The Nest
FOUNDATION MEMBERSHIP - AVAILABLE UNTIL 31 DECEMBER 2026
Your first year of solo motherhood, with mums who are in it too.
You worked incredibly hard to get here. Then your baby arrives, and suddenly you’re doing feeds, appointments, sleep, recovery, visitors, decisions, firsts and the completely ordinary chaos of life with a baby — without another parent in the house.
The Nest is a dedicated first-year space for Solo Mums by Choice in Australia and New Zealand, inside the wider Solo Mum Society community.
Connect with women whose babies are at the same stage as yours, while also having a village of solo mums further ahead who understand exactly what this family life looks like.
FOUNDATION MEMBERSHIP - $29.99/month
Applications reviewed within 72 hours · Cancel any time.
You don’t need another parenting group.
You need people who understand what it’s like to be the only parent in the house.
There are plenty of places to ask whether a sleep regression is normal or how much milk a baby should be drinking.
The harder questions can be the ones underneath that.
How do you recover from birth when there isn’t another parent to take over? What happens when you’re sick? How do you manage visitors when you’re already exhausted? How do you build support before you desperately need it? What does returning to work look like when every drop-off, pick-up and sick day ultimately comes back to you?
And sometimes you don’t need advice at all.
You just need someone else to say, “Mine did that too.”
The Nest exists to make those connections easier.
It’s a dedicated space for Solo Mums by Choice navigating their baby’s first year, while also connecting you with the wider Solo Mum Society community and women who are further ahead.
The big parenting groups can answer a question. The Nest gives you people who understand the context.
FOUNDATION MEMBERSHIP - $29.99/month
Applications reviewed within 72 hours · Cancel any time.
Maybe you’ve been looking for this without quite knowing what you were looking for
You might have wonderful family and friends around you and still feel like parts of this first year are difficult to explain.
They may be incredibly supportive, but they go home to another adult. They can hand over at the end of the day. They may not understand why something as simple as getting sick, finding time to shower, choosing a guardian or working out who can hold the baby while you go to an appointment can feel different when you are the only parent.
You might also be surrounded by mothers and still find that conversations about partners, shared nights, resentment, division of labour or “getting Dad to take over” make you feel like you’re parenting in a parallel universe.
The Nest gives you somewhere you don’t have to translate your family structure before the conversation can begin.
“I didn’t expect to feel that connected after just one Zoom.”
The kind of connection that makes the first year feel less solitary
Friendship and trust rarely grow from one anonymous comment in a Facebook group.
They grow when you see the same people again. You remember whose baby wasn’t sleeping last week. Someone checks how the appointment went. You realise another mum lives twenty minutes away. Eventually the online conversation becomes coffee, a walk with the prams or a playdate when the babies are bigger.
The Nest creates more opportunities for those repeated connections to happen.
Our members connect through the private Circle community, specialist, state-based and the Nest spaces, and regular Zoom connection calls where the group breaks into smaller conversations rather than trying to talk over one huge room.
This is what members are already saying about connection inside Solo Mum Society:
The first call confirmed exactly why I wanted to create this.
“Being able to connect with other mums who just get it, without even leaving the house, was honestly so nice. I didn’t expect to feel that connected after just one Zoom. It made me realise how much something like this is needed.”
Another member told me:
“I shared a bit about how I’ve been feeling and it was the best medicine to hear that they both felt the same. I’m so glad I joined and can have a dose of connection and fill my cup up every few weeks.”
And another:
“I left feeling uplifted, hopeful and excited for what’s ahead thanks to the wisdom of mums who’ve been there before.”
That is what I want Solo Mum Society to become: not another group you joined, but a place where names become familiar and familiar names can eventually become real friendships.
Why I built it
Some of the greatest friendships in my own life came from becoming a solo mum.
But I also remember those early months. You’ve spent so long focused on becoming a mum that suddenly being one can feel like an entirely different world. You can be overwhelmingly grateful, completely obsessed with your baby and still want people around you who understand what it is like to be doing all of this as the only parent in the house. Council mothers groups often don’t start until your baby is six weeks or older, and more often than not they are filled with couples, and many solo mums find it hard to relate.
With all of my beautiful solo mum friendships, our kids have grown up together. We’ve done playdates, BBQs, camping trips, holidays and Bali. My daughter knows families that look like ours, and I have women around me who understand this life without me having to explain all the context first.
But those friendships didn’t happen automatically just because we were all solo mums.
Someone had to organise the first meetup. Someone had to start the group chat. Someone had to put the invitation out there, keep inviting people and create enough opportunities for people to see each other again.
For years, that person has often been me.
