The 2011-12 New Member Class Project 

Baby Steps, an educational baby shower for expectant mothers in need.

As any mother can tell you, the period leading up to the birth of a first-born child is a veritable roller-coaster of emotions filled with numerous questions and concerns.  For many of us, our fears are dampened with the knowledge that we have a solid foundation of support from friends and family around us, and have the ability to tap into a wide range of resources to help us through the multitudinous questions that will arise.

For all of our good fortune, however, there are many others that do not have these same advantages. Plenty of new mothers from underprivileged communities, many lacking either a partner, family, or support network, are trying to navigate this strange world of impending motherhood without adequate financial resources or access to information.  Their future, and more importantly that of their unborn child, is at risk given their lack of access to critical resources both in terms of education and items necessary to support a newborn child.

The 2012 New Member Class of JLE-NS is happy to once again have the privilege of positively impacting the lives of 15 new mothers and their children on April 21, 2012.  On this date, we will be hosting Baby Steps, a baby shower for new mothers from the Perinatal Family Support Center, an affiliate of NorthShore University HealthSystem’s Evanston Hospital.  At this event, we will shower each new mother with an assortment of essentials for their newborn child as well as provide several speakers on various educational topics of interest including post-partum depression, lactation, and feeding essentials.

In order to be successful in our auspicious goal, we ask for your help in partnering with us so that we can strive to provide these moms with some of the advantages many people take for granted.  To this end, we have compiled a registry of some basic items we would like to purchase for our new moms, some examples of which are attached. 

Donations can be made in several different ways.

You can either go directly to Target.com (first name, Junior League; second name, Baby Steps) or to Target itself and purchase the desired item(s) from the registry;

You can write a check to JLE-NS (Baby Steps in the memo line, please) and we will use those funds to help complete our registry prior to the event;

You can visit our website at www.jle-ns.org and look for “Baby Steps” Link to make a donation electronically;

We will also be hosting a raffle at the March GMM with an exciting line-up of items, so if you have donations of merchandise, services, unused gift cards/ gift certificates, etc. we will also accept those. 

    On behalf of the 2012 New Member Class of JLE-NS,

we thank you in advance for your support!

Click here to see how you can help with the Baby Steps registry.