CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- As a Chicago woman is getting ready to celebrate her first Mother's Day with her daughter, she's thankful to a program that helped her get through the first couple of days of motherhood.
Typically, the at-home visit with a nurse through Family Connects is three to five weeks after mothers give birth, but Sharon Hayes couldn't wait.
Delivery complications including preeclampsia and kidney enzymes issues meant she spent a week Rush University Medical Center.
The day after she took her daughter Jillian home last June, Hayes was in a panic. She called the number for Family Connects and had a nurse at her Washington Park home the next day.
The nurse helped her with scheduling doctors visits and postpartum counseling all while giving her advice and comforting her, she said.
Hayes even received assistance with breastfeeding. "We just basically practiced what we had done at the hospital, but it was like being in the hospital all over again."
She calls the free program amazing and is grateful "Just to have the nurse feel (her) pain and show compassion over the phone and be there so quickly."
It's available through a partnership with the Chicago Public Health Department at Rush, Humboldt Park Health, Mount Sinai and University of Chicago Medicine.
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