Annual Baby Shower at Stafford Head Start

For the past 13 years Stafford Head Start has provided a Baby Shower for Head Start moms who are pregnant or recently delivered, as part of our effort to meet federal performance standards for services to pregnant women. Twenty to thirty families attend this annual event, designed to connect the moms with maternity and pediatric services in the community while celebrating their new “arrivals”. Topics presented are ‘When to go to the hospital’, post-partum depression, breast feeding, safe infant care, healthy relationships, child development, WIC and Family Planning services. Nurses from the Health Department, registered dieticians, lactation consultants from a local hospital and Cooperative Extension staff attend the 2-hour shower, often provide door prizes and explain the services of their agency, best practices in maternal and/or pediatric care, available birth control, etc.

Second-hand maternity and infant clothes, used baby equipment and furniture, and other donated items from the community are also available for the families to take home. Lunch is provided with a stork-adorned cake for dessert!

The Stafford program won a $2,000 VAHSA Mini-Grant to provide 20 portable play yards to the pregnant families and families of newborns attending the Baby Shower, and to purchase five breast pumps that would be loaned out to families willing to breastfeed. 

Keeping your baby safe and healthy is the message of the Baby Shower. To this end, breast feeding and preventing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome are the two most important practices Stafford Head Start/Early Head Start desires pregnant families and families of newborns to adopt. Most of these families are young, and for the Early Head Start families, may be having their first baby. Because they are living at or below the poverty level, they may not be able to afford the safest infant furniture or most effective equipment. The Baby Shower helps in a small way to provide some of the essentials that new-borns require.