As the Women’s Institute in Britain was once synonymous with home-made jam and baking, mothers’ groups were usually associated with coffee mornings and play dates. But things in the UAE are changing.
There’s now a plethora of resources, meetings, groups and activities that break away from tradition.
There are luxury retreats for mums-to-be with prenatal yoga, antenatal classes and spa treatments. There are Mountain Buggy fitness classes where mums can entertain their children and get a good workout at the same time.
There are also websites that go beyond talking about struggles to hire maids and references to DH (dear/darling husband).
One of the newest is Sassy Mama Dubai (www.sassymamadubai.com), set up by the team behind the very successful Sassy Mama Hong Kong and Singapore.
“There were a lot of sites that gave a voice to one particular person, rather than a platform that pulled together all the sources you were looking for,” says the Sassy Mama Dubai co-founder Kaya Scott, a Briton. “There’s a lot of good bloggers here, but there was nothing that collectively grouped everything together.”
The mother-of-three joined forces with Sofia Berman, of the Sassy Mama Asia sites, to produce local content for a new Dubai version of the brand.
In four months, the site has signed up 8,000 mums.
“As a mother, you’re constantly on the lookout for the most convenient or the most fun things,” says Berman, mother to Adam, 4, and Edward, 3.
“We all struggle to have enough time with our families, so we want to make sure that the time we have we are spending on something that is really worth doing.
“It takes a lot of time to research those things from all the different resources. In Dubai, there are resources, but they’re not collated.”
The Sassy Mama websites in Hong Kong and Singapore have attracted more than 62,000 subscribers and receive more than four million site visits a year.
The team pride themselves on being contemporary, fun and not-at-all preachy, unlike some other parenting websites can appear to be.
“We want it to be inspiring and aspiring, but not at all intimidating. We don’t want it to be exclusive,” Scott says. “We speak to mums – we are not just trying to speak to the Jumeirah Janes. We do our research and we are just as happy to write about a fish shack on the beach as we are about five-star hotels. It’s all about how to get the best out of this city.”
Experiencing Dubai as a single person or childless couple is different, Berman says, to when you have a child.
“As we see it, being ‘sassy’ is not about wearing designer clothes to the playground – being sassy is about wanting to get the most out of your city for your family and rediscovering your city from a new perspective.
“When you have kids, things change, so it’s about helping mums fall back in love with their city and see that there are tons of things for them to do, even if life changes.”
One notable absence from the Sassy Mama Dubai website is a forum, usually a staple of any online community expat group.
“We were nervous that a forum encourages whingeing and complaining,” Scott says. “We definitely encourage people to communicate with us, but we do that via our social-media channels.
“We wanted to get away from that negative whingeing. Certain people are just looking for an outlet to vent and we didn’t want to provide that.”
Berman agrees, saying that the team feel they can help better by sending out newsletters and responding to questions directly.
“A lot of the time, a question from someone who is unsure about something turns into a way for other people to criticise, or to acknowledge their own decision, as opposed to helping somebody else.
“We wanted to get away from the whispers in the playground like ‘What are your kids doing with this?’ or ‘What are your kids doing for a birthday party?’ I feel these chat forums sometimes become a digital chamber for people to continue that whispering.”
Scott, mother to Felix, 4, Arthur, 2, and Violet, 1 – and Berman feel strongly that motherhood doesn’t have to be competitive. Parents don’t need to try to one-up each other by always having the right answer or always having the latest information or material goods.
“Someone once said there’s no sisterhood in motherhood,” Scott says. “We are trying to change that, we are trying to bring all these people together. It doesn’t have to be so competitive, we’re all doing the same thing at the end of the day.”
The website includes sections on shopping, eating, travel, play and learning. There’s also a “Mama” category, with information on books, fitness and beauty. There’s a weekly newsletter and at least two articles going up every day.
Sassy Mama has a team of designers in Hong Kong who create some content specifically for Dubai. There are 18 full-time employees and the site funds itself through advertising and branding tie-ups, company launches or content sharing.
Berman and Scott hope to grow the site in the UAE before expanding across the GCC.
