New Certified HUG Teacher Shares Her HUG Reflections

Tamar Dodenhoff, who serves families in Calgary, Alberta Canada share her journey through the HUG Your Baby Certification process.  

The Hug Your Baby Strategies and content are truly informative, well thought out, and extremely helpful when facing the challenges of understanding newborns and older babies with their parents. The simplicity of the content gives clarity to the development and behavioural issues of the baby, and why they behave the way they do during the different months of their lives. For myself, after learning about the Zones, the SOS, and eating and sleep patterns, it became so clear to me that babies have a language that needs to be deciphered, and especially by the people who love them the most...the parents. Being able to fill the gap between baby and parent has been rewarding. Through the observing, listening, conversing, broadcasting and commenting, these tools have proven beneficial in bringing parents to a better awareness of their baby's development and behaviour. Parents grow and learn about newborns and their changes, they themselves start to change and adapt to their baby's ways, and they start to interact and observe their baby in new ways. And this happens because someone comes along side them and creates an informative support tool. ..The Hug.

A common circumstance I came across during a visit with a parent - the tangling idea of expectations. Expecting the baby to be alone, sleep a certain amount of hours, feed within a given amount of time, and be happy when put down. The problem here was the Internet. It was the sense that her baby needed to “perform” just like the other Internet babies she had read about. It became clear to me, after observing the mother/baby relationship for a good hour, that the expectations hindered the care giving. The expectations added an extra stress. It was crucial that Mom had to relax. Mom had to view her baby as her unique child. Mom had to hear about the abilities and great interactions she could have with her personal child, and to observe the many self calming behaviours her baby was exhibiting. At 3 months old her baby was underweight and needed to be woken up at night to feed. It wasn't time to sleep through the night yet. The hunger for stimulation of all kinds was evident. Baby wanted to look and hear something in her Ready state: the calming voice of mother or father, lie by the window and look outside, listen to a familiar song or music track, or focus on the movement of a mobile. Most importantly mom had to realize that her baby could go to sleep after a feeding and “Play.” Swaddling and swaying her to sleep seemed to be a great comfort for her as the father took charge of this quiet time. Mom grasped at all these new observations and said she was refreshed and encouraged to care for her child in new ways. And it wasn't about comparing one baby to another, but rather looking at that one baby and reading its needs, and learning about what worked for her in that unique family.

As I said to that mom and other moms, “It's all about bonding” - not spoiling. It's all about understanding the little individual you've been given. The Hug creates a straight forward approach to help parents bond with their child. In the relationships I come across,while integrating the Hug, it is vital for me to leave something good, practical, and encouraging behind me: simple and understandable for the parents.