Lactation Classes & In-Home Visits
An educated parent is a skillful and confident parent!
My Name is Luz Chavez; I specialize in giving parents absolute confidence and knowledge to identify and manage all pregnancy-to-weaning lactation milestones. My Experience:
*Lactation educator and adviser since 2004 at two local free-standing birth centers
*Worked for 12 years alongside Certified Professional Midwives inside and outside birth rooms.
*Shared nursing classes with over 2000 parents
*Counseled over 1000 families
*Lactating mother since 2017 (going on five years as of 2022)
My Certifications:
International Board Certified Lactation Consultant since 2022
Certified Lactation Counselor since 2015
Hug Your Baby Teacher since 2019
Becoming a lactating working mother encouraged me to change my teaching approach to a more effective way to prepare families with confidence and troubleshooting tools for the physical and emotional changes that will occur once the baby arrives... because parents are born too.
08/10/2025
🌸 La leche materna no caduca 🌸
En cada gota de leche materna hay algo más que nutrientes:
hay amor, protección, consuelo y un lazo único entre mamá e hijo.
Muchos opinan que “a cierta edad ya no sirve” o que “pierde nutrientes”…
pero la ciencia es clara: la leche materna sigue adaptándose a las necesidades del niño, tenga meses o años.
Sigue aportando proteĂnas, grasas saludables, vitaminas, defensas y, sobre todo, seguridad emocional.
Si tu instinto y tu corazĂłn dicen que sigas, sigue.
No hay nada más natural que alimentar con amor… el tiempo que quieras.
08/05/2025
08/05/2025
Las latinas amamantamos en todas partes
08/04/2025
The Importance of Education
Over the last week, I have gotten several emails from parents describing very avoidable but quite serious complications from a tongue tie release. I am entering my 13th year in treating these ties and I am still amazed that people who are doing this procedure. do not understand basic concepts of how to do it correctly. Many people come to my office and think that I am some sort of tongue tie Messiah, only to recognize that what I am doing is very simple, but has to follow very specific goals.
Over time, I have become increasingly less diplomatic when I have to interact with these providers to let them know what they have done. In almost every case, it is very clear that they have no formal training in the procedure. One of these complications was from an ENT with a pair of scissors. One was from a supposed tongue tie expert in his community who was a dentist using a laser. In each case, these problems occur because of a lack of basic understanding of surgical principles and of the underlying physiology of what the tongue is supposed to be doing. I am tired. I am tired of having to explain to parents why this occurred. I am even more tired that 13 years into this, people are making the same mistakes.
I do not care how experienced you think you are. For almost all of you, you have more to learn. How do I know that? Because I am still learning. This is not meant to be some advertisement for my course, but I cannot help but shake my head, knowing that what is in my course would've prevented both of these complications. These courses will not be around forever because of my personal goals to just be in my garden and tend to my crops. Seriously, take the course and learn.
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I am here to provide expecting parents and whoever else involved in the postpartum care with the necessary knowledge and tools for a gentler transition into parenthood.
In 2004, I began the journey of becoming a breastfeeding instructor. Though midwives at our local birth center taught me everything they knew about lactation, I never stopped researching on my own, updating the classes I was teaching and improving the care of mothers I was supporting at the birth center.
Breastfeeding is my passion. But, all along I felt that something was missing in my classes and counseling interactions, I knew I could give more. Finally, I found what was missing when I learned about HUG Your Baby.
To continue my education in the Maternal-Child Health field, I completed HUG’s two-hour online training in March and then attended the "Breastfeeding on the Border's" all-day workshop in Sunland Park, NM. Jan Tedder, the creator of HUG Your Baby, taught the workshop. One of my favorite moments of the day was the exercise we did to better understand how the same event in a mother’s life can be lived totally differently depending on the mother’s physical, mental, and emotional state. As educators, sometimes we forget that each case is different even when the situation is the same!
Since the workshop, the way I teach and communicate with families has changed for the best. Learning about the baby’s zones and sleep phases has taken my interactions with parents to a completely new and deeper level. Now I am initially more focused on the baby’s behavior and then I give my attention to the specific breastfeeding issue. Because of this new approach, parents seem to open up more about their other questions or concerns. The more I know about these mothers and fathers, the more I may be able to help them have a smoother postpartum period and to offer better care to the baby and to the mom.
I became a Certified Lactation Counselor in 2014 and am now working toward my IBCLC certification. The amount of knowledge acquired through the HUG Your Baby workshop will enhance my skills as a Lactation Professional. As others have said after the HUG workshop, “I wish I knew this [HUG information] before I had my baby!”
Blog Author: Luz Chavez, CLC & Jan Tedder, BSN, FNP, IBCLC
