Health District program puts moms, babies on right track

By Aida Ahmed

Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2011 | 1:55 a.m.

With limited resources, no high-school diploma and her first baby on the way, 25-year-old Tiffany Schoeb had no idea what she was doing. She was scared and unsure of how she would be as a mother.

“I didn’t know a lot of things. I was really nervous about when she’d cry or things that were wrong with her,” Schoeb said of her daughter.

That was until she found the Southern Nevada Health District nurse-family program, she said. Schoeb enrolled in the free program when she found out she was pregnant with her daughter, Carolina, who is now almost 2 years old. The now 27-year-old graduated from the program Tuesday with a new lease on motherhood.

“They taught me how to take care of her, be a better mom. Just things I didn’t know that I could learn,” she said.

Schoeb said she learned how to take care of her diabetes and how to understand her daughter’s needs. With her nurse’s assistance, she went back to school to get her GED and plans to become a nurse.

Thirty other first-time mothers who graduated from the program share the same experience. Accompanied by dozens of 2-year-olds, mothers accepted their diplomas and shared how the program helped them to be better moms.

The program, in its third year, helps low-income, first-time mothers in the valley learn how to care for their newborns and themselves. Registered nurses start counseling mothers who are 28 weeks or less pregnant in a weekly home visitation program. The program ends when the child turns 2.

“Our goal and our hopes are that they achieve their dreams,” said community health registered nurse Patricia Montalvo. “We don’t want them caught in the cycle of poverty and dropping out of school and continue to have unplanned pregnancies.”

The program helps mothers find out how to get insurance, government assistance and further their education.

Bonnie Sorenson, SNHD director of nursing and clinical services, said the program was in trial for a couple years before Southern Nevada implemented it.

“We now have the data that show us that when you work this intensively with families, you can start to make a difference in their lives,” Sorenson said. “You don’t just start at kindergarten. It’s the product coming into kindergarten; it’s those first three years of life where brain growth and development is so intense that you have to really be intervening in a child’s life.”

“Ninety-three percent of our babies are healthy, full term,” she said. “In a community where we maybe have 30 percent of women who get late to no prenatal care it’s nothing short of a major accomplishment.”

The program, funded by county taxes, has a waiting list of 76 mothers and will continue next year.