Communal baby shower in Pilsen offers wealth of resources to parents

Friends and expectant mothers, Yuri Cardenas and Yesenia Cruz might have held a baby shower together, only they did something different by having one with a whole room full of expectant and recent parents.

The pair came from the South Side for a communal baby shower held at the Pilsen offices of El Valor, a community organization that has hosted communal showers regularly for the past few years.

The communal showers, like any other, are a chance for soon-to-be parents to celebrate and receive baby essentials, such as diapers and clothes.

But for many, it was just as much about learning about resources for long-term help.

Cruz, seven months pregnant, heard about the shower from Cardenas (six months) — and, despite having one child already, the 37-year-old wanted more help this time around.

“I wish I could have participated in this,” she said. “I had postpartum depression and no one to help me with that. But they have a lot of people here for that.”

Rosa Moreno, director of the Pilsen site, said that’s what these events are for. 

The organization began hosting the showers after the death of Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, an expectant mother from Little Village lured to her death in 2019 by someone promising her baby clothes. 

“We need to do something for our families so they don’t run into this,” Moreno remembers one her bosses saying then.

The organization now hosts free showers every quarter at each of their four sites for new or expecting mothers. Wednesday’s shower at the 19th Street and Damen Avenue location follows one in Little Village. There’s another planned for Thursday morning in South Chicago and one on Friday in Cicero. Call Ixchel Velez at (312) 997-2021 to register and find out more.

In goody bags stuffed with onesies and pastel-colored packing paper and concentric circles of diapers stacked in the shape of cakes, there was no trace of the tragic nature of the event’s origin. In a room filled with two dozen parents, the sound the guest speakers, and of parents telling stories, was broken only by the babbling of babies. 

The presentations, in Spanish, included presentations by a midwife from Alivio Medical Center; Fussy Baby Network, a bilingual telephone service where parents can find help; and a Lurie Children’s Hospital representative talking about car seat safety.

“Who knows what a midwife does? the midwife asked the group.

“Somebody knows,” she said, spotting Lizzet Gonzalez — a client, as it turned out.

Gonzalez smiled. “Well, during the birth, they give you massages so it doesn’t hurt and encourage you because it can be really hard to get through,” she said.

The 26-year-old was speaking from experience, having brought her Ismael, her baby boy, born January 3 with the midwife’s help.

There were additional talks on Valor childcare programs, then a raffle. Gonzalez, from Back of the Yards, won a carseat.

Ismael is her third child, but Gonzalez said the items were still helpful. More than anything else, though, she had just wanted to hear what other programs were out there.

“There’s always more to learn,” she said.

Michael Loria is a staff reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South Side and West Side.