Connie Hoffner is a long time maternal-child
nurse and lactation consultant in Mount Ulla, North Carolina. She shares her
experiences becoming a new Certified HUG Teacher.
I love
helping mothers and families learn about their newborns. Using The HUG
techniques with families has been such an added benefit. Over the years I have
seen that many mothers stop breastfeeding because they do not understand normal
newborn behavior. As described in my encounter with the mother below, The HUG
Your Baby information enhances a mother’s breastfeeding experience.
Baby Z.
and his Mother E. visited me with some questions and concerns about
breastfeeding. The baby was nursing well and had a good latch, had
good output and was doing well with weight gain. However, the mother
was concerned about the baby waking up and eating frequently. I
explained to her about a newborn “Zones” and a baby’s Active/Light and
Still/Deep Sleep. She was quickly able to identify the Active Sleep
“Zone” and she now realized that over the past few weeks she had assumed that
the baby was hungry and needed feeding when she saw that Active Sleep behavior.
We discussed suggestions to help him "sleep though" Active Sleep and
ways to help him be put down to sleep.
We then
reviewed all 3 newborn ”Zones” – The “Resting Zone”, “Ready Zone” and
“Rebooting Zone”. We talked about playing with the baby during his
“Ready Zone”, information she was very happy to share with her husband.
Mother
E was very interested and concerned about the baby's SOS behavior and had
noticed that when he was upset he tended to "Switch Off". We
discussed that the baby was very smart to send out signs when he had too much
stimulation. We discussed comforting/calming techniques and that the
baby was really good at calming himself. We talked about the value
of talking quietly to him when he showed as SOS holding his hands to his chest,
swaddling him, swaying him, making "shooshing sound", placing him on
his side, and letting his suck mother’s finger or the breast. Mother
E verbalized more confidence and has contacted me a couple more times with the
good news, “I love breastfeeding!”