Australian Midwife/Lactation Consultant becomes a Certified HUG Teacher

Emerald Rice is a midwife and lactation consultant from Brisbane Australia. She has just completed the Certified HUG Teach program and share a bit of her experience with us.

The HUG YOUR BABY program has been great for me in my role as Post Natal midwife and Lactation Consultant. I see new parents learning the practical skills of being parents and issues involving learning the normal behavior of newborns.

Reading feeding cues and deciphering baby’s cues is the hardest for them to cope with. I enjoy watching parents having their lightbulb moment when they discover through “Broadcasting” infant behaviors. I have enjoyed using the HUG concepts of “Start here, not There” with parents as it ensures their needs are met.

I have been able to help a mother who was convinced she did not have enough milk for her baby as she felt she was feeding "all the time". Watching, observing and “Broadcasting” helped the mother and the father understand their baby's Zones and readiness to feed. I felt I was able to help mothers determine sleep cycles and understanding transition from one Zone to another.

HUG Your Baby Comes to Brisbane, Australia

It is a great joy to find our way to Brisbane and our final Australian HUG Your Baby training. The Brisbane River, twisting its way through the city, accessible transportation, and a diverse population (both in people and animals!) contributes to Brisbane being identified as one of the most “livable” cities in the world. All they seem to need is a big HUG!

CLICK HERE to watch a YouTube from these participants!

A large crowd of nurses, midwives, lactation consultants—and even a nanny who fosters newborns—join us to learn tools and resources that give parents the ability to see and understand their babies’ body language.

Among other issues, we review the rising incidence of anxiety and depression in today’s parents and how those parents often misread what a baby is communicating. Participants agree that HUG’s family-friendly language (such as a newborn’s “Resting, Ready and Rebooting Zones” and how a baby “Sends out an SOS—Sign of Over-Stimulation”) will increase parents’ confidence and enhance attachment to their babies.

Because “sleep training” of infants and babies has become popular (and controversial) in Australia, HUG trainees were relieved to consider how The HUG’s information on Active/Light and Still/Deep sleep, and on normal sleep patterns, might help decrease the need for more aggressive parent training.

Our red TicTacs were popular once again as a simple tool to demonstrate a baby’s capacity to engage visually. Participants were reminded that many infants have a normal hesitation in the movement of their eyes as they begin to orient. Specific techniques were shown to equip HUG trainees to help all babies be a star as they demonstrate how ready and able they are to engage with their parents, and the world!

I was especially happy to meet Ann Thistleton, who had taken HUG Your Baby online courses to become Brisbane’s first Certified HUG Teacher. She shared with the group her experience using HUG Your Baby with Australian parents and expressed delight in the ideas that were offered in this one-day workshop.

Jim and I LOVE Brisbane, and we hope to return here in the future, when we expect to find even more Certified HUG Teachers working with fortunate families in Queensland!

Cairns, Australia Gets a BIG HUG!

We had a quick flight from Adelaide to Cairns and were greeted by the most amazing "dead of winter" weather. We shed our fleeces, hats and gloves and put on lightweight shirts and sunscreen to enjoy the tropical climate!

I felt immediately at home when I unpacked my HUG workshop gear in the Cairns Base Hospital, where health professionals are trained at the James Cook medical school. Since Cairns health professionals must often travel far and wide for relevant continuing education, they appreciated our Australian host holding a HUG workshop here.

During the past two workshops I have spent more time demonstrating actual techniques to engage a newborn to look at a toy or face and respond to a voice. I presented my highly valued developmental assessment tool: an AU$2 box of red TicTacs! I explained that not only do they have a great sound, you can eat them if you forget your lunch!

I remind participants that most newborns have a moment of hesitation before their eyes start to move in response to visual or auditory stimulation. “Be still and stop shaking the rattle or moving your head a few seconds when you see this hesitation,” I explain. “If you don’t, the baby may send out an SOS and just 'Shut Down'." I warned that it is likely to require practicing this technique with at least 10 babies before getting comfortable with it. But as we are fond of saying, "It takes courage to learn something new!"

Several of the nurses, midwives and LCs expressed concern about how to respond "if the baby just can't do it."


Since it is our job to see EVERY baby as a success, I show and discuss video of a baby’s steps to gaining this skill. When a baby does not orient as expected, the professional can say, "I see your baby gets quiet and still when she sees the toy. That's great! In the next week or so she will be able to look at that toy with her eyes and later be able to move both her eyes and her head as the toy moves." Such information reassures parents and gives them the ability to see their baby grow in her engagement with the world.

The "Broadcasting and Commentating" practice session was especially fun in Cairns. Participants' comments included: "I noticed I started to see more as I was Broadcasting"; "Broadcasting is like learning a new language"; and, "I'm sure a parent would feel I've really connected with their baby." What at first seemed like a simple idea, now seemed, to some, as simply amazing!

