North Liberty ‘womb literacy’ initiative will help expecting parents

NORTH LIBERTY - A new ‘womb literacy' program at the North Liberty Community Library is aiming to help expecting parents incorporate reading into daily routines even before bringing a baby home from the hospital.

'As a new parent, it's difficult to carry on your normal routine, even getting a shower in every day,” said assistant library director Jennifer Jordebrek. 'So starting something new, like reading to your child, is more difficult to do if you haven't already been doing that.”

As a mother of three, Jordebrek said she developed the library's womb literacy initiative after recalling her struggle to find time to read out loud to her three sons when the boys were infants.

She said parents often receive children's books through literacy programs once babies are born, but adding reading every day to the usual routine isn't easy.

'I just kept thinking, as a parent, if I had known about this before my children were born, if I could have started the daily habit of reading while they were still in the womb, I would've had a much greater chance at continuing that after they were born,” Jordebrek said.

The initiative will include two programs.

The first, Stork Story Time, is a nine month program featuring guest speakers who will touch on six early literacy skills and teach parents how children develop those skills though talking, listening, and singing. Jordebrek said each hour long session also will connect parents with library resources, help parents get into the habit of coming to the library, and allow soon-to-be parents to meet others going through the same experience.

'That's when they can start meeting other parents and doing that bonding and network building,” she said.

The second program, Read to the Bump, will encourage families to develop their own reading routine distribute books to mothers around the start of the third trimester, which is around the time when babies develop the ability to hear. Jordebrek said this will promote bonding and also help families build a personal library.

Read to the Bump is dependent on funding, but Jordebrek hopes to kick off that initiative in 2016.

'Our community is a young community, we are growing,” she said. 'Every day in the library we see babies, and newborns, and expecting moms. We think this will be a wonderful program for them.”

The library plans to host a baby fair in August to kick off the initiative. More information is available on the library's calendar of events.