Wendy Flecker

In January of this year, my husband and I moved to Myanmar to volunteer through a Canadian NGO. I was lucky to connect with an organization that has a Safe House (shelter) for women who have experienced violence. One of the women who arrived at the Safe House was a former sex trade worker. She had sold her baby to someone for approximately, $15.00USD. The manager of the Safe House heard about this, found the mother and bought the infant back. It was agreed that the Mom would stay at the Safe House for free as long as she exclusively breastfeeds her infant for 6 months.

After that, if she wanted to, she could put the baby up for adoption. Of course, the hope was for the Mom to form an attachment and decide to keep her son. I immediately thought I could help support this by showing mom what an incredible human being her child was through the use of NBO. What a success! Not only was the mom amazed but other women at the house were engaged and interested.Another important piece to this story is all of this was done without an interpreter. Mom does not speak English and I have only a few words in Burmese. Body language is universal. Several weeks have passed since that first NBO.

As a trained Infant Massage Instructor through IAIM, I have also been introducing the power of touch. Mom massages her infant daily and she shows me how her infant responds to her voice and touch! Yesterday she told the manager of the Safe House that she would be keeping her child! The use of NBO provided the opportunity to enhance attachment between mom and infant but it also allowed me to connect with the Mom through her baby.