Solo Mum Society and The Nest is my way of making that process easier for you, without expecting you to spend years building it from scratch.
Alisha x
What you get inside The Nest
A private space inside Circle specifically for Solo Mums by Choice with babies under 12 months.
This is where you can talk about the everyday realities of your baby's first year with women who are currently living it too — feeding, sleep, recovery, childcare, returning to work, family boundaries, first illnesses, building your village and all the things you didn't know you'd have questions about until your baby arrived.
Your dedicated Nest space
Every second Monday, members can join a relaxed Zoom call and spend time actually talking to other solo mums from home.
The calls use smaller breakout rooms so conversations feel natural. As the membership grows, groups can be mixed in different ways — by children’s ages, state, shared interests or completely randomly so you meet someone new.
They aren’t compulsory, and they aren’t formal networking events. Come in your pyjamas. Come without makeup. If your child appears, nobody is remotely surprised.
The point is simply to make regular connection easier.
As The Nest grows, we can also use baby-stage breakout rooms when there are enough Nest members attending.
Fortnightly connection calls
The wider Solo Mum Society community
The Nest isn't an isolated baby group. Your current membership also gives you access to the wider Solo Mum Society community, including mums whose children are older and who have already navigated many of the stages you're approaching.
Sometimes you want another woman with a four-month-old. Sometimes you want the mum of a six-year-old to tell you what happened next. You get both.
Circle is our dedicated member platform, so the community isn’t buried in a Facebook feed or filled with anonymous posts and nicknames.
There’s a main community for everyday conversation, as well as specialist spaces for women who share another part of the experience. These currently include areas for neurodivergent mums, older mums, mums parenting children with additional needs, and mums who don’t have their own mum around.
Solo motherhood brings plenty of questions that have nothing to do with fertility treatment.
Buying property on one income. Wills and guardianship. Online safety. Body safety. Returning to work. Identity after motherhood. Expanding your family. Managing practical decisions when there isn’t another parent in the household.
Each month, Solo Mum Society brings in an expert to cover one of those areas, with members able to join live or watch later.
These sessions can also be purchased individually by non-members, but they are included as part of membership.
Monthly expert sessions
Membership gives you access to the complete back catalogue of previous expert sessions from the moment you join.
That means you don’t need to wait for a topic to come around again. If something becomes relevant to your family now, you can go straight to the session you need.
The library already includes sessions on wills and guardianship, body safety, online safety, employment rights, matrescence and identity, and considerations when expanding your family, with more added over time.
Your expert library
Member benefits that grow with the community
Members also receive access to selected partner offers and benefits, with more member-only opportunities, event advantages and extras added as Solo Mum Society grows.
Those benefits are useful, but they aren’t the reason I created the membership.
The people are.
This is about more than “having friends”
For some women, The Nest will simply mean having people to message who understand solo motherhood.
For others, those connections may eventually become much more practical.
Who can you meet for a pram walk after a terrible night? Who understands why you’re thinking so carefully about your emergency contacts? Who has already researched childcare in your area? Who knows why “Can’t your partner just take the baby?” is not particularly useful advice?
A village doesn’t appear overnight. But relationships are how that village starts.
State-based spaces open once there are enough members in that area to make them useful. I deliberately don’t open empty state groups simply for the sake of saying they exist. Once five members from a state have joined, that local space opens and can start becoming a pathway to real-life connection.
That creates the pathway from: “I know another solo mum online…” to: “Want to grab coffee?”
State-based connection
I don’t want the success of The Nest and Solo Mum Society to be measured by how much time everyone spends online.
The real win is when someone finds another mum nearby. When kids start recognising each other. When a Zoom conversation becomes coffee, then a playdate, then a friendship. When a regional mum discovers someone else within driving distance. When a child grows up knowing other families that look like theirs.
The Nest is simply where those first connections can begin.
Real friendships
You can use the membership in a way that works for your life
This is not another thing you have to keep up with.
Some members will join most connection calls and be active in Circle regularly. Others may dip in and out depending on what is happening in their lives. Some will love live expert sessions; others will almost always watch recordings.
There is no attendance requirement and no expectation that you prove you are “active enough” to belong.
The community is there when you want connection, support, practical information or simply a room full of people who understand the family structure you are living.
With a baby, some weeks you may be everywhere and other weeks you may barely open the app. Both are completely fine.
Is The Nest for you?
Who The Nest is for
The Nest is specifically for Solo Mums by Choice in Australia and New Zealand who intentionally created their families through donor conception and are currently parenting a baby under 12 months.
It may be particularly useful if you want more women around you who understand solo motherhood, would love to know mums with babies at a similar stage, want your child to grow up knowing families like theirs, or simply want somewhere you don't have to explain the context before asking the question.
