Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Give a hat, gift another.....

My friend is having a baby soon. She doesn't know if she is having a girl or boy and I am impatient. I want to make a hat now and not in yellow but boy and girl colours so yesterday I decided that I would make two; a boy hat and a girl one. Madness you think? Well I'm thinking not.

I'm going to give my friend both hats before she has the baby and ask her to take them both to hospital when she goes to have the baby then which ever she doesn't need, I'd really love it if she gave it to the special care baby unit.

When Jack was born, he was poorly. Really poorly. He wasn't an early baby though and weighed 8lb 3oz so when they put a hat on him and tied breathing tubes to it, the hat they put on him was way too small. When I think back to then, one of the images I have in my head is that stupid yellow, too small hat. I know someone made it but they made it for a premmie so it was too small.

When he was transferred to a different hospital for more specialised treatment, the nurses couldn't take it off for days because he was too unstable to remove the tubes and while the hat remained, it scared his head; he now has three bald marks on the back of his head from it.

So I'm thinking other knitters might want to join me in doing this. Its quite simple, every time you make a hat for a new baby, make two newborn sized and gift one to the hospital.

My only problem is that I have to knit three because someone has pinched the first one I made....

4 comments:

Wharfedale Woolworks said...

That's a fantastic idea and something I'd definitely do :)

Bobbie said...

Absolutely brilliant idea Nic! xx

Daisy said...

Cool idea!

Unknown said...

What a brilliant idea. The requests I've seen always seem to be for preemie hats and of course children are also born at full term under difficult circumstances too. I'll definitely be doing this, in fact I have two here, one with a knotted top which could easily be untied to make access for tubes.