YES!
YES!
NO! I am a little surprised that you ask this, Chris.  (still love you, though) I absolutely belive that it is not only "safe" to teach, but "needs" to be taught to help keep them safe!  When people have trouble communicating, whether or not they have been verbally abused, the right step is to teach correct and effective communication.  When a person is physically abused,  the first step to healing is positive interaction and positive touching.  Postitive touching can help heal negative touching.  You don't stop hugging a child because they were molested.  They really have nothing to do with each other.  Much like how many of us understand that nursing a baby is not sex.  Same but different.  Experiencing the positive will teach the difference.
I cannot begin to tell you what physicially mothering my child has done to help me heal from my abuse as well as see that not all touching is the same.  Just as no talking is the same.  If a person is verbally abused the answer is not to stop talking to that person.  Touching is just another form of communication.  And it's the form that the infant is expecting to use.
 
I have been teaching skin to skin contact in every bfing class that I teach.  I believe it is the most important thing I teach.  Without skin to skin contact babies suffer and bfing can't happen.  With it, it occurs pretty naturallly.  I stress it immediately after birth.  I mention it again for during the first 2-3 weeks.  I mention it again near the end with a mention on fathers also recieving this skin to skin contact.
 
What you talked about earlier regarding a mother keeping her baby in the plastic bucket for feeding.  I recently saw, also in the wic clinic, a baby about a month or less old, left completely alone on top of a clinic chair (armless) in a plastic bucket with a bottle *propped* up and stuck in his mouth.  Both parents were standing at the counter at least a couple of feet away.  What to do?  How do you do something without offending, so that you can teach.  I don't know.  Any suggestions?  I thought about going over to the baby and taking the bottle out his mouth and saying to the parents, "he was choking".  Or saying "Did you know that those fall of the chairs?"  as nice as possible, of course.  But instead I said nothing and hoped that when they spoke to the cpa or nutritionist that "propping bottles" would be covered.  I think that if they had been taught before or at the hospital about skin to skin that there really wouldn't be the need to reteach them to not treat their baby like
 luggage.
 
Zena Kay
'WIC Lactation Specialist in Las Vegas

Chris Mulford <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
 I wonder about the power of skin-to-skin contact to encourage
good mothering. Would it help to increase a woman's responsiveness to her
baby? Would it seem just too threatening for a woman who had a history of
abuse herself? Is it "safe" to make a blanket recommendation for
skin-to-skin care of newborns?

What does anybody think?

Chris Mulford, RN, IBCLC
LLL Leader Reserve
working for WIC in South Jersey (Eastern USA)
Co-coordinator, Women & Work Task Force, WABA



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