Today we’d like to introduce you to Ansley Parillo and Guy Baker.
Ansley and Guy, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
My friend and business partner, Guy Baker, and I are both registered nurses. We worked together as Neonatal ICU nurses at an Atlanta area hospital. Rest Assured was born out of a need we saw to provide families with high quality, expert care for newborns by licensed professional caregivers. Having a baby is an incredibly exciting time for couples. But it also exhausting! Every parent remembers what it was like bringing a newborn home. You go from having order in your life to having no routine at all. Getting up every 3 hours during the night for feedings doesn’t provide parents with much time for rest. What makes it more difficult for many Atlanta families is the fact that they are transplanted from other parts of the country and don’t have the traditional help available to them from grandparents and extended family. We simply saw a need to provide families with expert, compassionate care from highly educated, registered nurses that have experience caring for newborns. Our goal is to match each family with an experienced nurse that can provide them with the support, and most importantly, the rest they need to be the best parents they can be. Since 2010, we’ve been Atlanta’s leader in providing this support. We expanded to Nashville in 2012 and Charlotte in 2016.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It has mostly been a smooth road. It’s been challenging for sure. Running a business is not for everyone. Guy and I joke that we feel like we’ve been to business school over the past 6 years! We weren’t given the tools in nursing school you need to run a business. We’ve had to learn on the fly so to speak. From hiring and marketing to accounting and payroll, it’s been quite the learning experience. I would say the biggest challenge has been hiring the right number of nurses to meet the needs of our business. It was hard at first to predict the amount of business we could expect. We still struggle with that. Hiring enough nurses has also been a challenge for us. We only hire high quality people. We would rather turn business away than send a nurse that doesn’t meet our high standards. Maintaining those high standards can make it difficult at times to hire enough people.
Please tell us about Rest Assured Infant Nursing.
We are night nursing service that provides high quality, expert nursing care to families in need of newborn care at night for their baby. What sets us apart is that we only hire registered nurses.
They must have experience caring for newborns, pass a nationwide background check and be CPR certified. There duties as night nurses include:
- Feeding
- Diapering
- Soothing the baby
- Establishment of a feeding/sleep schedule
- Cleaning bottles, nipples, pump equipment
- Lactation support
- Restocking changing table
- Addressing any feeding issues
- Identifying strategies to address reflux
- Providing encouragement and support to parents
One of the things we are really proud of is our Baby Nurse Registry. Not everyone can afford to hire a baby nurse. That doesn’t mean those families need help any less than those that can afford it. We were looking for a way to provide access to our services to a broader market. So we started our BNR. Families can register for a baby nurse with Rest Assured and add us to their registry for their shower. Their family and friends can donate to their registry and help support them when the baby comes!
We are most proud of the relationship we and our nurses build with these families. We really do become part of that family and continue our relationship long after the nursing care is completed. So many of our families have used us for their next baby which is a real testimony to us that we are doing things right!
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I’m not sure we would’ve done anything differently. We’ve loved every moment of this journey as business owners and as nurses. It’s been challenging but rewarding.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.restassuredinfantnursing.com
- Phone: 770 580-3023
- Email: info@restassuredinfantnusring.com
