Great Ottawa Services for New Parents

Today is Friday and also the day I decided I wanted to share with my son who is in daycare the rest of the week – so I hope you don’t mind if I make this blog a more personal one. On Fridays, I usually take my son to a local playgroup. I started taking him when he was 14 months-old and still home with me full time. I just wish I had known about it sooner – which is why I hope that this blog might help someone else realize all the great FREE services new parents have access to in Ottawa. First of all, a week after my son was born, a public health nurse came to my house to check up on us. How awesome is that! I didn’t know this was standard practice until I got my ‘welcome baby’ kit at the hospital. She weighed my son and asked me how things were going and if I had any questions (what new parent doesn’t?!). She also gave me a list of local Well Baby Clinics. Something else I hadn’t heard of but was pleased to discover one such clinic took place once a week at the community centre down the street from our house. The proximity was especially important to me because my son was born a week before Christmas in 2007. Do you remember the winter of 2007-2008? Many cities broke their snowfall records and Ottawa got a whopping 436.7 cm (171.9 in) just shy of the all time record of 444.1 cm. We had only one car that my husband used to commute to work and I was recovering from a c-section (my stubborn boy was breach). So you can imagine that venturing outdoors with a newborn was a daunting task. I was worried about the cold, slipping on the ice and hurting my incision and/or my baby. No way could you push a stroller with that much snow so I bundle him up in a Moby wrap under my coat and walked to the community centre to get my baby weighed once a week and have an opportunity to chat other new moms while I waited my turn to see a public health nurse. I could ask them anything from advice on breastfeeding to this or that normal. The clinic sees baby up to 3 months and it was such a comfort to know he was gaining weight (he was slow to gain in the beginning) and developping normally.

Fast forward to the following winter when once again stuck indoors and developing another case of cabin fever, an online search allowed me to discover a free play group that ran 4 days a week from 9:30-11:30am. By then, friends that had been on maternity leave at the same time as me had returned to work so this was a chance for my son to interact with other children, new toys and activities and songs while I could socialize with other parents. They offered snacks to the kids and sometimes had workshops for the parents on various topics relating to child development. These were nice breaks while the facilitators supervised the kids. Right now on Fridays, one of the facilitators comes in half an hour earlier to teach a parent and tot yoga class.

I have been so impressed with how the play group is run and the diversity of parents and care-givers who use it. The facilitators are well-educated and great with the kids. My son now asks for them by name and loves to give them hugs.

So for any new parent that is sick of winter and tired of the mall, drop by a local play group! The Ottawa Public Library also has some great programs so check them out too – click here and use the Search Library Programs for Babytime or Toddlertime.

I hope this helps! I would love to hear about any other programs that are useful to new parents so I can pass the information along to my maternity and newborn portrait clients.

Tags: belly and baby portraits, free services, maternity portraits, new parents, newborn portraits, ontario early years, Ottawa, ottawa public library, play group, success by 6, well baby clinic