offer scholarships.
One of the biggest challenges for PIP has been trying to get new parents to realize they will need this level of support. “You can’t tell an expecting parent, ‘It’s going to be rough,’” Opps says. “We have to be able to say, ‘it will benefit you.’”
“They don’t realize how isolating it can be,” Ladov says.
