The main goal of our project was to create a knowledge base, a knowledge cloud, that new mothers (and their supporting family members, helpers, and organizations) can turn to at any time. In which they can meet all the important issues that concern mothers in the nine months after giving birth, and where experts talk in a way that is easy for new (and often sleep-deprived) mothers to understand, accept, and process. Our goal was to create a platform where we talk directly about what is really important for new mothers, where there is no judgment and where we do not increase the already high expectations for them. This is how the definition of the project was formulated, according to us: The Second Nine (Months) is a collaboration that provides support to mothers in the ups and downs of the postpartum period. It supports mothers in • daring to listen to their own inner instincts, • daring to believe that they are competent in their own motherhood, • becoming a good enough mother.
We started the application because we came across an important gap to fill based on our personal and professional experiences, to which an adult education project could provide a very good answer. We saw that while we pay a lot of attention for the babies during the period after birth, and we have more and more knowledge about what happens to them during this period, mothers receive much less attention. There is very little focus on them, and our knowledge about what happens in mothers' lives at this time is incomplete and fragmented. However, this period largely determines the later life of both mothers and families, and there is a great need for a curriculum that deals with this period, the second nine months, from the mothers' perspective. Submitting the application was also a big step for our association, because we had not yet participated in a project of this size, neither as a partner nor as a coordinator. For the partner organizations, the project represented a special challenge from a professional perspective, a good opportunity to work together with other organizations and to showcase themselves in a new format, the podcast.