Robyn Voge works with WIC in Wisconsin. She shares her HUG Your Baby journey with us.
My goal with each person that I speak with during a WIC appointment is to leave the mom feeling empowered and more confident. It has always been challenging for me to feel confident in my ability to provide good feedback to a breastfeeding mom. I am with them for such a short period of time and the feeding I observed may not be very reflective of what happens at home. I have really found that using the Broadcasting and Commentary concepts have given me the opportunity to share the experience with the mom and help her focus on what her baby is doing.
The most recent opportunity that I had to use this technique was with a mom who was having difficulty getting her baby to latch. They were using a nipple shield which seemed to be having an impact on milk transfer. The feedings were stressful and mom and baby both became more agitated when a good latch didn’t happen. On this day, she came in for a weight check and feeding assessment. As mom was getting baby ready to nurse, I started describing what I was seeing and how he was reacting to what mom was doing. As she was nursing, we talked about breastfeeding and I helped her see that breastfeeding was not just about feeding baby, it was also about the relationship and the back and forth interaction between them. At the end of the appointment mom said that she was going to change how she thought about breastfeeding which she felt would help make feeding feel less stressful. At her next follow up about 2 weeks later things were going much better and they had successfully stopped using the nipple shield.