Fevers? Vomiting? Fussiness? How to manage the first night home from the hospital? These are just a few of the hundreds of questions from parents that Atlanta, Georgia–based pediatric nurses Jennifer Walker and Laura Hunter answered well into the night.
Jennifer Walker and Lauren Hunter
It was the mid-1990s, and theirs was the only practice in town that offered on-call nurse responses around the clock. Ms. Hunter and Ms. Walker alternated work-from-home shifts, chatting with many of the practice’s families.
The pair answered the same questions from panicked parents over and over. And they found themselves bridging the gap between medical advice and parenting advice when supporting families.
“Parents were calling us at 2:00 in the morning with all kinds of things they were worried about, and that’s where Moms on Call was born,” Ms. Walker said.
A few decades later, Ms. Walker and Ms. Hunter turned that experience, empathy, and expertise into a thriving business. Moms on Call is often referred to as the “instruction manual for babies,” and the two nurses have consulted with more than 10,000 families. Along the way, they’ve sold more than a million copies of multiple books, created a deep well of online resources, and trained others in their techniques.
So how did they do it?
A Folder, a Swaddle, and a Mission
Ms. Walker and Ms. Hunter literally wrote the book on helping people in the trenches of new parenthood. But it wasn’t quite a book at first. “It was a folder we printed off the computer with those questions coming in,” Ms. Hunter recalled. The nurses developed a way to approach each call with a specific outline of protocols they had designed.
“What if we just go to the [patient’s] house and help them figure that out?” Ms. Walker remembered one of the pediatricians she worked with suggesting in 2002. For example, Ms. Hunter’s swaddle technique that calmed even the fussiest babies worked much better if it was demonstrated in person.
The two embarked on home visits with new parents. But their advice would be practical, not medical. Because they were not classified as traveling nurses, they drew a “definitive line” that they wouldn’t be discussing “major medical issues.”
“Going into the homes here in Atlanta, taking that folder, clipping nails, doing baths, discussing feeding — whether you were doing bottles or breastfeeding — we were going to help parents where they were,” Ms. Hunter said.
The physicians they worked with began recommending their services. Ms. Walker jokes that they didn’t know what they were doing at first; they considered giving their first client their money back. But parents needed what they were delivering, which was advice, validation, and confidence in their parenting.
Just 6-8 weeks into their initiative, other practices started to inquire about whether the nurses could do the same thing for them.
It was a solution to the problem of the 15-minute office visit. “We were helping with those questions so that when [babies] came in for their well visits, those questions were already answered. Not only did we go into their homes, but we supported them in the months after we left,” Ms. Hunter said.