Holiday Warmth Is Wrapped in a Blanket

When babies in the neonatal intensive care room of Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center go home--some in the throes of cocaine withdrawal, others having tested positive for HIV--they will leave a little warmer, with at least one holiday gift: a handmade blanket.

The county Probation Department on Tuesday teamed up with Binky Patrol Comfortable Covers, a national nonprofit group based in Laguna Beach, to provide hand-crocheted, knitted and quilted blankets to the newborns and older children spending the holidays in the hospital.

“Usually when you think of probation, you think of guns and badges, negative things. We’re trying to . . . show these kids and their families that someone put a lot of time and love in for them,” said Wini Jackson, community outreach coordinator for the Probation Department.

The kids need the warmth. The national percentage of babies born with low birth weight is 1%. At King/Drew, more than 10% of the 2,000 babies born each month are below the standard range. At 2 to 3 pounds, their heads are sometimes barely the size of tennis balls, nurses say.

King/Drew neonatal specialist Richard Findley said there are a variety of reasons for the low birth weight, but drug use and lack of prenatal care are key.

Though King/Drew has volunteers who feed the babies and give them human warmth when families can’t be there, Findley says the nurses are still overworked and the babies need more human contact. And more blankets. That’s where the Binky Patrol comes in.

The organization’s Westside chapter, one of about 150 across the country, provides its handmade quilts in all colors, styles and sizes to local shelters and hospitals. The quilters range in age from 6-year-old Brownie troop members to senior citizens.

Westside chapter founder Kim Wadsworth says the love can be seen in the careful stitches. She gave out more than 60 blankets Tuesday to a variety of children up to age 14, but she said she was most overwhelmed by the newborns. “They were just so vulnerable. If they have something to go home wrapped in, just any kind of positive energy, they need it. They’re fighting so many elements,” she said.

Findley agreed. “It would make a difference for us if the [babies] didn’t come from so many risks.” It would make difference for taxpayers as well, he added.

Another child Wadsworth presented with a blanket Tuesday was 1-year-old Gina Avalos. A reserved girl with dark brown hair, Gina has been at King/Drew for nearly three weeks with a series of infections.

Her mother, Dolores Avalos, said she had stopped working to take care of her daughter and already told her two older children that there won’t be any Christmas presents this year.

“Three weeks of being here, you can only do so much,” Avalos said. But smiling at the stitched winter-scene quilt, she added, “at least Gina is getting something. . . . As a mother, it’s very good.”