WILKES-BARRE - After becoming a mother for the first time three years ago, Kim Murphy tried to use pediatricians' handbooks and the way she had been raised by her parents as guideposts, but something seemed wrong.

"I bought all the things you were supposed to, like a crib, playpen, and swing set," she recalled. "You were supposed to put the child down and have it just be a part of your life. But it just didn't feel right to me."

Nor did the fact that her infant daughter spent her first night home from the hospital crying in her crib.

What did feel right to Murphy and her husband, Tim, was listening to their own instincts. For the new mother, that meant bringing Gwen into her arms and later her bed, where the infant slept soundly for 12 hours.

"With our second daughter, Arden, my husband and I did the bed sharing, tried cloth diapers, extended breast-feeding, and I pureed all the food," said Murphy, of Forty Fort, Pa.

Murphy soon realized that neither way of parenting was wrong, and that there probably were more parents out there just as confused and as eager to try new ways of raising their children.

She went online and discovered the Holistic Moms Network, a nonprofit organization connecting parents who are interested in holistic health.

The mother of two daughters already had formed a small holistic group with about 20 friends called Mommas LC, which stands for Mommas around Luzerne County. "We just kind of did play dates and got together and talked," she said.

Today, Murphy is eager to allow other moms to follow their similar instincts as she forms a local chapter of the Holistic Moms Network.

"When you first hear the holistic term, you get scared," admitted coleader Christina Nichols of Honesdale. "I was always interested in green living, but I became even more interested after the birth of my first child. We really distanced ourselves away from the Earth, and I wanted to return to the natural way of doing things."

Nichols - who is the mother of sons Josh, 6, and Orion, 2 - is pregnant with her third child. She recently began home schooling her older son and is eager to learn from other moms who already have taught their children.

"It's important, when you parent outside the mainstream and you're just learning, to talk to others who have had similar experiences," she said.

"Everyone has been at that same point of beginning at one time or another. You can only read about a topic or learn online so much. It's really so beneficial to actually talk to and learn firsthand from someone who has been there. It can be so reassuring."

The national organization offers advice on a variety of topics, including pregnancy, breast-feeding, natural childbirth, healthy eating, positive discipline, alternative medicine, and all aspects of green living.

Members say they have discovered natural remedies for their children's asthma and fever and tried recipes for making their own nontoxic cleaners.

Murphy said the main focus of the Wyoming Valley Holistic Moms Network was making informed decisions.

"We don't judge anyone," she said. "We respect other people's opinions. Remember, there is always a reason why somebody does something."

Murphy said she had learned to be less judgmental over the years.

"I remember how I used to get bothered by women breast-feeding in public," she said. "I never thought of it as a woman feeding her child. Now I see it differently."