Perch Babies Turn Two

Who are the Perch Babies?

I know I've made many references to my mom's group in these pages, but I've never explained how I came to be part of such an amazing group of women (and husbands and children).

Perch is the name of a restaurant in Park Slope where "kid-friendly" is not jut reflected in high chairs and kiddie menus, but in the very business plan, which encourages groups of moms to gather in the back room at off hours. When Clio was a tiny baby, my friend Emily and I took her son Abe and Clio there for lunch. As we ate (and the infants slept in their car seats), a woman came in with a stroller, and as she passed, asked us, "Are you here for the mom's group?"

There is a maternity and baby store in Park Slope called Boing Boing, where you can buy nursing bras and take classes to learn how to use various baby slings, and where you can sign up to be part of an email list of mothers whose children are born in the same month as yours. When I was pregnant with Clio, I bought a maya wrap sling there with my friend Liza after pre-natal yoga one day, and when asked if we would like to be on the June babies list, we politely declined (having both learned at Vassar how not to be joiners.)

Sure enough, what Emily and I happened upon at Perch some months later was one of the first meetings of the July babies group, and knowing better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, we moved to the back of the retaurant, met a slew of women with babies in all shapes and sizes, and began to compare stories. Every Tuesday through my maternity leave, and plenty of Fridays after I had returned to work, I drove to Perch and enjoyed delicious decaf coffee and the comfort of talking to woman facing the very same issues as I: breastfeeding and pumping, sleep trouble, the best high chairs, separation anxiety, exhaustion, and so on.

Eventually, the lunches at Perch became a thing of the past, but we began a google group called Perch Moms, arranged regular movie nights and craft nights and mom's nights out, started swapping free babysitting and borrowing equipment, and became a support network, especially for those of us with no local family. These are the women whose blogs are linked to at the right, who I call on when I have kid questions practical or emotional, and who were literally on call for the graveyard shift every night for a week leading up to Eleri's arrival, waiting for the phone call that I was in labor, that they were needed at my house to be with Clio while her parents went to the hospital. Despite having met just two years ago with nothing in common but the month of our babies' births, these are the women who, it sometimes seems, make being a mom in Brooklyn possible.

Today we got together in the park to celebrate two years of parenthood. It was amazing to all of us to see how much our children have changed- last year they were babies, this year they are truly kids. And as kids, they tore the place up. Statia recalled that last year, only Melissa's daughter Eva was walking, and how impressed the rest of us were. Melissa remembers wishing she could sit like the rest of us, rather than running after a new walker. This year, run they did. Up and down the hill, after various balls, pushing strollers. A good time was had by all.



But it was also a little bittersweet: since the perch babies' first birthday party, Rebecca, Anneliese, Cari, and Christine have all moved away, and Stephanie and Melissa are next. At the same time, we have welcomed three new additions to our family, Amanda's son Sam, Eleri, and Millie's son Ibrahim (below, with big sister Zuzu); Statia is due in a month, and Stephanie and Jennifer are both due in October- Jennifer with twins! It is my hope that I will meet and get to know all of these children, and that Clio and Eleri will count all of the "perch babies" as friends for some time to come.