Megan Ritchie is a
midwife from Sydney, Australia. She provides antenatal care, delivers babies,
and makes home visits for up to 6 weeks postpartum. Megan took the HUG course
with hopes that using these ideas and resources would help mothers extend
breastfeeding duration. Since starting and completing the course she finds
herself talking more about a newborn’s body language to her pregnant patients.
Information about the baby’s sleep/wake cycle and SOS signs leads seamlessly to
further discussion about breastfeeding. Megan admits that, initially,
“Broadcasting” a baby’s behavior sounded a bit contrived to her. But parents
responded so well to this approach that she has continued with it. In the
process Megan also discovered that effective breastfeeding support postpartum
can begin in surprising ways, as described below.
Today I
visited Baby Jon, a 6 day old Chinese baby born via LSCS for Pathological CTH
at 9 cm. Apgars were 6 and 9 and baby spent some time in the NICU due to low
cord PH. Grandmother is worried the baby “was brain injured at birth and would
never be any good!” And, since Mother’s milk is not in, Grandmother insist on
feeding the baby formula in a bottle.
When I
enter the room Grandmother is sitting in the corner energetically giggling the
baby who is tightly wrapped. Anticipating a prolonged visit, I turn off my
phone and head toward Grandmother with my Tic Tacs! (The HUG course showed me
that red Tic Tacs make a good tracking ‘toy” for a newborn). Grandmother and
Mother thought he was "very clever” when they saw him follow those Tic
Tacs with his eyes.
After
seeing how “clever” this baby was, Grandmother and Mother agreed to unwrapping
the baby and placing him skin to skin. In no time the baby had moved
himself to The Ready Zone and Grandmother and Mother could hear audible suck
and swallow. Seeing the baby’s readiness to breastfeed reassured both
Grandmother and Mother that breastfeeding was going well even though the birth
had not gone as hoped. I was able to end the visit discussing how to
help a crying baby and Mother took notes so she could tell her husband what
they had learned. Tomorrow I plan to discuss SOSs since this
Grandmother might be expecting him to be doing math a little too soon.