A moment in July

By Jess Hadju, Speech Pathologist

My name is Jess and I am a Paediatric trained Speech Pathologist. Many people don’t know that along with helping children to talk and communicate, Speech Pathologists also help children and babies with feeding difficulties. At the moment I am the Senior Paediatric Speech Pathologist in a hospital setting so I need to provide services to children on our paediatric ward and on our Special Care Nursery as well as in our mulit-disciplinary Feeding Clinic. The babies and children might have difficulty feeding because of prematurity, cardiac conditions, anatomical differences, e.g., tongue tie, cleft palate or they might have a syndrome e.g., Down Syndrome.

Helping babies and children with feeding difficulties is what I am most passionate about within my Speech Pathology scope. There is, however, always more and more to learn, especially when it comes to babies and Mum’s who are breastfeeding.

That’s where Amanda Sykes comes in! I started my education and training to become an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) in January 2015. In addition to 90 hours of breastfeeding specific education, I also need to accumulate 500 hours of hands-on care with breastfeeding Mum’s and Bubs before I can apply to sit the qualification exam. Amanda Sykes is one of the IBCLC’s who I have linked in with to be my IBCLC mentor. I have been able to accompany Amanda on a number of home visits to support women and their babies to successfully breastfeed. I really appreciate her help with my hours and learning.

I’m looking forward to the day I have completed my 500 hours of training and get to sit the exam to become an IBCLC and be able to use the knowledge I’ve learnt to help lots of lots of other women and babies.

Jessica Hajdu

Speech Pathologist