Musings from Mat Leave: How Starting a Facebook Group Changed My Life

For most women, maternity leave is a full time job away from their full time job. For three, six, nine, 12 or even 18 months, goals switch from getting that long overdue promotion to getting more than 3 hours of consecutive sleep. Business meetings are traded in for 3am feedings, and happy hour becomes the witching hour. I assumed my own maternity leave would be no different. Boy, was I wrong. 

My son was born a month early in the wrong city. I went in to labour the day after our baby shower in Toronto and was hospitalized with nothing but an expired health card, my cell phone, and my shocked husband in tow. Two hours later, our baby was born and my leave had officially begun. After a few intense weeks of very little sleep and a mad scramble to make our way back to Ottawa with a newborn, I began to wonder what the next 11 months had in store for me. It was then that I realized I had a problem - I had no mom friends. 

I left behind a vibrant social life in my hometown of Victoria, BC, when my husband and I moved to Ottawa three years ago. Since then and despite being an extreme extrovert, I hadn’t made many friends. If it wasn’t for my rewarding career at Shopify, I probably would have driven my husband even crazier. However, now that I didn’t have my co-workers to gab to five days a week, I was stuck. 

With no one to commiserate with about the highs and lows of first time motherhood, I felt a void forming that only another mama could fill. So, what’s a lonely, sleep deprived, over caffeinated woman to do? Take to the internet, of course! I joined a couple of “mom groups” on Facebook with high hopes of finding my new BFF, but what I found was, for lack of a better word, bleak. 

Instead of acting as hub for moms to meet in person, the groups I did join seemed were more of a forum for the world's most stressful Q&A. “Why is my three week old spitting up so much?” “Help! My 10 week old is waking up 47 times a night!” “Can you guys look at this pic? Does this poo look normal?” While having a place to go to ask TMI questions was helpful, it wasn't what I was after. So, I decided to take matters in to my own hands.

Armed with a funny family photo and accompanying caption, I whipped up a post in the largest group calling for "dope mom friends who want to GTFO of the house" or something to that effect and held my breath. It was then that Dope Moms of Ottawa was born.

The funny thing about moms is that they talk. Once word got out that someone was taking the initiative to actually plan in person meet ups and people were actually showing up, there was no stopping it. My Little Mom Group That Could exploded.

Fast forward three months and much has changed since that first post. At the time of writing this article, Dope Moms of Ottawa is 1300 - yes, 1300 - members strong. I have planned and executed six meet ups, all which have had more than 50 attendees a piece with three more planned in the next six weeks. Our Instagram page is less than a month old and already has +1k followers, and we just launched our website. I've have negotiated exclusive discounts for our members at over 20 different small baby related businesses with many more in the pipeline (can you tell I'm in sales?). Oh, and our our upcoming Halloween party might as well have been a Beyonce concert because it sold out in 30 minutes.

This group has become my full time job and my second child. It has had a transformative effect on my life and the lives of hundreds of other women who, prior to its creation, felt exactly the same as I did. I am deeply humbled when I meet a mama who has made it to a meet up with a newborn, or who has made her new best friend because she chose to do the hard thing and get out of house even though her baby was screaming.

Dope Moms is not your Mom's mom group, it's a community. A community of funny, brave, generous, intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate women who inspire me every day to keep breaking new ground and finding ways to surprise and delight our members. I never pegged myself as a leader, but somehow I have been given an incredibly special and unique opportunity to have a significant impact on the lives of some very important people: moms.

So, is this article about maternity leave really appropriate for a professional networking platform like LinkedIn? I think so, because being a mother is the most difficult profession there is. The pay is terrible, the hours are long, and you almost never get to enjoy a hot cup of coffee. But, it's a little easier if you have another mom to share the journey with. Luckily for me, now I have thousands of them.