CINCINNATI — When Amanda Laskowski became a mom in 2019, she thought she was as prepared as she could be.
“We took a newborn care class. We took a breastfeeding class,” she said. “And still, motherhood really kind of caught me off guard.”
As a Cincinnati transplant, experiencing a new stage of life without many friends or family in the area, Laskowski said she felt isolated and overwhelmed. The one thing she wanted was the chance to talk with someone who understood what she was going through.
Not long after, the pandemic hit, and Laskowski noticed a lot of parents longing for the same kind of community and connection, especially in those challenging first few months.
“Not to give or get advice, but just to be seen and feel heard and feel supported while you’re processing and integrating all of that information,” she said.
Not seeing any place providing that service, Laskowski wanted to find a way to create it herself. After the birth of her second child in 2021, she looked into doula courses focusing specifically on postpartum, underwent certification, and in the spring of 2022, she launched her first Cincy Postpartum Fourth trimester circle.
Image courtesy: Amanda Laskowski
“It’s really focused on those first two to 12 weeks,” she said. “Just a space to process all of that in human real time with real people in your neighborhood.”
The circles, which she intentionally refrains from calling classes or courses, focus on physical, mental, and emotional health in those early days of motherhood.
As one of her first participants, Allison Kendall, said the most important part of the experience was finding a community of other mothers who live in and around her neighborhood.
“We still talk every day,” she said.
A second-time mom, she said having that community made her experience with her daughter’s first few weeks night and day different from her son’s, who was born in early 2020.
“There’s so much happening, you’re processing so much, a lot of it is so overwhelming that I just kind of found out I wanted to talk about it a lot,” she said. “The support through conversation, through collaboration and community, that was really what I was looking for and what I thankfully got from the experience.”
Even though she’d been through the process once before, Kendall said there were new and unexpected challenges of raising a newborn with a toddler in the home on top of changes outside the home.
Kendall plays with her baby Naomi
“When she was born, we were mid-deep in the formula shortage,” she said. “That was something that weighed really heavily on me, just the anxiety around the pressure of breastfeeding. Am I going to be able to feed my daughter?”
Kendall said Talking through those concerns with other moms facing the same concerns provided both an outlet for that anxiety and a sense of comfort that they’d be able to help each other through this and anything else they were going through.
“It was just feeling empowered to be honest about some of the really maybe off-putting or difficult things you’re going through and knowing that likely you’re not alone,” she said.
Since Cincy Postpartum launched, Laskowski has established three in-person circles in three Cincinnati neighborhoods, as well as a virtual circle and a circle specifically for moms in their transition back to the workplace.
In the next year, she said she hopes to expand what Cincy Postpartum offers, including perhaps a circle specifically for second-time moms, and another for fathers of newborns.
She has no plans on expanding the group outside of Cincinnati because she believes the hyper-local support is a big part of the group, but she said she’s willing to work with others who might want to start circles in their own communities.
