Kendra Powell loves to crochet, and she loves to care for new moms and babies as a registered nurse and international board-certified lactation consultant at AnMed Maternity Center. So she was moved to hand-craft something for babies to cuddle and grasp if they're in the intermediate nursery and away from their moms.
Typically, babies should not be given dolls or items to cuddle at sleep time because those items can pose suffocation risks. But some babies have medical need for intermediate nursery care, such as when they're born prematurely or have difficulty in the transition to life outside the womb, and they benefit from additional, special monitoring in AnMed's intermediate nursery to protect against those risks.
Yet those babies still face brief but necessary time away from their moms to get that care. So when such circumstances arise, those babies now find the nursery a touch more comforting. They're given crocheted octopuses to deliver many tentacles of care.
Hand-crafted by AnMed nurses, the octopuses provide a little more ease when moms and babies aren't always able to be together, as is AnMed's aim.
"At first I was going to leave the octopuses in the nursery and just let the nursery nurses give it to the babies if they felt like the babies needed it, but I just felt like there was something better," said Powell. "I kept thinking about it more, and I felt like, no, I'm going to give them to these mamas. I think they need to snuggle with it and know the effects of it first, and then they can take it down there when they go visit their baby and leave it with them. It has her scent on it then, and they feel like they're leaving a piece of them down there with their baby."
Powell picked up the idea from what's done at neonatal intensive care units at a few hospitals around the world.
And she's recruited another nurse at AnMed's mom-baby unit who is a crocheter, Kassie Patterson, to join in the effort. Patterson and Powell now spend some of their time away from direct care to advance care a little further for babies in need.
"I was excited when Kendra asked me to help," Patterson said. "I love seeing the smiles on the mom's faces, and I'm very happy to have a small part in that."
Crystal Gilstrap, a fellow certified lactation consultant at AnMed, celebrates their initiative.
"It's amazing to see the effect that it's had on the moms," Gilstrap said. "They really 'latch' on to that idea. You just see the little heads sticking out of the moms' shirts when you go in. They almost act like it's the baby. They kind of pat it and say, 'I'm going to leave this with my baby when I go back to the nursery.' It gives them something to love on, too, when they don't have their baby there.
"That has surprised me. They're just so lovey with them. They feel like it's something they can do for the baby."
Powell has even crocheted a beehive mobile for babies to look at when they're being weighed in the outpatient lactation office.
"I love my patients, and I love what I do," Powell said. "If you can spread some love and make the mamas and the babies feel better while they're going through that time apart, I think that's important. You want them to have a good experience."
Having something so ready to grip caters to babies' grasp reflex and protects against any inclination to pull at tubing. Having the scent of their mom on it soothes their raw senses as their new life begins to experience the world.
"They need their mama, and that scent of the mama and having something there just is calming for them in the moments when mom is away," Powell said. "I just felt like making these octopuses was something I could do to kind of give back. We care about our moms and our babies. We care about how they're feeling and their emotions. It's important to have that compassion."
Powell knows what the experience is like. The Belton resident is a mother of an 18-year-old and a 16-year-old.
"She's about to need an octopus herself because she's going to have an empty nest," said Gilstrap.
"I am," said Powell. "I'm going to need something to snuggle."
To reach AnMed Lactation Consultants, call 864-512-4864.
