Scent Sock
We scheduled an appointment with the head of Piedmont Henry Hospital Women's Healthcare, Susan Oswalt, and we drafted an idea of we want to help the premature babies but did not know how. Miss. Oswalt proceeded with a tour of the neonatal unit of the hospital where we meet two of the nurses and got a chance to actually see the premature babies. After speaking with the nurses we found that the hospital mainly needed the “scent-socks” more than any other item. Though many premature babies have access to incubators, we see that they only help 80% of the time. The other 20% of the babies need the skin to skin contact with a parent. It has been scientifically proven that premature babies health improve when they are in the presence of the parent.
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However, the parents cannot be in the attendance of the premature baby causing the health of the baby to slowly decline. Because of this startling fact, we wanted to create a way for the parents to be in the presence of the baby without in the room.
After meeting with the nurses of the neonatal unit, they gave us real life testimonies on how the scent socks have saved the lives of the premature babies; the nurses suggested that the best way we can help is by creating and donating scent socks. We were touched by how the nurses said the scent socks were important in saving the premature babies lives. So we began to research more about the scent socks to understand the process of how the scent socks work and found out that the scent socks are placed in the parents clothing such as mother’s bra or the fathers pockets to gather the parents scent. Once the sock has accumulated the parents scent it is then placed in the incubator alongside of the premature baby. The baby then smells the scent of the parent in the incubator on the scent sock. The smelling of the scent helps to trigger the movement of the jaw in the premature baby, making the baby believe that the parent is present (skin-to-skin) allowing the baby to relax and let the body function as needed.
With the fact that the scent sock will save lives we decided to make it our top priority to create as many as we can and donate them to neonatal units at various hospital.
To create the socks, we gathered and purchased the materials needed that are safe for the preemie babies such as hypoallergenic fiberfill and non-flammable baby socks. With those materials we started our first prototype of how we wanted to make the scent-socks. At we just did a simple oval shape to see how the doll would turn out. We then tried to take it up a notch and change a simple oval to a bunny rabbit. Along with the help of one of our teachers we decided to change the look of the dolls to represent a miniature life-like baby, a companion for the incubated baby. After finding the final look of the scent sock we began creating them in majority.
To help involve our community in our project we hosted a preemie session, in which speakers from Piedmont Henry Hospital spoke to the 11th and 12th grade young ladies at Stockbridge High School educating them about the reality of premature babies and how the majority of the premature births are from teenage pregnancies. After we hosted various Sock-o-Thons in which students and teachers volunteered to help create the scent socks as a whole, through this we created over 200 scent socks. Which we have donated to the Piedmont Henry Hospital
recently.
However, the parents cannot be in the attendance of the premature baby causing the health of the baby to slowly decline. Because of this startling fact, we wanted to create a way for the parents to be in the presence of the baby without in the room.
After meeting with the nurses of the neonatal unit, they gave us real life testimonies on how the scent socks have saved the lives of the premature babies; the nurses suggested that the best way we can help is by creating and donating scent socks. We were touched by how the nurses said the scent socks were important in saving the premature babies lives. So we began to research more about the scent socks to understand the process of how the scent socks work and found out that the scent socks are placed in the parents clothing such as mother’s bra or the fathers pockets to gather the parents scent. Once the sock has accumulated the parents scent it is then placed in the incubator alongside of the premature baby. The baby then smells the scent of the parent in the incubator on the scent sock. The smelling of the scent helps to trigger the movement of the jaw in the premature baby, making the baby believe that the parent is present (skin-to-skin) allowing the baby to relax and let the body function as needed.
With the fact that the scent sock will save lives we decided to make it our top priority to create as many as we can and donate them to neonatal units at various hospital.
To create the socks, we gathered and purchased the materials needed that are safe for the preemie babies such as hypoallergenic fiberfill and non-flammable baby socks. With those materials we started our first prototype of how we wanted to make the scent-socks. At we just did a simple oval shape to see how the doll would turn out. We then tried to take it up a notch and change a simple oval to a bunny rabbit. Along with the help of one of our teachers we decided to change the look of the dolls to represent a miniature life-like baby, a companion for the incubated baby. After finding the final look of the scent sock we began creating them in majority.
To help involve our community in our project we hosted a preemie session, in which speakers from Piedmont Henry Hospital spoke to the 11th and 12th grade young ladies at Stockbridge High School educating them about the reality of premature babies and how the majority of the premature births are from teenage pregnancies. After we hosted various Sock-o-Thons in which students and teachers volunteered to help create the scent socks as a whole, through this we created over 200 scent socks. Which we have donated to the Piedmont Henry Hospital
recently.