Warm and Fuzzy Gifts for Firstborn Babies

The ladies at the South El Monte Senior Citizen Center may never meet the crying, drooling babies who are born every day at County-USC Medical Center. But they think about them whenever they sit down to crochet.

The women, a group of about 30 senior citizens, have already crocheted about 300 knit caps to warm the tiny heads of every baby born at the hospital to a first-time mother.

“It gives us a warm, fuzzy feeling to do it,” said Berenice Coverston, 76, a retired bookkeeper who can crochet a cap in about two hours.

The South El Monte seniors are among dozens of volunteers from various groups who recently began working together to provide first-time mothers at County-USC a free “baby kit” that includes a car seat, clothes, an informational video, a diaper bag and a handmade blanket and cap.

On average, three babies are born to first-time mothers each day at the hospital.

In the past, the hospital gave all mothers--most of whom are poor immigrants without medical insurance--a bag of diapers, a T-shirt and some brochures on infant nutrition.

Beginning a week ago, county Supervisor Gloria Molina started a pilot program to give new mothers at the county hospital the expanded package, similar to those offered at many private hospitals. The most important element of the new package, she said, is an instructional video on nursing and nutrition.

“We have a lot of first-time moms,” she said. “And no baby comes with instructions.”

The package is offered only to first-time mothers because they have a greater need for the items than a woman who has already had a child, organizers said.

Many mothers who give birth at County-USC leave the hospital on an MTA bus, in some cases because they don’t have the car seat required to carry an infant in their autos. It is not required on a bus. For that reason, Molina said, her staff added a car seat to the kit.

Eventually, the supervisor found that many groups throughout the county wanted to add to the package.

When Molina’s staff approached the seniors at the South El Monte center, “the response was overwhelming,” said Jackie Raines, the senior services manager at the center.

“One woman knitted 130 caps in one week,” Raines said.

Molina’s office put up $200 for yarn and material, which is being supplemented by the volunteers.

For some, the work does not come easy. Gerry Moffatt, 87, a former mobile home park manager, suffers from arthritis and can knit just one cap a day. Still, she has produced 12 so far.

“It feels like we are giving of ourselves,” said Helen Wallace, 79, a former office clerk, who crocheted 10 caps in seven days.

The handmade receiving blankets in the kit are stitched together by the Hispanic Women’s Ministries of the Adventist Church of Southern California.

The Glendale-based group had already been making blankets for chronically ill children at three area hospitals when Molina’s staff asked the group to add to the baby kits.

Over the past three years, the women of the group--ages 14 to 88--have made and donated nearly 1,500 quilts and receiving blankets, many of them embroidered with personalized designs and messages. The material for the blankets is donated by the volunteers.

“These women wanted to be part of an outreach program to help whoever might have a child that needs to be wrapped up in a blanket of love,” said Anita Requenez-Moses, a social worker who heads the group’s blanket program.

Bertha Contreras, an 82-year-old grandmother from North Hollywood, has sewn 10 blankets so far for the program. They are the same type of blankets she used to make for her own children.

“I like to do it because it keeps me busy and it is going to someone who can use it,” she said.

Molina’s office put up $10,000 to pay for the car seats, the baby thermometers and the parenting videos. Gymboree Corp. donated baby outfits for the kits. Molina hopes her office can find other funding, such as money from Proposition 10--the 50-cent tobacco tax--to continue the program indefinitely.

Some of the mothers said the kit was the second-best thing they brought home from the hospital.

Lorena Trujillo, a textile worker from Huntington Park, said the car seat was much needed after she gave birth to her first child, Alfredo, on Dec. 21.

But she especially liked the pink blanket and the red and white knit cap in the kit.

“I really like the warm feel of the blanket very much,” she said as she cradled her baby at home recently. “But he is already growing out of his cap.”