After ten years in the Army, as a linguist, intelligence specialist, and finally a medical evacuation pilot through multiple Iraq deployments — leaving the military felt like whiplash. One day I was a soldier. The next, a housewife and mother.

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I was three months from delivering my second son, Bret, when I took my toddler for Christmas photos at the department store. At checkout, the cashier asked if I was having a Christmas baby. I laughed. "I hope not, he's not due until February 16."

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I had no idea how much was about to change.

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The neonatologist said Bret was the sickest baby he had ever seen leave the NICU alive. He came home with spastic quadriplegia cerebral palsy, hydrocephalus, cortical blindness, seizures, scoliosis, and a list of other diagnoses that would define the next six years of our lives, marked by more hospital stays than I can count.

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After fighting to keep him alive, he eventually grew into a little boy. He suffered frequent infections that left him in hospitals for weeks at a time. As a mama who desperately wanted to comfort her baby, there was a little I could do. In the hospital I grew to hate the dreaded hospital gown that left my son exposed and uncomfortable. While I would sit at his side waiting for his body to heal, I would take knit pajamas that I had purchased at the store and cut them up the sides. I sewed snaps so that we could snap him into pajamas that a typical little boy would wear. It was a small thing. But it was a way for me to provide comfort and dignity to a little boy who suffered so much. 

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My son passed away in 2013. My heart has healed, and it’s time for me to do something for other children who face terminal and chronic illnesses that frequently leave them hospitalized. My vision is to make these pajamas for children in hospitals to give them a small amount of dignity and comfort in spite of the struggles they face. 

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-Katie Bigelow

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