EveryStep Program for New Moms Shows Immediate Success

This fall, EveryStep’s Healthy Start team hosted a pair of classes for new mothers providing education, resources, information, and – most importantly – the opportunity to connect with one another.  Those connections have already made a life-changing impact on the life of one participant’s child. 

The two classes - ‘Mind & Motherhood’ and ‘Circle of Smiles’ - took unique approaches to accomplish the same goal: bringing mothers together in a group setting to answer each other's questions about motherhood and child development. 

EveryStep’s Mtee Paw led the six-week ‘Circle of Smiles’ classes held at the Eddie Davis Center in West Des Moines.  “The purpose of this group is to encourage parents to participate in activities with their children and learn other resources in the community, connect with each other ... and also get support on health and parenting topics,” she says. 

"Each week we do different topics,” Mtee says, “The first week we talked about the importance of fine and gross motor skills.  When you're staying with your children at home, what's an activity that you can do with them?” 

From there, the sessions transition to an open question and answer format and group play for their kids.  It was during this play session that one mom made a potentially life-changing observation. 

“We had a shy child that started interacting with other children (and) mom mentioned that her son is a little over 20 months old, but isn’t talking much,” Mtee says, “We completed an ‘Ages and Stages’ questionnaire and developmental screening and his development was delayed – according to charts. 

“We called together with her and Early Access set up an appointment to come out and do another evaluation with them ... that could be a major breakthrough,” Mtee says. 

That same group learning model is being practiced in EveryStep’s “Mind & Motherhood” sessions.  The six-week course was held at Calvary Chapel on the east side of Des Moines, starting in early September.   

The groups were led by Keimara Roby.  As the group facilitator, she led discussions about moms taking time to take care of themselves and helped guide those mothers into a discussion amongst themselves. 

“They’re bouncing ideas off each other, giving a lot of advice to the others who are still expecting -  let them know what their experience was like and what work and what didn't work for them,” Keimara says, “they're all going through kind of the same thing right now so they can really relate to each other.”