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.
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