Meeting other premmie mums

When your baby is born early, your experience of birth and early parenting suddenly becomes quite different from the experiences of your friends and family whose children were born close to full term. They don’t know, and can’t be expected to understand exactly how you feel, the different emotions and worries at the time of birth, during your hospital stay, and after your baby comes home. What’s more, the effects of being born prematurely might still be felt and seen years down the track, long after other people have forgotten those stressful early months.

In retrospect I wish I’d made more effort to get to know other mothers while my daughter was in hospital - but I didn’t have the emotional strength to do more than exchange greetings and didn’t want to get involved. I was too concerned with my baby’s day to day wellbeing and didn’t realise how important it was to think about support for myself in the longer term.

Now I can say it is fantastic to be able to talk to other parents of premmies. I have found great comfort and encouragement, and people who appreciated all my daughter’s tiny milestones, no matter how delayed. Until recently most of my “premmie friends” lived far away from me, and I met them online, in a forum or chat room. Now I am lucky to be able to meet some of them in person, and I would love to meet more.

If you are reading this, live in Perth (or visit from time to time) and would like to meet other premmie mums, please get in touch! Maybe we can form a premmie playgroup. I meet another premmie mum in Kings Park about twice a month - come and join us!

If you live in Perth and already have a premmie playgroup, get in touch and let the rest of us know about it!