Kindness Is Sewn Into Them

When my daughter was seven weeks old, she was diagnosed with a medical condition that required wearing an ugly harness under her clothes to fix her dislocated hip. This meant that she had to get a load of specialised clothing to fit over the top, and a lot of the lovely things we’d been given as gifts when she was born were no longer useful.

I’m quite handy, so I managed to make a lot of clothes for her, but I was still disappointed by the loss of some lovely clothes, in particular one trousers-and-top outfit with little ducks on it. I wondered if I could modify the little trousers, and my mum suggested writing to the company, a small independent one, to see if they could send me some scraps of fabric to fill in the gaps. I sent them an email, explaining the situation, and they got back to me right away asking how much I needed.

Thinking I was likely to only get tiny offcuts, I asked for just a foot square. I offered money, but they refused to take any. A few days later, I got a full metre square in the post — enough to make a whole new pair of modified trousers — and some little t-shirts, too. I also didn’t have to take apart the existing trousers, so when she came out of the harness a few weeks later, she could go back to wearing them. That company is now one of my favourite places to buy baby clothes.

Finding out that your tiny baby is unwell is such a frightening experience, but it’s amazing how willing people are to help you out.