Tanner and Ethan Heinberg, shown with their parents, are now busy playing with toddlers in their age group.

Born just 25 1/2 weeks into her first pregnancy, Karen Heinberg's twins weighed 2 pounds, 1 ounce and 1 pound, 15 ounces - prime target weights for Healthy Start Program services.  Karen and her husband, Jae, were delighted when a hospital social worker told them about the at-home services. "We're fortunate to have a strong support system. But at that point we wanted all the help we could get," said Karen Heinberg, because Tanner and Ethan arrived with an array of concerns: double the normal worries of new parents, complex feeding schedules, apnea alarms, oxygen level monitors and more.

While friends and family were indispensable, Healthy Start community health nurse Myrta Guinta arrived with professional advice and peace of mind.  "She made sure I was reading the monitors right, observed our setup and watched how we did things.  So she was able to make suggestions very specific to our needs," said Heinberg, who now serves on the Coalition's Advocacy Committee.

Heinberg said she's surprised more families don't use Healthy Start Program services, "I think some of them think, 'If I see a problem on my own, then I will call for help,' versus taking advantage of help right up front.  I know I felt more secure having someone trained to spot things before anything might go wrong."

When Tiffini Taylor died of cancer shortly after giving birth to a pair of twin boys last year, she asked her mother to keep them and her other children together.  So the daunting task of caring for seven children, plus her own son fell to grandmother Judy Marcelus. “But Healthy Start nurse Bertha Jean-Mary and social worker Brenda Williams had been closely involved with the babies' before the twins were born.  The team now visits Marcelus' home regularly to weigh and observe robust 8-month-old Donnell (20 pounds) and Darnell (16 pounds), drive the threesome to doctors' appointments, help connect the busy family to other needed services and coach Marcelus when things get overwhelming.  Often they simply lend a sympathetic ear.

"Sometimes they can see that something is wrong or that I'm troubled about something, and they listen and talk with me.  It helps a lot," says Marcelus.  "I like everything they've done for me."

Giving Back
Ivelisse Colon has a bachelor's degree in social work and worked in the field in her native Puerto Rico, but when she arrived in Tampa in 1995, pregnant, with no family and few resources, she need help herself.  Healthy Start began by helping her with the barest essentials: food, clothing for her and her baby, applying for food stamps.

"I learned a lot of things I didn't know about how to prepare myself, how to be a mother so that I was ready." she said.

Later, after her healthy 7-pound, 7-ounce daughter, Elyvelisse Castro, was born, that help extended to expert guidance on infant care, such as how to handle a crying baby and what to do when the baby was sick.  Now, pregnant with her second child, Colon looks forward to motherhood with confidence.

And this time, Healthy Start plays a different role: Thanks to constant support and encouragement she received as a client, Colon now puts her education and experience to work helping other women as a social worker for Healthy Start at the University Clinic: "I use myself as an example and tell them, 'If I can do it, you can do it.'"

"I was really down," said Thelma Mix of her early days in Tampa, when she knew no one and her family was far away in her native Philippines.  When her husband left (with the family car) two weeks after baby Anita Helterbran was born, things got even worse.  But thanks to the relationship she had developed with Healthy Start, help was already on the way with baby needs, food and other resources.

Most important for Mix was the path toward independence.

"I didn't want to depend on government aid," said Mix.  So caseworker Marilyn Brice brought the new mother a job application and helped her find affordable and convenient daycare for Anita and her son, Kristoffer Catulang, who was a toddler at the time.

Soon Mix had moved out of the home of a compassionate friend and into her own place; her friend's family helped her purchase a car (with a car seat provided by Brice); and Mix was starting her new job at the WIC and Nutrition Program Department of Health/North Hillsborough Clinic.  Seven-year-old Anita is now an eager student in the gifted program the first grade.