Joy Reid understands the emotional strain mothers face when spending long weeks or even months in a hospital room with their babies.
The anxiety and uncertainty that come with such an experience can take a heavy toll, transforming what should be a joyful time into a challenging ordeal filled with worry.
Reid, a former TVNZ Europe correspondent, said the “significance of human connection” became a fundamental principle of her co-founded charity, One Mother to Another, which provides care packages to mothers with babies who are in hospital, alongside a handwritten note of support.
Reid said the handwritten notes conveyed a human connection, which can be hard to express through a package.
“People don’t get handwritten cards like they used to, and we’ve found that it’s a really great way for our care packages to have quite an emotional meaning,” Reid said.
“It’s sometimes just the words they need to be able to survive that day.”
Reid said the idea for the charity started when a friend’s 18-month-old spent time in the hospital.
“She found it really difficult, so she decided to make a couple of care packages,” Reid said.
“She just said, ‘Look, give these to other parents who are having a really tough day in the hospital’.
“When she told me what she’d done, I immediately took myself back to the experiences I’d had in hospital, and the trauma and isolation that I felt with my firstborn, who spent his first week of life in the neonatal intensive care unit.
“It would have made a big difference if I’d received a care package with a handwritten note of support, knowing that I wasn’t alone.”
All three of Reid’s children have spent significant time in hospital, which she said is “definitely the motivation for this kaupapa”.
Reid said the charity was on track to deliver approximately 8000 care packages to 20 hospital wards across the South Island.
It also partnered with Perinatal Wellbeing Canterbury, which offers mental health services, as well as with Nurse Maude, to support parents of terminally ill children.
But Reid said the services One Mother to Another provided wouldn’t be possible without work from more than 120 volunteers and six part-time workers, who were mothers of children who had been hospitalised.
“We’ve got note writers, care packers, crochet writers, a board of trustees, and people come and deliver our care packages,” Reid said.
Volunteers meet for monthly “packing nights” to put together care packages.
“Our volunteers are the absolute lifeblood of One Mother to Another – we couldn’t do it without them,” Reid said.
“At our packing days, we just see this beautiful connection happening between people who’ve received our care packages and nurses who give out our care packages.”
Reid said the moment she realised the impact of the packages was when she was in the neonatal unit with her youngest daughter.
“I watched our care package get given out, and I saw the impact that they had,” she said.
“[A woman] was alone, it was during Covid times, and she wasn’t from Christchurch.
“I saw the difference that the care package made to her. I saw her break down, sobbing as she read the note and her talking to a nurse about how it meant so much to her to know she wasn’t alone.”
“Human connection is just so desperately needed in that space,” Reid added.
“You can be in a room full of people, tubes, babies, machines, nurses, and feel so isolated and alone,
“Yet our care package can convey a sense of care in that space, and that moment has been a driver for our expansion.”
She said the care packages not only supported hospitals, but that many volunteers benefited from their work with the charity.
“One of the ladies who’s writing our notes for us came to a packing day, and said that she had been in hospital with her child about 10 years ago,” Reid said.
“She said in that moment, it was like 10 years’ worth of trauma that she’d held bottled up came out, and she realised that it gave her a space to grieve.
“I don’t think you ever forget, as a parent, that feeling of powerlessness at your child’s hospital bedside.”
Reid said the charity had also helped support her through her own grief journey.
“There has been so much healing that has happened because I’m now able to give back to other people who have sat in the chair that I sat in.”
“I would like every parent of a child in every South Island hospital to receive One Mother to Another support if they need it.”