Between the wires for the monitors and having to hook up the tubing for her feeds, it's pretty important that her clothing have openings to make life easier. This means that pretty much anything with a zipper is a no-go. Unfortunately those were my favorite style of pjs / clothing for the boys!
Shortly before she was released for the NICU, I realized we didn't have enough clothing that would work for her situation. So Henry and I went out and bought every snap-up outfit the resale store had in stock for a newborn girl. And they work great - so many options to run wires or tubes through.
But we had gotten soooo many cute outfits that now seemed impossible for her to wear. I figured I could look online and see what the options were for modifying clothing we already had. I came across one Etsy store that sold modified onesies and ordered one to see if I liked the concept or not. It worked pretty well for the g-tube (which it was designed for), but the other wires were still problematic. It's hard to tell from the photo, but they are going out the bottom of her onesie and then up through the top of her pants - less than ideal...
But since it feels like we were getting close to losing the monitors (my optimism knows no bounds!) and their problematic cords, I thought it would be good to start trying to modify her clothes. My sister nicely loaned me her sewing machine and I started tinkering around. The onesie I bought basically looked like a slit in the fabric with a fancy edging over the top to make it look nice. I found out that some machines do buttonholes automatically and I thought maybe that would do the trick. Heather's machine has that option, but you can see it still took me a few (8?) tries to get a buttonhole done correctly on the test fabric.
Finally - I succeedeed! Also, I am not a seamstress by any means. I have mentioned sewing exactly once on this blog and my skills have not dramatically improved since then. Luckily my mother-in-law is a huge resource for sewing and she was helping me out via text messages. After I did this awful line of stitching thanks to the pins not cooperating (and stabbing myself with a pin), she suggested trying a glue stick instead of pins and it worked like a champ!
I didn't get a photo of the straight(er) line, but it looked much better. And I think I had the edging "flap" figured out pretty well. Time to bite the bullet and try it on a real piece of clothing!
And that's about when disaster struck...
I switched threads when I switched to the real clothing and I must have wrapped something wrong. It was a rat's nest of thread that pulled the onesie down into the machine. Grannie was ever encouraging and swore "it happens to the best of us!"
Besides the fact I somewhat mangled this particular piece of clothing at least twice, I did get the tube opening on there and made it look nice. Good thing this was a test run on a boring onesie!
And the onesie in action! It's a little hard to see because the tubing is white (milk is pumping through it), but you can see it coming out the slit in the shirt and running off to the right side of the photo. I think once we are free of all of the monitor wires, I'll be ready to start modifying all of her cute onesies for easy g-tube access. Can't wait for her to have all the wardrobe options! :)