Heartland Women

By Chanda Green

Editor/Publisher

Mom’s Milk Boutique is one of the newest businesses in West Frankfort, having opened its doors in August. It’s a breastfeeding and natural parenting resource boutique, as described by one of its two owners, Abbie VanderMeulen.

“After my sister and I each went through two pregnancies and saw the lack of services locally for pre-and post-natal women, we decided to bring the first natural parenting store to Southern Illinois,” Abbie said. “We’re in this to educate and to give parents a resource so they don’t have to drive to St. Louis for these products. We’re helping make this community strong and supporting parents in their decisions to breastfeed and to take care of their babies naturally.”

Abbie and her sister, Bonnie Parkhill, are the owners and sisters, both equally passionate about the rights of mothers to chose to breastfeed and keep only natural fabrics next to their babies’ skins.

Bonnie and her husband, Josh, have two children, Faith and Ilana. I met Ilana at the shop just before Halloween. She’s a little chatterbox, filling me in on the costume she was going to wear – a princess – and a field trip her school class was going on the next day – to a pumpkin patch.

Abbie and Bonnie are two of four sisters and one brother in the family. All of them worked together to open Mom’s Milk Boutique.

Dad – who owns the Walton Service building that houses the boutique – donated the room. Ethan, 18, helped with the ceiling. Cacie and Dominie Walton helped get the space ready, furnished, decorated and stocked. Bonnie runs the store, but Abbie – who lives in Arizona with her husband, Seth, and children, Graeme and Heidi – stays on top of things via frequent calls and e-mails.

The idea was born in September 2006 after Abbie asked Bonnie to move to Michigan for a short while to be a nanny to her two children.

“I was up there four months,” Bonnie said. “It was a real bonding time for Abbie and me. We had lots of time to talk about lots of things including our children and our experiences as mothers.”

There was a store nearby that sold cloth diapers. Both Bonnie and Abbie had decided to try them before they had their last children.

“That’s why we carry cloth diapers – or as we call them, real diapers – and encourage every mother and mother-to-be to at least consider using them,” Abbie said. “I mean, would you like to wear plastic underwear? We don’t think babies would vote for them either. We have a variety of name brands to make every baby smile. These diapers fasten with Velcro or snaps and are made with fluffy, soft material, a far cry from the pins and stiff plastic covers of decades ago.”

And cloth diapering saves money.

“On average, a child is in diapers for about three years,” Abbie said. “If you buy disposable diapers it will cost you about $3,000 to buy disposable diapers for those three years. If you buy cloth diapers, you’ll spend about $400 and you can more than likely reuse those diapers on child #2.

“And think of all the diapers you aren't throwing into a landfill,” she said. “It is estimated that in the US about 27 million disposable diapers are consumed every year. That's a lot of poop sitting in plastic bags, and just really gross.”

Both Bonnie and Abbie breastfed both of their children.

“There wasn’t much support for that choice here in West Frankfort,” Bonnie said. “That’s one of the big reasons we wanted to open this store, to promote natural parenting. We’ve gone to classes and been in touch with the La Leche League, (a non-profit organization whose mission is to help mothers worldwide to breastfeed through mother-to-mother support and education). We want to let women know that it’s OK – that it’s more than OK, it’s wonderful for mother and baby – to breastfeed. And we want them to know that there is support out there for that decision.”

Abbie goes one step farther in her support.

“Beyond just being natural, breastfeeding is truly unparalleled in terms of nutrition and mother/child bonding,” she said. “But in the US it is still very closeted. … But we are changing that, helped by celebrities such as Jennifer Garner, Gwen Stefani, Maggie Gyenhaal, Faith Hill, Sarah Jessica Parker and countless famous faces who are pushing it into the mainstream and helping to normalize it.

“There are so many great advocacy groups who have been working for years to establish ‘breastfeeding culture’ in the US, but we aren't there yet,” she said. “States are finally taking note of the health benefits and passing laws protecting nursing moms' right to feed their children uninterrupted in public.”

I told you they were passionate.

So, when Bonnie returned from helping Abbie in Michigan, they continued their conversation about providing some local support for breastfeeding mothers.

“Dad had this huge building with a space in the back we could use,” Bonnie said. “Abbie came back to West Frankfort in July and stayed three weeks. That’s when the whole family worked together to cleaned out all the junk and get the space ready to open in August.

Sister Dominie added the artwork on the walls – clouds and a stork and flowers – and Ilana, Bonnie’s youngest daughter, adds her talent to the ever-changing artwork on the chalkboard near the front door.

"All of us working together as siblings again was great," Abbie said. “It was a lot of work. At the time we were still putting together the vision for the shop and I was working on buying inventory. I had my two little ones and we were away from home and my husband. It was really stressful. But it was great to be home with my family in my old room for a month and exciting to see our idea become reality.”

Mom’s Milk Boutique carries a variety of maternity and nursing supplies, including belly bands, nursing bras, nursing sports bras and tanks – all in extended sizes – maternity belts, nursing covers, baby carriers and, of course, cloth diapers.

They also carry Charlie’s soap, a natural laundry soap; Eucalan wool wash, great I’m told to wash any woolens; Babylegs, leg warmers for babies; Wahmies, cloth diaper bags for the storage of dirty diapers; and Snappis, the new way to fasten traditional cloth diapers without pins.

“Lots of what is in our store makes great shower gifts and we have a gift registry online,” Abbie said. “I believe that mothers in Southern Illinois deserve to have the same level of high quality natural parenting resources available to them that they would have in a metropolitan area, and Mom's Milk Boutique is determined to provide that to them. That being said, that doesn't mean we just carry a bunch of high-priced boutique items. We have tried to stay priced very competitively with items to fit every budget.

“And I’ll offer your readers a special, too,” she said. “If they come into the store and mention this article, they can have a pair of Babylegs for half-price through the month of November.”

Mom’s Milk Boutique is located at 601 S. Emma St. in West Frankfort, in the same big, white building as Walton’s Service, but with its own entrance on the north side and its own sign. It’s open from 1 to 6 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays or by appointment. For more information, call 932-3700, send an e-mail to info@momsmilkboutique.com, or log onto momsmilkboutique.com.

For more information on breastfeeding, log onto unicef.org/ffl/ or unicef.org/nutrition/index_breastfeeding.html.