When Leanne Alfon brought her newborn son home, the baby’s father was stationed several hours away at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
Both parents were serving on active duty, but Alfon, based at Naval Station Norfolk, was handling most of the daily child care on her own.
After giving birth, she was afraid to drive alone with her newborn, especially when he cried in the car. She also had questions about breastfeeding, the baby’s weight and her own recovery.
Molly Curtis showed up at her home with an infant scale, blood pressure equipment and educational materials to help Alfon get the answers she needed.
“Having it in the comfort of my own home really does help,” Alfon said.
The visits came through the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society’s Visiting Nurse Program, which provides free health education and basic assessments to active-duty and retired Sailors, Marines and their families.
Curtis is one of about 25 visiting nurses working through the program. Three are based in Hampton Roads and divide coverage across major cities including Norfolk, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach.
Though military families can also access other programs like the Defense Department’s New Parent Support Program, those services are more focused broadly on child support and family support.
Curtis said all Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society visiting nurses are registered nurses and focus more directly on the health and medical aspects of the transition to parenthood.
“So ours takes more of a medical approach in getting these families aligned with appropriate resources, but also seeing how they're doing, ensuring that they are transitioning health healthily,” Curtis said.
That transition can often turn up serious challenges. A 2022 Government Accountability Office analysis found that about 36% of Tricare beneficiaries who were pregnant or had given birth received a mental health diagnosis between 2017 and 2019.
Anxiety, depression and trauma- or stress-related disorders were the most common categories.
The report flagged military-specific risk factors including isolation from social support networks and deployment of a spouse.
In 2025, the three Relief Society nurses serving Hampton Roads met with new or expectant mothers 1,637 times and drove 11,084 miles, according to data the organization provided to WHRO. They also held 29 breastfeeding classes attended by 241 residents.
Across the nationwide program, nurses recorded 14,174 patient contacts.
Curtis, who works from the nonprofit’s Portsmouth office, said she typically sees about eight families per week. A home visit averages about 90 minutes.
During a typical postpartum visit, she assesses how the birthing parent is recovering, checks blood pressure and screens for perinatal mood disorders. She also evaluates how the infant is feeding and gaining weight.
Curtis said the longer appointment also gives families more time to ask questions than they may have during a medical visit.
“We, as visiting nurses, have the luxury of time,” she said. “We can establish a relationship with the family. We can try to ensure that all their questions are addressed.”
For Alfon, the home visits added support but did not eliminate the broader pressures she faced.
She said that although her family generally received good care through the military health system, scheduling her son’s milestone appointments could be difficult.
Sometimes his regular pediatrician was unavailable, while other appointments had to be booked further out than she wanted.
Curtis’s care gave her another place to bring questions during her son’s first year.
“She would always tell me, ‘I’m doing a good job’ or ‘I’m doing a great job taking care of him and myself,’” Alfon said.
