Charity lifts baby blues
JULIE-ANNE McBride and her friends could talk for hours about how tough it’s been adjusting to their relatively new lives as mothers.
Instead, they’re throwing that energy at helping those mums doing it even tougher.
“Being a parent is one of the hardest things you can do but there are so many mums doing it so much harder than us,” says Julie-Anne, one of five women who have founded Baby Give Back, which collects and rehomes items for Gold Coast mums in need.
“Looking around, we started to realise how privileged we are to be able to just buy our babies nappies and wipes when there are mums having to decide if they should spend their money on formula or nappies.”
Since launching less than six months ago, Baby Give Back has racked up a set of numbers that reflect their claim they’ve been “run off our feet from day one”.
Thus far, they’ve provided families with more than 4200 pieces of clothing, 3000 nappies, 850 items such as baby wipes, toys and books, and about 30 large items like cots and car seats.
Numbers can only tell part of the tale though.
“There was a mum having a high-risk pregnancy and because she couldn’t afford car parking fees, she was walking an hour to the hospital twice a week with two toddlers and a baby,” Julie-Anne says. “We were able to give her a double pram and were told she was in tears. One story like that makes what we’re doing worth it.”
With Baby Give Back’s focus on collection and quality control of items, it relies on the expertise of agencies such as Gold Coast Pregnancy and Family Support Agency to identify families in need.
“Our advice for donating items is to not give us anything you wouldn’t give your best friend,” Julie-Anne says.
“If people just throw an extra pack of $2 wipes or $7 onesie in their trolley, it also makes a huge difference.”
The group has a 50-strong army of volunteers, including “washing angels” who launder second-hand clothes, grannies who knit new items and a men’s shed that runs its eyes over donated cots and prams.
“We’re now raising money to secure and fitout a warehouse as we need to expand our space as this has grown so much quicker than we anticipated,” Julie-Anne says.