If you're thinking "To Infinity, and Beyond!" then you're definitely in the wrong place. However if you're looking for more info on the inaugural Memory Maker Bump, Baby and Beyond event, then welcome!
This will be my first attempt at running a baby event so it does feel a little bit of a leap into the unknown. What I do know is that in my personal experience, Jersey felt very disjointed when it came to prenatal self-care (outside of the fantastic hypnobirthing classes I did and would recommend to anyone). There was also no central hub for baby services, groups and any sort of support for new parents when I had my two girls. I'm sure that won't be everyones experience and I've learnt there are a lot of fabulous services and groups out there, but if you want to find them, sometimes you have to look quite hard to find them, especially if you're not on social media.
The Bump, Baby & Beyond event, aims to showcase as many amazing and varied local services, businesses and groups that can help during pregnancy, with young babies and into the toddler years as I can fit into a hall! This should help to create that 'one-stop-shop' for all things pregnancy, baby and toddler!
It may only be March, but I've had a fantastic take up of stalls and also found a huge number of local services and businesses I never knew existed already! Some of the amazing people you can expect to see on the 10th June include:
Positive Birth Jersey
NCT
Baby Steps
Family Nursing and Home Care
Nurturing Touch
Carry in Cloth
The Mum Club
Jersey Association of Child Carers
Kalimukti
Toddler Sensory
Mind Jersey
Tiny Threads
Sign Time
Anna Lezala photography
Jabula
More to be announced... and Memory Maker of course!
To ensure it's fun for the little ones as well, we have The Party Crew who will be providing bouncy castles in a fun area outside.
There will be a pop up cafe and seating area for you to sit and enjoy a cuppa (and give a feed if bub is hungry!). Hosts of the pop up cafe TBC, watch this space!
This event is for the parents of mini-me's and the parents-to-be. It's a showcase of local talent and the friends you never knew you needed until you joined the world of needing a village who just "gets it".
Becoming a parent, or transitioning from one to two, or two to three, brings its own new set of challenges. While something will always get easier as something else gets harder and it's wonderful to be able to share the successes and challenges with others. A problem shared is a problem halved and sometimes all it takes is someone to talk to, or a change of scenery that's not being sat inside staring at the same four walls every day.
While there is a charge to stall holders for being part of the Bump, Baby and Beyond event, it's all for a good cause. All net profit from stall sales will be donated to Philip's Footprints, continuing the work of this fantastic charity in supporting parents through baby loss and making pregnancy safer.
I sincerely hope that you will come down and join us on the day, have some fun, have a chat and meet someone new. We're all in this together so please, make a note in your calendar, follow us on Facebook or Instagram and tell people you know who may be interested and help us to make the Baby, Bump and Beyond event a success we can repeat for the next people who need some help in finding their village and having some fun with their most precious person along the way.