Handmade touch
Local teen donates incubator covers to YRMC neonatal unit
Parents’ whose babies are in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Yuma Regional Medical Center will now be met with an atmosphere that includes a handmade touch.
Back in the spring of this year, Gila Ridge High School student and 4-H member Jordan Cordery donated 20 hand-sewn covers for the NICU babies’ Isolette incubators. The incubators provide controlled temperature, humidity, and oxygen levels. Additionally, each incubator has armholes through which the infant can be reached with minimum disturbance to the controlled environment for premature or other newborn infants.
As each incubator is clear, the covers help better create a dark, womb-like environment.
“They are supposed to still be inside and growing,” said resource coordinator/clinical educator for the YRMC NICU Lucrecia Dobson. “We have to try to mimic that for them and create the environment for them externally. What is so nice about Cordery’s covers is that they are dual fabric. It allows for that really dark environment so that they do have that time and nice environment to be able to grow before they get to go home.”
Cordery explained that each cover is comprised of two different fabrics — one that is dark and plain to go on the “inside” or the side that cannot be seen by parents and nurses after it is laid on the incubator and one that is more bright and cheery to be seen on the outside. Covers also came with various patterns sporting bunnies, llamas, dinosaurs and sock monkeys.
According to Dobson, each cover that YRMC typically purchases can cost the hospital hundreds of dollars.
“A lot of the things that we purchase for our NICU babies are specialty order items so they can get very costly,” Dobson said. “Some of the covers average four to six hundred dollars apiece.”
Along with helping the hospital with NICU costs,
Dobson noted the covers provide comfort to parents as the covers that are normally purchased by YRMC do not have the added warmth that comes from a handmade item.
“Although they are designed for babies, they are just a little bit sterile,” she noted. “The look of it — you can tell that it’s made for the hospital almost like a curtain or a hospital gown. It doesn’t really give you that warm and fuzzy feeling, so when we got the box of handmade covers we were so excited. They have really cute patterns and they just made such a big difference in brightening up the day for the parents and the nurses, too.”
For any parent, a preterm delivery is never part of their plan, Dobson added, noting that babies can end up being in the NICU for a few weeks to a few months.
“It’s just not something you are ever prepared for so it’s all the more scary,” Dobson said. “It’s great being able to create some kind of environment where they feel like oh, we have these cute little blankets or these cute covers. Even something as simple as that — parents walking in and being able to feel welcomed at the bedside is something we wouldn’t have been able to create without what she did for us. It does mean so much.”
Cordery says she and her family have a history of giving to the community.
“My family has always been very community service orientated,” Cordery said. “My sister and I always try to do big community service projects by ourselves, but this year I ended up doing one where I made incubator covers for the NICU at the hospital.”
Cordery noted that her 4-H leader, Sue Hanson, helped her start the process by aiding her in creating the pattern for the covers. To figure out how the covers are made, Cordery and Hanson utilized an existing cover by studying it, taking it apart and putting it back together again. Once the process got started, Cordery’s grandmother lent a hand as well.
“I like to sew but with all of the different turns, styles and everything she really needed to help with the button holes and getting all the fabric pieces together,” Cordery said. “We started in August and we ended up completing them in May. It was about a year-long process. This is the second year we’ve done a project like this for the hospital.
“Last year we made 113 blankets for the NICU and those took about a year too,” Cordery added.
Cordery said she initially got involved in donating items for the NICU after her sister did some research.
“My sister had wanted to go into the medical field so she started trying to look at the different departments which resulted in us talking to Sue since she works here,” Cordery explained. “She started telling us about the blankets and how the condition of them were. They were running out of them, so we ended up just putting our community service toward that for that year. The more we got into it, the more we realized these people were the most appreciative and just overjoyed people that we’ve ever done community service for.”
After her first time donating to the NICU, Cordery said she decided to do more and she noted she learned a valuable lesson through the experience.
“This has taught me about how important the little things are,” Cordery said. “You would look at a hospital and think wow, they have it all and they can get it all. Why would they need help from a 17-year-old high school student? But then you get involved in it and you start to realize these people are so excited about having somebody from the community get involved. They are also so excited to see younger people trying to help.
“It honestly just made me really appreciate the smaller things in life because you realize those truly are some of the best things,” she added.