Kirkwood's Pickles & Ice Cream: An Obvious Resource for Expectant Parents

Erin Meckfessel helps families navigate one of life's most profound experiences, and she does it all from her Kirkwood home.

The experienced nanny launched Pickles & Ice Cream, a St. Louis-based baby planning service, last fall. She is the company's only employee.

“When you call the number, you get me,” she said with pride.

Her clients are sometimes well established moms, often lawyers and doctors who are having their first baby, and who are overwhelmed by the experience.

Meckfessel is the calming voice in a sea of storms and chaos. “You might call me the filler-inner for the families,” she said.

She provides soon-to-be parents with support, resources and a shoulder to lean on.

Many young to middle-aged moms count on her expertise. Among other things, she is certified to teach baby sleeping techniques. But she is not a medical professional by trade.

She restores faith and confidence in new moms, so both parent and baby can ease away tensions, and get some much needed sleep.

Meckfessel, 30, who is married to Doug, a sales rep in the food services industry, has high hopes for her company. Often during the day, for a $30 daily fee, she will provide helpful hints and email back and forth with clients, some of whom live out of town.

Her advice and consent is worth its weight in gold. Meckfessel graduated from Regis University in Denver in 2004 with a communications degree

“I’m able to put to use my communications skills," Meckfessel said. "I do everything for the moms."

That includes setting up registration for baby showers.

“So much money is wasted buying the wrong things," she said. "I know how to pick out just the right car seats for newborns and where to take them to get them installed.”

“I have found many of these moms have taken fertility drugs to become pregnant, often leading to multiple births.” That, she says “is a much bigger issue to deal with.”

Meckfessel, who grew up in Des Peres is a 2000 graduate of St. Joseph’s Academy in Frontenac. There, she did some diving for the school. “I love the school. I’m trying to find ways to give back to the Angels,” she said. For one, she’d like to take part in seminars that deal with developing new cottage-industry businesses like Pickles & Ice Cream.

For now the Meckfessels call a condo near Downtown Kirkwood home. She would like to raise babies of her own and have a Kirkwood home with a white picket fence within walking distance of all the local attractions.

In 2011, she completed course work at the International Maternity Institute in San Francisco. That made her a certified child sleep consultant. She can handle just about any routine situation, but stays clear of children with medical issues. “I’m not a doctor or a nurse,” she said.

“I do a lot of evaluating of family lifestyles. I spend a lot of time going one on one with the new daddies. They like that. I get a lot of feedback about my business. People really like the name.” She works hand in hand with a lot of busy pediatricians offices.

Pickles & Ice Cream is a perfect match for moms with newborns and who have a lot of uneasiness and lots of unanswered questions. Meckfessel’s career goal is to solve all of those problems, and, do so much more.

For more information contact Pickles & Ice Cream at 314-489-2644 or visit the company's website.

Kirkwood Patch Editor Owen Skoler contributed to this report.