You do not need to be struggling, lonely or overwhelmed to join.
You can be loving motherhood and still want more community around you.
The Nest isn’t for every stage
If you're still trying to conceive or currently pregnant, The Bump is the community designed for your stage.
If your child is already over 12 months, Solo Mum Society Membership is your ongoing community.
The Nest is also not designed for women parenting alone following separation, divorce or the death of another parent. Those families have their own experiences and support needs that are different from intentional solo parenthood through donor conception.
For now, membership is limited to Australia and New Zealand so there is a genuine opportunity for online relationships to become local connections too.
Every application is read and reviewed personally.
Every application is read and reviewed by me personally — not automatically approved by a bot or a set of rules. That's slower than an instant sign-up, but it's the only way this stays a space where everyone in it genuinely gets each other. At this stage, connection calls run on Australian time zones to start, growing to include NZ-friendly times as the community grows.
Not sure you fit? Apply anyway and say so — I'd rather have a quick honest conversation than have you guess.
Your Nest foundation offer
The Nest is relaunching in this new format now, and I want the first members to help shape what it becomes.
Join by 31 December 2026 for the current Foundation offer of $29.99/month.
Your membership currently includes your dedicated Nest space plus access to the wider Solo Mum Society community, Connection Calls, monthly expert sessions, the expert library, specialist spaces, state-based connection and member benefits.
As The Nest grows, I may introduce additional first-year support, resources or experiences. Future Nest offers, inclusions and pricing may therefore change.
FOUNDATION MEMBERSHIP
AVAILABLE UNTIL 31 DECEMBER 2026
$29.99/month
Join by 31 December 2026 to secure the Foundation rate.
Applications reviewed within 72 hours · Cancel any time
Frequently Asked Questions
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The two spaces have different jobs.
The Facebook group is excellent for broad discussion, asking questions and getting advice from a large community.
Solo Mum Society and The Nest is deliberately smaller and structured around repeated connection. Members use real names, see the same women in calls and discussions, and have more opportunities to move from “we’re in the same group” to actually knowing one another.
You can absolutely use both.
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Calls are fortnightly, not weekly, and the monthly expert sessions are recorded if you can't make it live. It's there when you want it, not a commitment to keep up with.
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Not even close. Come to as many connection calls as you like, catch expert sessions live or via recording, and dip into the community whenever suits you.
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State groups open once five members from that state have joined, because an empty local group isn’t useful.
Until then, you still have access to the full national community, specialist spaces and connection calls. Once the membership in your state reaches that threshold, your local space opens.
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Yes, to start. Calls run on Australian time zones initially, growing to include dedicated New Zealand-friendly times.
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We read every application personally. You'll hear back within 72 hours — if approved, your welcome email covers reviewing our guidelines, payment, member site login, and your Circle invite.
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Circle is the private platform we use for the membership. It combines many of the useful parts of a Facebook group, group chat and forum in one place, with community discussions, events, direct messages and specialist spaces.
It can be accessed through an app or web browser.
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No.
Connection Calls are one way to use the membership, not an attendance requirement.
If joining a call feels intimidating initially, you can start by getting to know people inside Circle and join a call when you feel ready.
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Possibly — but not necessarily.
If you already have a strong community and feel completely connected, you may not need the membership.
If you would like to widen your circle, meet mums with children at a similar stage, connect with people closer to where you live or find women who share another part of your experience, there may still be plenty of value for you.
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No. Expert sessions are recorded and added to the member library, so you can watch them whenever the topic becomes relevant to you.
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Of course.
The calls are designed around real solo-mum life. If bedtime falls apart, somebody wakes up, or a child wanders into view, nobody is going to think twice.
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Your dedicated Nest stage comes to an end, but your community doesn't. You can continue as part of Solo Mum Society, so you don't lose the friendships and wider community you've built during your baby's first year.
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Not yet. The Nest begins once your baby is here. During pregnancy, The Bump is the community designed for your stage.
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The Nest is a dedicated first-year space within the wider Solo Mum Society community. Nest members currently receive access to both, giving you women at exactly your stage as well as mums further ahead.
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$29.99/month is the current Foundation offer. As The Nest grows and additional first-year support or features are introduced, future offers and pricing may change.
You worked incredibly hard to become her mum. You don't have to navigate the first year without a village.
The Nest is somewhere to find women who understand the tiny, enormous, hilarious, exhausting and completely ordinary moments of your baby's first year — because they're living them too.
And because you're part of the wider Solo Mum Society community, those relationships don't have to disappear when the baby stage ends.
$29.99/month current Foundation offer · Applications personally reviewed · Cancel any time