When Mrs. Audrey Kelly, the president of the Meet-A-Mom Association's Bermuda chapter, was trying to make Hamilton's primary shopping district more accessible to baby strollers recently, one merchant reportedly told her: "What do you expect me to do -- raise Reid Street?'' Well, Mrs. Kelly and her fellow Meet-A-Mom members have not raised Reid Street, but they have won a small victory in their fight to make Bermuda a more mommy-friendly environment.

Recently, the support and advocacy group, after a series of curiously unsuccessful encounters with other establishments, was able to persuade the Phoenix store on Reid Street to install a "baby room'' in which local mothers could breastfeed, change or clean up their children while doing their shopping in town.

"It (the baby room) means that women can come into town and stay for more than an hour,'' Mrs. Fiona Elkinson, Meet-A-Mom's public relations officer, told Community. "They won't have to hurry off home to tend to the needs of their children. It's very convenient.'' At first glance, of course, the little room off a storage station on the second floor of the Phoenix Centre doesn't seem like such a ground-breaking innovation.

Tucked away in a corner of the drug emporium's new stationery section, the five-and-a-half-by-six-foot space is simply and sparsely furnished, containing as it does the bare necessities only: a wall-mounted changing board, a diaper pail, some sanitary protectors and "a comfortable chair'' for breastfeeding.

Enclosed for privacy by an accordian-type door, the room, which was paid for entirely by the Phoenix Stores Ltd., contains moreover only two colourful touches: a tasteful pair of wall portraits of a woman breastfeeding her baby.

"It (the room) may not look like much, but it's everything to a mom who's feeding or changing,'' Mrs. Elkinson said. "Previously, they were sitting on toilets (to feed their babies) or changing their babies on the tops of their cars.'' To fully grasp the gratitude of the Meet-A-Mom mothers, it is probably necessary for non-moms to understand the hurdles that they had to jump over to get even this simple convenience installed.

According to Mrs. Kelly, MAMA members went to some half a dozen major stores in Hamilton before Phoenix vice-president Mr. Laurion McGehee, who was described by the association's president as "most receptive'', agreed to put in the baby room.

It was also, moreover, during their lobbying effort, which also included the bid to improve stroller accessibility, that Mrs. Kelly was brushed off with the remark about raising the level of Reid Street.

"There was a lot of reluctance in Hamilton,'' Mrs. Elkinson confirmed last week. "We are so grateful to the Phoenix store for being so helpful with this.'' And indeed, the Phoenix store itself is also reaping some rewards from the baby room's installation.

Having generated a great deal of goodwill among a sizeable group of consumers, the drugstore chain's flagship enterprise has simultaneously increased customer traffic in the store and come off looking -- at very little expense -- like the good corporate citizen that it is.

"I certainly shop at the Phoenix more often because of their baby-friendliness,'' said Mrs. Kelly, who also cited Cooper's, Leisure Time Ltd. and Kids' Closet as other Hamilton establishments that have installed or are planning to install mommy-friendly facilities.

In fact, if the Reid Street merchant who was flippant with Mrs. Kelly had thought about it, he probably would have realised that he was at risk of alienating not only a large segment of the buying public in Bermuda but a very influential one as well.

Recently, for example, the 300-or-so-member MAMA, which distributes an 18-page guide to motherhood in Bermuda and serves as an information exchange/support group for its members, has successfully embraced a number of child-related projects, including the creation of the Shelly Bay playground, the donation of a tympanic thermostat to the Government clinic (an act which subsequently prompted it to include three or four of the instruments in its budget) and the recent donation of relief money to the Oklahoma City children's fund.

Traditionally, moreover, it has usually been the mothers of a household that have controlled the domestic pursestrings, a time-honoured fact that has not been lost on the Phoenix.

"Let's hope,'' Mrs. Kelly wrote recently in a thank-you letter to Mr.

McGehee, "that some other businesses will follow your example and make shopping a less traumatic experience for us mums.

"After all, we are the primary shoppers and spenders in the family.'' A ROOM OF THEIR OWN -- Local mothers and their children join a Phoenix staffer in the store's new baby room recently. Pictured from left to right are Mrs.

Linda O'Shea and three-month-old Isabel, Meet-A-Mom public relations officer Mrs. Fiona Elkinson, Phoenix cashier Ms Carolyn Young, Mrs. Julie Silvester and eight-week-old Christina and Meet-A-Mom president Mrs. Audrey Kelly and two-year-old Deirdre.