Blankets for Preemies 2010

Events > Blankets for Preemies

 

The Tiny Miracles Foundation (TTMF) has been blessed again, by the generosity of local Darien middle school students! On Friday April 30, science teacher Kelley Depiano (who is the founder and developer of “Blankets For Preemies”) led the Middlesex Middle School 6th Grade Red Team, their teachers and parents to make 400 fleece blankets. The Tiny Miracles Foundation volunteers deliver the blankets to Stamford, Norwalk and Bridgeport Hospital neonatal units.

The blankets are:

  • a tool for nurses to keep the incubators dark and quiet, which helps the brain development of the fragile babies who are experiencing sight and sound too early.
  • a visual guide to the parents who arrive in a crowded room of incubators to see their baby and very often their baby’s incubator has been moved and they can only locate their child by the fleece blanket incubator cover.
  • a warmer for when parents hold their baby outside the incubators using Kangaroo Care.
  • a stabilizer for a tiny baby going home in a car seat that is too big for his or her body.
  • a gift that has special memories for the baby’s family to cherish as a keepsake forever
  • a comfort to fragile new parents from people who care.

The Blankets For Preemies Club planned and organized the 6th graders to raise the funds to buy the fleece. The students solicited local stores to donate to their raffle to raise funds and for prizes for students who made the most blankets. They helped motivate and mobilize their parents to help cut the fleece and then, all 100 students spent the entire school day making the blankets. The energy and excitement in the room increased throughout the day as the bags of blankets filled the room. To help educate the students about prematurity, teacher Kelley Depiano and Leelee Klein (President of TTMF) spent one class period educating the children about premature birth in our community and a short film was presented to the students to show them how The Tiny Miracles Foundation is helping families with premature children. 

The “Blankets For Preemies” program at the middle school was developed by Kelley Depiano in memory of her friends’ son, Sean James Maloney, who died from complications of premature birth. Mrs. Depiano also wanted to give back to the medical community who helped her family care for her twins who were also born premature.

 

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