Videos: Second-Time Mom Talks About Benefits of ‘Welcome Baby’

Ashley, a second-time mom in Lancaster, California, never breastfed her first daughter. But that was six years ago and she was determined to breastfeed her new baby girl. Initially, it wasn’t easy — it was downright painful — but she credits her Welcome Baby parent coach for talking her through the challenges and helping her succeed.

“If we didn’t talk about that, I probably would not have breastfed — not at all,” she tells parent coach Maureen Farrell (in the second video below).

Like all Welcome Baby parent coaches, Maureen is a Certified Lactation Educator and has received extensive training in a variety of areas related to perinatal health and parenting.

As Ashley explains (in the first video below), she got so much valuable information through Welcome Baby that she became the go-to resource for her sister-in-law and other new moms.

Ashley recalls how she encouraged them to enroll in Welcome Baby, but they just kept calling her with questions about pregnancy and infant care. “They’re calling me with this and this,” she laughs, “and I’m like, dude, if you would’ve took the program, you would know this!”

Ashley also recounts how Welcome Baby helped her husband bond with the new baby. “Now he gets to do the skin-to-skin and feed her and get that same bond that I get with her,” she says. “That was something that I thought was amazing, that I still share. [The doctors] don’t tell you that, and they can’t … there’s just too many people to tell everybody everything.”

Welcome Baby is part of a network of free home visiting programs funded by First 5 LA to help pregnant women and new parents raise healthy children. It’s available at these 14 hospitals in L.A. County. For an overview of the Family Strengthening Network in Antelope Valley, which includes Welcome Baby and its partner home visiting programs, see the third video below.