I finished my day having a special conversation with a maternal-child health nurse who travels by small plane to visit isolated Aboriginal and Islander villages. She has remarkable pictures, videos, and stories to share about her patients, who have strong family bonds, significant struggles with poverty, and amazing passion for their babies. We brain-stormed about the possibility of collaborating on a HUG video mades especially for Australia's indigenous families.



And of course, no trip to Cairns is complete without a snorkel trip to the Great Barrier Reef. It was indeed a privilege to see a reef system of this magnitude. As exciting as that was, it did not cause Jim and me as much joy and laughter as watching each other squirm into our wetsuits!

Adelaide, Australia, Gets The HUG!

We were met at an airport in Australia by the cassowary, a (wo)man-eating bird who apparently is NOT interested in Getting a HUG. Walking beside a beautiful beach the next day in Cairns we learned that CROCS, instead of humans, enjoy frolicking in that particular surf. So we are happy to meet Australian colleagues who are a LOT friendlier and less threatening than some of the Aussie wildlife!

Australia has the benefits, and sometimes the challenges, of being an enormous continent with a great diversity of population, including significant numbers of refugees and immigrants.
A maternity nurse attending our HUG session in Adelaide reported that over 130 languages are spoken in her hospital each day. “I do a lot of pointing and hardly speak English on some days,” she said.

CLICK HERE to watch this one-minute YouTube video to discover what HUG learners most enjoyed about this workshop.

Once again professionals attending a HUG workshop are impressed with the concepts of “Broadcasting and Commentating” on a baby’s behavior. Though easy to understand, our practice session proves that it is harder than it looks! Participants are especially impressed with how using these techniques for breastfeeding support will enhance mum’s confidence and help to engage fathers.

After thousands of miles of travel and a number of days of non-stop teaching, Jim thinks we deserve a refreshing Adelaide break. So off we go on a tasting tour in the Barossa Valley wine country. Jim smells a 100-year-old port, while I nip into a 10-year-old one. (Not surprisingly, my white wine that evening taste like water!) Tomorrow we leave this chilly, wet weather behind as we head off to Cairns, Australia.

Australian Midwife Shares HUG Your Baby

Denise Harris is a midwife from Melbourne Australia. She has incorporated HUG Your Baby into her postpartum work with new mums. She shares this essay to give us a taste of her experiences using HUG resources and techniques.

I am a registered midwife, in Melbourne Australia. I work in a hospital where my main contact with new parents is birth and the first two nights, as I work permanent night duty. Therefore, I have contact predominantly with Mums and not the whole family. I find this often puts these Mums in a very vulnerable position as they only have me to rely on for education, information and extended care of their newborn, after family members have left for the day.  These Mums are tired and feel the overwhelming reality of caring for a newborn. 

I was first attracted to the Hug Your Bay conference because of its name. I was finding that many women did not want to hold their babies because they were scared of spoiling them! I needed to find more information to try and convince them this is okay. Though it was interesting to learn more about normal newborn behaviour, the greatest thing I learned was about MY behaviour. I learned that no one wants to hear what parenting is like for everyone, but only  what it is like them and their baby. After learning the baby's name, my nest step was DO actions instead of all talk. 

I would ask the Mum if they thought they knew what was going on with their baby, and most Mums at this stage would answer that"my baby is hungry and I'm worried I don't have enough milk". I would agree that the baby's behaviour can be confusing and then go on to explain the process of initiating lactation and the baby's role in this. I would also take time to use the techniques I learned to calm the baby.  I try to keep this all very brief, and condensed as it is usually the middle of the night and these Mums are all getting very tired, some even exhibiting S.O.S.! I try to speak in a calm reassuring manner and I find a much more positive response from these Mums.

The other most common problem I encounter is that the baby will fall asleep at the breast the moment he latches on. then waking up the minute they are taken away from the breast. I usually have six women and newborns in my care, and cannot spend a great deal of time with one mum. However if a mum is struggling, I do my best to spend more time with the mum and bub to show further settling techniques such as patting the baby in bed and rocking the baby. This seems to give these mums more "tools" in managing their babies and increase their confidence.

The very first time I made an effort to incorporate The HUG into my practice,I discovered three of the mothers I had been caring for had gone home a night earlier than planned discharge. I hope that my new approach contributed to their confidence about going home earlier than planned. 

In the near future, I hope to my further my education and become a Maternal and Child Health Nurse. In this field I will see mothers and babies for the first few years of the lives instead of the first few days. I hope to also run first time mother groups where I can incorporate and teach Hug Your Baby. This will hopefully help many more new parents become the good Mums and Dads they want to be!