As we left the hospital on Macario's second day of life, I placed the blankets over his car seat and thought to myself, “they’re in plain sight, so if anyone wants to stop me I’m giving them the opportunity to do so.”
The nurse who walked us out didn’t even bat an eye.
I felt a little guilty that I took them, but I couldn’t resist it. Macario had spent the majority of his hospital stay wrapped up in them, and I decided that it would be comforting to him if we could continue to wrap him up in the blankets when he got home. That seemed like a good enough reason for me to justify taking them, and that really was all the justification I needed because as his mommy I really wanted them as a keepsake from his birth.
Now a days he doesn’t need to be swaddled as much, but I still keep one of the blankets in my car for him. As I gazed at it on my way home from work last Friday evening an NPR segment began to play over the radio about hospital blankets!
I turned up the volume and listened closely as I remembered the day we left with ours. During the segment the narrator explained that a company called Medline Medcrest manufactures the blankets and sells them to hospitals at a relatively low cost. Good thing, as one mother admits to taking home TWELVE of the blankets!
As I listen I was given the impression that, although most hospitals don’t give the blankets away, they expect families to take the blankets home with them and are prepared for that. I guess that's why I was allowed to leave without the embarrassment of someone stopping us on our way out of the hospital.
Even though these blankets mean so much to me, I never knew or even wondered for that matter, where the blankets came from or who manufactures them. I’m not alone. You probably couldn’t meet someone in this country who hasn’t seen one of these blankets, but I’m sure most people would have no idea who makes them.
With the blankets being so popular, one would think that the company who manufactures them would want some credit, but Andy Mills, president of Medline Medcrest, says of childbirth that, “It’s such a beautiful event. It’s great to be a part of it, but we’re not the leading role in there.”
I guess that says it all.
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| Macario and his Hospital Blanket |
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