In search of Parent & Baby group

The weather took the turn for the worse. The rain is back. The cold gusts of wind make me feel like the summer is over and the winter is fast approaching. I’m dreading the coming of winter with its gloomy short days. At least my parents will be here for some of the time to keep us company. Occasionally due to the lack of free time I grumble about the time I spend on my Skype conversations with mum, but now I sorely miss our long chats while my parents are taking 20 days to drive from Townsville to Melbourne. Hope they are seeing lots of interesting things on the way.

So lacking adult conversation and not feeling inspired to visit any of the usual places I finally made it to the local Parent and Toddler group yesterday. As expected the kids were older than Cat. The closest in age was lovely outgoing one year old girl in the pretty dress, who was trying to master walking and every time she took a step her ankle bracelets would make a soft tinkling noise. There was a shy 18 months girl, who was observing the other noisy kids from a quiet corner. The rest of the kids were closer to 2 years and older. The activities they did and toys they played with were age inappropriate for Cat. I chatted to three mums, but was totally overwhelmed by all the noise and trying to keep Cat out of harms way. Cat seemed to deal with the noise better and after initial shock of seeing so many kids at once wanted to take part in the fun and to chew everything in sight.

One of the mums runs an earlier morning group and I discovered that this breastfeeding group described as “designed to support breastfeeding mothers” in the centre’s leaflet is actually the equivalent to Parent & Baby group. If Cat wakes up early enough from her morning nap I’ll try it next Tuesday as it sounded more appropriate for us. While fully supporting breastfeeding and believing that breastfeeding mothers need all the encouragement and help they can get, I wonder where non-breastfeeding mothers and fathers go. The area seems to be sadly lacking in parent support groups. There is another church group I know of, but it is also targeted to parents of Toddlers. The baby clinic canceled theirs due to the lack of staff. While waiting to see the health visitor at the baby clinic I noticed that many parents from the same cultural background know each other – so I guess if someone belongs to a cultural group numerous in this area (like Polish or Indian) they are able to find other parents via their friend network. But people like us, who just moved to the area and don’t have any friends with kids, end up being pretty much isolated. Once the school term starts I’ll try the story and rhyme groups at the local libraries and Monkey Music class. I’m hoping they’ll be more to my liking otherwise it could be a very long winter.