The Coleman Center for Families and Children in Petal is offering pregnant women another resource in the form of free pregnancy calendars.
Subtitled “Your 40-Week Guide to Prenatal Care and Fetal Development,” the calendars can be picked up at the center at 201 West Central Ave. during normal business hours. The calendars, which are primarily distributed by www.thepregnancycalendar.com, give tips and prenatal care information, as well as space for expectant mothers to record their pregnancy experience.
“I had a similar one when I was pregnant with each of our children, and it’s just a really fun way to keep up with all the special little things that happen throughout your pregnancy,” said Dede Smith, director of the Coleman Center for Families and Children. “So you can share that with your child as they get older, and it’s special memories.
The calendar starts with weeks one through four, with spaces to fill in dates and occurrences throughout. Tips are offered each week during the course of pregnancy.
“You can put the mother’s weight in at the beginning, and kind of track it as you go, and see how much the baby’s growing,” Smith said. “It also has specific tips for things like morning sickness – just the different little challenges that sometimes come along during pregnancy.
“There’s a huge page of stickers that comes with the calendar, so the momma and the daddy can have fun with all those different little milestones like ‘shopped for baby today,’ ‘set up nursery,’ and just different special little things that have happened along the way.”
The calendar also gives advice on topics like vitamins, food cravings, heartburn and other issues during pregnancy.
“It’s a great resource that’s free for individuals,” Smith said. “We do want them to come by and check out the center and the other things we have available.
“We’re going to make sure we offer our Parents as Teachers program to individuals to pick these up. It’s just really neat, and it becomes a keepsake that you can look back at when your child gets older … and notice all the special things that happened all throughout the mom’s pregnancy.”
Smith got the idea to bring the calendars to the center after seeing them at a Zero To Three conference she attended in New Orleans with Mary Cirino, coordinator of the center’s Parents as Teachers program. After receiving help with funding from the Mississippi Department of Health and the Early Childhood Academy at Pearl River Community College, she was able to get a number of calendars to give out.
“It was on display, and they gave us one to keep,” Smith said. “So I had checked into the cost and wanted to purchase these, but didn’t have the funding.
So when we received the funding from the Early Childhood Academy, this was one of the things I said I wanted to add to have available for our families.”
In the near future, the Coleman Center for Families and Children also will offer Baby’s First Year Calendar, which is similar to the Pregnancy Calendar but is meant for mothers who have just given birth.
“It’s a fun thing, but it also is a great educational tool, because it’s got all of these little tips all throughout the calendar,” Smith said. “It’s just a good learning tool.”
