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November naturally makes us think about gratitude.
And lately, I've been thinking about how grateful I am for something I don't take lightly:
Being invited into some of the most vulnerable moments in a woman's life.
I've sat with a new mother who is also a physician as she told me, almost in disbelief, that she had never realized how significant the gap in maternal care could feel after having a baby.
The baby was being checked. The baby had appointments. Everyone wanted to know how the baby was doing.
But who was checking on her?
Even with years of medical training, she hadn't fully understood that experience until she became the mother herself.
I've worked with a labor and delivery nurse who spent her career helping women have babies—only to need help latching her own first baby. With her second, what she needed was different: the reassurance that exclusively pumping was a perfectly valid option considering her state of her mental health.
Sometimes support isn't telling a mother what she should do.
Sometimes it's helping her understand her options and choose what works for her.
I think about a mother whose career took her around the world, but after a difficult delivery and episiotomy, she came home to a third-floor condo and suddenly couldn't manage the stairs.
A woman accustomed to going anywhere was essentially confined to her bedroom.
So support came upstairs.
And I think about a first-time mom whose tiny baby developed severe eczema as unidentified allergies wreaked havoc on his little body.
I remember sitting beside her in a hospital room holding her baby while she napped.
At that moment, the work wasn't simply about feeding or development. It was listening, helping her ask questions and advocating alongside her when she was exhausted and scared.
Making sure both mother and baby were being seen.
What a privilege that is.
These women had different professions, births, babies and challenges.
But each allowed me into an incredibly vulnerable space.
And long before MAMA & BABE had a name, women, children and families were already teaching me the importance of this work.
My own four children certainly did.
And over more than two decades as an occupational therapist, hundreds of families have trusted me with their children, their questions, their concerns and pieces of their lives.
Every therapy session.
Every worried phone call.
Every “Can I ask you something?”
Every mother who has handed me her baby.
Every family who has trusted me enough to say, “Something doesn't feel right.”
I'm profoundly grateful for all of it.
We still need each other.
We live in a world that somehow feels more connected than ever—and increasingly isolated.
We can work from home, order groceries without seeing another person, search any question at 2 a.m. and scroll through hundreds of people's lives while sitting completely alone.
And then a woman has a baby.
Suddenly, she's navigating one of the most physically and emotionally vulnerable transitions of her life.
And Google can't sit beside her.
An Instagram reel can't look at her baby and say, “Let me see what's happening.”
A search result can't notice that she's struggling to get out of a chair, hasn't eaten, is overwhelmed by feeding or simply needs someone to say:
“I see you, too.”
That's some of the space I hope Mama & Babe can fill.
I can't fill every gap, nor do I replace the many medical and support professionals a mother may need.
But I can fill some of the space between.
I can come upstairs.
I can sit beside the hospital bed.
I can watch a feeding.
I can notice Mom.
I can listen when the plan isn't working.
I can ask another question.
I can advocate.
And sometimes, I can simply stay for a while.
This Thanksgiving, I'm grateful to be invited in.
To every family who has trusted me over these past 20+ years—and every MAMA & BABE family who has welcomed me through their front door:
Thank you.
For the calls, conversations, therapy sessions, home visits, questions and babies.
There will always be gaps in our systems. There will always be things we can't anticipate before a baby arrives.
But I hope we can continue filling some of those spaces with something our increasingly disconnected world desperately needs:
Connection. Community. And the assurance that mothers don't have to navigate motherhood alone.
What an extraordinary privilege it is to be a small part of that.
With so much gratitude,
Melissa