“We’re getting emails all the time from other places in the UAE and other countries in the GCC saying: ‘Any plans to come here?’” Scott says. “We’ll see what happens in the future. At the moment we’re enjoying the Dubai site.”
Pregnancy and motherhood is not the same for any two women, though.
After Joanne Hanson-Halliwell gave birth to her first child, for the first five weeks, coffee mornings and play dates couldn’t have been further from her mind.
The 33-year-old Briton spent more than a month taking care of her son, George, who was born prematurely at in Mediclinic City Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in Dubai.
“You can’t prepare for a child coming early,” says the former banker. “You’re catapulted into this world of the unknown and you don’t how you’re going to handle this tiny baby. When you leave the hospital, that’s the next chapter and you really need that extra support. I found there wasn’t a go-to information hub – you can’t always find the answers.”
George was born in May 2013 at just 30 weeks, weighing 1.9 kilograms (4.2 pounds). While he was relatively large for his age, his body was not designed to survive outside the womb and he spent the next five weeks in intensive care, where medical staff kept him alive and free of infection.
Hanson-Halliwell and her husband Kevan kept a vigil at his incubator and tried to learn as quickly as possible about caring for a premature baby.
“A woman in NICU came up to me and said: ‘Don’t worry, it gets better.’ I’ll never forget it. You’re in a medical world and there’s no one to talk to.”
Tasks that should be fun and easy – such as buying baby clothes – can quickly turn into an ordeal when shopping for a premature baby, Hanson-Halliwell says.
“Of course there are malls that sell everything, but you try to find premature baby clothes – it’s a nightmare. That’s where I want to make it a little bit easier.”
Hanson-Halliwell recently organised her first meetup of mothers of premature babies under the umbrella of her Small and Mighty group (www.smallandmightybabies.com). The plan is to make the meetings a monthly event, helping to educate new mothers and each other on the journey of raising a premature baby. She also has a website with information about where to source premature baby clothes, specialist help and online tools to help parents cope.
“At coffee mornings with people sitting around talking about whatever, the mother of a premature baby wouldn’t necessarily feel welcome,” she says. “I want to create an environment with people who have been through a similar experience. I think there’s certain women who feel isolated; they can’t go onto ExpatWoman and talk about it.
“Pregnant women don’t want to hear about it either. Some of these babies come out with feeding tubes and oxygen. It’s such a specialist thing, it needs to have a specialist focus.”
Victoria Keenan, 31, recently set up Birth Zone (www.birthzone.ae), another group for mothers-to-be that also aims to offer something out of the ordinary.
She moved to Dubai from the United Kingdom, where she had been working as a doula and hypnobirthing specialist.
As well as film nights showing “empowering birth films” and talks by pregnancy and birth specialists, Keenan wants to organise pregnancy retreats.
A recent event in Dubai included question-and-answer sessions with a lactation specialist, a doula and a placenta-encapsulation specialist.
“When people first come to the UAE, it can be quite overwhelming, and unless you know someone who has already had a child, it’s quite hard to find out what’s out there. There are more services than people realise.”
Placenta encapsulation is one of the less-well-known services on offer in the Emirates. It involves drying the placenta after birth and putting it into capsules that are taken with water. Studies suggest that it improves breast-milk production and helps to treat postnatal depression.
“I want to have events that bring new concepts to people. In this social age, we can connect with everything a lot more easily and women are encouraged to become empowered and make their own decisions about birth.
“Birth Zone isn’t just about going to a group and moaning about your husband – this is about intelligent women taking control of their lives.”
In 2015, she plans to organise pregnancy retreats to five-star hotels in the UAE that offer educational talks, antenatal classes, spa treatments, and gifts including a birthing ball and yoga mat.
Keenan, mum to Ofelia, 6, and Aria, 3, says that mums are much more knowledgeable when it comes to their pregnancy than they once were.
“Before it was just get pregnant and go to the hospital and do what everybody else does and don’t question anything. Now, women are encouraged to make their own decisions about their birth – I want to give them the information to do that.”
munderwood@thenational.ae