Paying it Forward -- Preemie Cap Style

As I mentioned previously, my twins were born 7 weeks early. As a result, they were in the NICU for nearly 4 weeks. My husband and I became very close with the NICU nurses, and we think of them, and our time there, often.

While my kids were in the NICU, they received some adorable knitted caps that had been donated. Since I am an avid knitter, I made preemie caps for my kids while they were there. The pattern was super easy--each cap takes about 2 hours from beginning to end--and I promised myself that one day, I would pay it forward and make preemie caps to donate to the NICU as a stashbuster, and as a good deed. (For all you non-knitters out there, stashbuster is when you do a project just to use up your leftover yarn from other projects!)

In October, I started thinking about the fact that my kids were turning 1 fairly soon. I wanted to do something bigger than a birthday party to commemorate the day. I felt that it was important to acknowledge and thank the NICU nurses who selflessly gave of themselves to nurse my babies to health. I decided it was time to cash in that promise to pay it forward, so I put out a call on facebook to all of my friends and family who knit and crochet that I was doing a preemie cap drive for the NICU and wanted to collect as many caps as I could before the kids' birthday. I wanted to drop them off at the NICU on their birthday, with a thank you note for the nurses and a recent picture of the kids.

I put all of my other projects on hold, dug out all of my non-allergenic stash yarns, and embarked on this project. I would have been happy to create 5 on my own, and maybe donate 10-15 total. Well, once I got on a roll, I got obsessed (like I do with many of my projects) and got more and more creative as the project went on. I ended up knitting 15 hats myself (photos of each one below), and received another 19 from friends and family. In total, I was able to donate 34 preemie caps to the NICU.

All of the preemie caps I made

I enjoyed this project so much, that I decided that I want to do it every year. I will knit a cap every now and again, whenever I have a few hours to spare and feel like I just want to knit something quick and easy. I hope that my friends and family will once again be generous with their time and yarn and help donate to this project. I hope to donate twice as many to the NICU this year as I did last year, and I hope that other friends and family members who knit or crochet will join in the project.

All of the caps I donated

Hopefully the parents who are going through the same difficult journey that we did will get an ounce of comfort from the lovingly crafted handknit caps that their babies will receive. Hopefully, when their healthy child comes home, they will put the cap in a special place--just like I did with the caps my twins received--to take out once in a while to remember how far they've come and how lucky they were to have the most amazing, caring, attentive NICU nurses.

Click me for the preemie cap pattern if you knit and want to donate some to your local NICU!

Close ups of all of the caps I made:


        

    

    

    

      

Love,

Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at theaccessorizedlife@gmail.com