Father celebrates The HUG!

Certified HUG Teacher, Pam Diamond, shares an important story about a new dad.  

I wanted to share my recent HUG experience. I'm working with new parents of a one-week-old little boy. I started on day three and showed them the HUG video as part of my newborn education. In my experience, the fathers respond so positively to it--I think because it's very clear and specific and shows concrete examples. That was certainly this family's response. Today, day six, the dad pulled me aside to tell me how much the video helped him. He citted specifically: 
1) holding the baby's hands against his body to calm him; 2) how to wake him up from sleep and get him to the Ready Zone (see photo); 3) learning that baby may not be able to do too many things at one time so, for instance, he may need to be swaddled if he's having a hard time "playing"; 4) playing with his baby by having him track him as dad moved his head slowly from side to side. 
Dad had such great things to say about the information! Besides the content, he also appreciated that the video was only 20 minutes long and arranged so that he could stop at a point and come back and watch later if needed.


Pam's story connects so well with the work of Roland Warren, who spoke recently at the national conference for Parents As Teachers. Roland's theme was that fathers JUST WANT TO KNOW WHAT TO DO!!  (See this Blog Story.)