Local Business Profile: Mamas and babies find love at new ‘green’ studio

By Jack Clifford

Stephanie Brandt has an entrepreneurial mind but her spirit is socially and environmentally conscious.

Mama & Baby Love in Manor@Midtown is the Tallahassean’s venture that she hopes will bring parents and their children – especially mothers and their babies – closer together, and create a better world for people now and for when those children grow up.

“The reason that I’m in business is because I really believe that the way we birth babies and the way that we raise our babies deeply affects the happiness of both mother and child, the happiness of the family,” Brandt says. “A lot of women and midwives say that world peace begins at birth, and I firmly believe that.”

Newly opened in September after Brandt worked out of her home for over a year, Mama & Baby Love is an eclectic business with a goal to teach about birth from four perspectives: mother, father, baby, and culture. Brandt offers support for mothers through birthing classes, postpartum workouts for mothers and babies, and prenatal belly dance, among other services.

In addition, she teaches yoga classes for moms, dads, teens, adolescents, and even babies. Adult dance and hip-hop classes also dot her schedule, keeping the 24-year-old busy from the time she is “up at dawn, until bedtime at 11 p.m. every day.”

But, she adds, the business “couldn’t be more fulfilling, and it is very self-affirming. Absolutely this is what I am supposed to be doing.”

The Florida State graduate and Reiki master helped put herself through school by working as a massage therapist and yoga teacher. In her opinion, she didn’t immediately put her environmental science degree to best use. She found herself disillusioned after a year working for an environmental firm that cleaned up sites such as gas stations and dry cleaners.

“I have compassion for people and compassion for the earth; I want to heal people and heal the earth,” says Brandt, who is originally from Homestead, Fla., where she grew up on an avocado farm.

When she decided to take her part-time work and make it her full-time focus, she had the right background to open a “green business.” The floors in her 2,000-square-foot studio are bamboo, the paint on the wall is milk-based, and all of the clothing and toys she sells are organic. Her customers can take comfort in knowing that what she sells in her store reflect her own desire to stay environmentally aware.

“Our dollar is what makes the best statement about making better choices, for our families and for the environment, as well,” she says.

Now with a mailing list of around 400 people, the studio also gives Brandt and her patrons the space they need to relax, meditate, and naturally bond with their children, including the Itsy-Bitsy yoga classes. While babies doing yoga might seem like an unusual idea, Brandt says that original yogis very well could have learned their art from watching how babies act when they are first becoming mobile.

“Those classes are a way to increase the bond between mother or caregiver and child,” Brandt says, adding that moms help the younger babies by moving their arms and legs into yoga poses. “The babies gets the same benefits that you and I would in taking a yoga class. A lot of babies naturally do yoga; they’ll squat and do down-dog when they are learning how stand up and walk. “It helps with their self-esteem: a one-year-old who can do down dog feels such self-confidence and a sense of accomplishment, so it’s amazing for them.”

While Brandt is single – but planning on a 2007 wedding – and has no children of her own, she is a nanny to 14-month-old Ava, and will soon take on the same responsibility with Ava’s younger sister. Her consideration for mothers and children is evident when talking with Brandt, and she says her desire is to channel that concern into bringing about healthy changes in the way our medical community views the birthing process.

“I want there to be better care for women and more compassion toward how sacred and meaningful childbirth is,” says Brandt, who is also a birth doula, someone who provides emotional and physical support to a laboring woman and her partner. “It’s such a medical event, yet for thousands and thousands of years women have been squatting in the forest having babies. I’m trying to get women to return to trusting their bodies – I want women to wake up and stop being indifferent. I want them to find out what is the best choice, health-wise and emotionally, for them and their baby.”

But Brandt also wants this business to work for her future, and she plans to franchise her idea of doulas working in teams, a concept that she says has not been done.

“My intention is for every woman to have a doula by their side.”

She is still learning the business side of Mama & Baby Love, and Brandt relies on her membership in the Independent Business and Community Alliance organization to help “get the word out” on what she offers to the community. “I won’t be super wealthy doing this,” she says. “But my intention is to create change, and make things better for mothers and women, and their families.”