About & Contact

We love working with families who are expecting babies or have babies or kids AND we love working with each other!

Jeanette Mesite Frem, MHS, IBCLC, RLC, CCE

International Board Certified Lactation Consultant & Registered Lactation Consultant
Certified Childbirth Educator
Owner & Director of Babies in Common

Jeanette has been fascinated by community-building and women's health since high school and college. During her college years she studied international development and health, worked in the field of international health (part-time) and served as a college health educator (focusing mostly on safer sex!). When she was 21, she moved to a village in West Africa to serve for two years as a Health Volunteer with the Peace Corps. That meant that she lived in a village and worked daily with a midwife and nurse, primarily doing child weight monitoring programs, health education, vaccination programs, specific campaigns for emerging diseases and working with malnourished children. She was inspired by the moms she worked with there and was honored to witness several births (and all the babies breastfeeding!) while there.

By the time she was married and pregnant, she had completed a masters degree in international public health and nutrition at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and worked for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health managing some of their perinatal community health programs. She thought she was informed and educated and would easily find a class that would help her have the unmedicated birth she wanted (even though she was labeled "high risk" due to a life-long kidney condition). It was amazingly difficult (this was is in the year 2000 in Boston, the "top" medical region in the US, right?!) to find a class that was specifically designed to help parents have a natural birth in a hospital. She was, fortunately, able to find the only one in the region, took it and then hired the instructor as her doula, too. Her doula and her husband were exactly what she needed as support to achieve the birth she wanted.

After that experience, she was angry and excited. Angry because it was so difficult to get that information and wondering how, if she was so committed and educated about birth and maternity care and worked in the field and still found it challenging to get this info, what happens to all the parents-to-be who want this information but don't have access to it as easily? She was excited, though, because she was encouraged by her doula to become a childbirth educator and a doula. And that was the next step in her life's path. She went on to be the doula for about 120 births, taught childbirth classes in two area hospitals (one for 7 years and one for 3) and then opened a parenting center (with a store) called Mothers & Company, which was around for five years and closed in January 2012. In the summer of 2012, she opened her private practice of Babies in Common in Grafton, where her office was for four years (now it's in Northborough). She is passionate about proving empowering, evidence-based and fun childbirth and prenatal classes which help parents get excited about birth, breastfeeding and parenting--and help them get the info they need to make their dream birth at least possible (while staying flexible, of course!).

She teaches prenatal breastfeeding and childbirth preparation classes at Babies in Common as well as provides support to families with breastfeeding, lactation, pumping, chestfeeding and bottle-feeding concerns.  Jeanette also enjoys leading educational workshops for other IBCLCs and perinatal professionals, including speaking at conferences.  In addition to her Pumping & Feeding Gear workshop for professionals, she has been a Speaker at the following conferences:

• Boston Association for Childbirth Education
• Partners in Perinatal Health
• Ohio Lactation Consultant Association
• Western Pennsylvania Lactation Consultant Association
• Mississippi Breastfeeding Coalition
• Nutrition First, WIC Association of Washington State
• GOLD Lactation (Closing Keynote Speaker)
• GOLD Neonatology
• and in late 2022:
  • Memphis Area Lactation Consultant Association
  • Washington State WIC (different group from the one mentioned above)
  • sole speaker for the 1-day La Leche League Montreal Annual Symposium

In addition to working with families, she loves to stay up to date on the newest research and techniques by attending about 18 days of training per year on lactation, birth and business. She is a long-time member of the Boston Association for Childbirth Education, through which she attained her childbirth educator and breastfeeding counselor certifications in the early 2000s. She is also a member of the Massachusetts Breastfeeding Coalition, the International Lactation Consultant Association and the US Lactation Consultant Association. She has attended DONA doula training workshops twice (after she was already certified as a birth doula through ALACE/ToLabor), several 1 and 2-day Spinning Babies workshops and the Spinning Babies Parent Educator 4-day workshop, and has attended all but two Partners in Perinatal Health Conferences in Massachusetts since 2001. She has attended the TummyTime Method workshop, the Oral Function: Assessment and Comprehensive Care for the Pre-Crawling Infant workshop, the IBCLC Master Class (twice), the Tufts Dental School 3-4 day workshop on pediatric tongue and lip tie releases via laser (4 times).

In her personal life, she also loves to hang out with her college-age kids and has enjoyed indoctrinating them with a love of 80s music.  She enjoys occasional date nights with red wine or dark beer with her husband of 20+ years. Guilty pleasures: shows about real estate, travel and food. And she also has a long-time passion for a certain band and Switzerland.

Contact her at jeanette@babiesincommon.com.

For more about Jeanette's professional experience, education, training, certifications, awards, check out her profile on LinkedIn. You can find her resume/cv here.

Melissa Anne DuBois, RN, BSN, CCE, CLC

Experienced Labor & Delivery, Postpartum and Newborn Nurse, Childbirth Educator and Certified Lactation Counselor at Babies in Common

Melissa was born and raised locally in Central Massachusetts and is the oldest of 7 children and 15 grandchildren. Being around babies, bellies and boobies her entire life, it is only fitting that she would one day become a perinatal nurse! 

Melissa graduated at the top of her nursing class at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2006 and then moved to Central NY where she worked in high risk obstetrics for 3 years. In CNY she realized that, while essential for high risk situations, the medical model of maternity care was doing a great disservice to low-risk, healthy pregnant people and babies, leading to parent disempowerment, low breastfeeding rates and a cascade of unnecessary medical interventions. This experience sparked her passion for “high touch, low tech” evidenced based maternity care and eventually led her to a job in labor and delivery at a community hospital where she worked for 3 years alongside one of the largest autonomous midwifery practices in all of New England. 

While pregnant with her first child in 2012, Melissa accepted a job as a nurse in an OBGYN office for 4 ½ years. This position afforded her the opportunity to work with people throughout their entire pregnancy, from preconception care to postpartum support including postpartum depression/anxiety advocacy. Inspired by her own breastfeeding journey and a desire to be a more educated postpartum nurse, she became a certified lactation counselor in 2014. 

Melissa Anne returned to inpatient maternity care in March of 2017 and worked on a floor that cross trained all their L&D nurses in postpartum and nursery care. In May 2020, she chose to pursue a dream opportunity of working alongside a homebirth midwife as a birth assistant and postpartum visiting nurse. In January 2021, Melissa Anne went back to labor & delivery and also began working as a maternity clinical instructor for student nurses. In January 2023 she enrolled in a Nursing PhD program so that she can one day become a perinatal nurse researcher and nursing professor. 

Melissa Anne had been teaching hospital-based childbirth classes since 2011 and first joined the Babies in Common team in 2016 as the New Baby & Postpartum Ready instructor. However, she became increasingly frustrated with the restrictions these hospitals placed on her ability to discuss evidence-based information and informed decision making that she fully joined the Babies in Common education team in 2020. Melissa Anne is passionate about parents having options and opinions and believes education, preparation and support are the key to an empowering birth and first year of parenthood!

Personally, Melissa Anne has been a part of the Babies in Common family since she started attending our new parent support groups in 2012 (which she enthusiastically credits her breastfeeding success to during her first year of motherhood!) She lives in Central Massachusetts with her husband and three children with three very different birth experiences: one born at a community hospital with midwives, one born at an academic medical center with obstetricians and residents and one born in a giant birth pool in her dining room with a homebirth midwifery team! She loves drinking tea, hosting theme parties, hiking, being epicurean and the color purple. Contact her at melissa@babiesincommon.com.

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