Roslyn Padgett is a Family Nurse Practitioner and IBCLC in Cary, NC. Though she has had ample child development study and experience in the past, she shares with us her special journey with HUG Your Baby.
HUG YOUR BABY is exactly what I need working in Family Medicine at SAS Institute, Cary NC. Jan has clarified a very complex set of theories, methods, research and clinical guidelines, and made them easy to put into practice in our day-to-day work with families. What Jan has so skillfully and thoughtfully crafted is a gift I can give my patients at every visit. The HUG program is easily incorporated into a clinician’s visits with families, and its digital educational resources permit parents to continue to access and build on what the clinician teaches in the exam room or office. This ongoing support for families helps them navigate the complexities of infant feeding, sleeping, crying, communication and development that most of us touch on at every visit. In addition, The Roadmap to Breastfeeding Success provides an excellent means to achieve the goal of successful breastfeeding. The HUG program helps us to promote breastfeeding at SAS Family Medicine and to assist more families meet their own goals, as well as AAP and WHO guidelines, for breastfeeding duration.
What we learn in HUG YOUR BABY training makes us better clinicians. As someone said, "Going into the room with a baby and family is like having a hundred helium balloons on the ceiling with strings attached—and choosing which ones to pull into the encounter." Family medicine visits can be full of so many details and tasks that it is easy to hyper-focus on those. What Jan has so beautifully done with HUG YOUR BABY is to help a provider see through all the details to emphasize what is most important for each visit: the parents’ agenda. My mantra has become, “Start here, not there.” Intentionally “holding the space,” watching the baby with the parents, and “broadcasting” what I see emphasizes the positive and brings the parents actively into the visit in collaboration with me. The HUG approach encourages me to stop and see the beauty of the moment, and of the lovely child and family I am privileged to know better at each visit. I am so excited about using HUG YOUR BABY, every day and with every baby and young family.