the story behind the program +

• When my daughter Juliette was born, she was diagnosed with a life-threatening heart condition. She had multiple holes in her heart so large, she couldn’t breathe or feed on her own. She spent 72 days in the hospital NICU. I would visit her at least 3 times a day, while trying to maintain a normal life for my toddler son at home during a Global Pandemic.
  
  After I would put my son to bed, I would drive to Children’s Hospital LA and swaddle Juliette in our norani Snugababe SwaddleTM for the night. After a few weeks, I noticed the nurses started talking about the swaddle, not knowing I was the co-founder. One afternoon the doctors and the director of the NICU had come into my daughter's room to discuss her upcoming surgery and one of them noticed the swaddle and how calm she was.
  
  I stood by quietly while I listened to the nurse rave about the swaddle to the doctors and how she sleeps all night when swaddled. She asked me where I got it from so she can tell the other moms in the NICU to get some for their babies as well. That’s when I confessed it was my design, and that, if the nurses like using them, then we would happily donate enough swaddles for every child in the NICU.
  
  After we dropped off our donation, the director told me that one of the mothers in the NICU started crying when she got the swaddle as a gift. She confessed that her family was staying in shared housing close to the hospital and they didn’t have the means to purchase baby blankets or swaddles. She was so touched by the donation and so happy it was going to help her baby sleep better. It was at that moment we knew we had to do more.
  
  We created the donate a swaddle option here to allow people to donate a swaddle to a local hospital to a baby or family in need. We were immediately blown away at the number of swaddled purchased for donation, and were able to donate almost 300 swaddles to families in need in just 2 weeks. The hole in my daughter’s heart was eventually repaired and we graduated from the NICU, but I certainly left my heart there. The donation program is our small way of helping the babies there, and at hospitals around the world, sleep a little better. xoxo Ani