From left, health visitors Fiona Gray, Suzanne Betts and Sam Lyddon, with three babies from their post natal group Baby Talk. DA5649P3THERE have been times in the last seven weeks when health visitors Suzanne Betts, Fiona Gray and Sam Lyddon have been left holding the baby.

The trio have been running Baby Talk, a post natal course giving new mums the chance to get out of the house with baby, make new friends, share experiences with others and gen up on subjects like childcare provision, sleeping routines, accident prevention, childhood illnesses and weaning.

"It covers relevant subjects for the first six months or so," explains Fiona, who is based at Grove House Surgery.

Suzanne and Sam are based at Castle Street Surgery and Bemerton Heath Surgery respectively, but Baby Talk is open to anyone, not just patients at these surgeries.

The idea was initiated, says Fiona, by mums themselves.

"We meet mums when they come to clinic in the first six weeks for development checks but eight months later, they'd say to us they wished someone had talked to them about dealing with crying babies or sleep deprivation," she explains.

"So we developed this programme and we'll evaluate the feedback from it."

Suzanne says that it's been a mix of discussions, videos and outside speakers. "We've also looked at personal issues like dealing with motherhood, isolation, coping with crying and dealing with depression," she says.

"The main aim is to provide an environment where mum can get out of the house, make friends and talk about issues that are close to their hearts."

The first course, which was held upstairs in the Elim Church in Dews Road, off Fisherton Street, for an hour and a half each Thursday, concluded last week and there were cakes and cups of tea by way of celebration.

More importantly, the response was positive and several have plans to meet up in days to come.

For Australian Mishell Currie with four-month-old Max, isolation could have been a problem with her own family down under and her husband's family in Manchester.

"The social network has been great," she says.

Nepalese Sabi Gaire agrees that the group has helped at what might have been a lonely time, but also found sharing knowledge was invaluable when three-month-old Ishwor was colicky.

Hailey Edmonds says she hopes to stay in contact with some of the other mums and Jo Kear says she found the course a good mix of meeting other mums and getting information.

The next course of Baby Talk starts on July 1st.

Information is available from the surgeries or from Suzanne Betts on 01722 413390.