The Story Behind The Ollie Swaddle
Video Transcript:
Several years ago, I was a single foster parent for this amazing little infant named Oliver. And when he came to me, he was about three months old, but developmentally he was probably, maybe only a couple weeks. He was really struggling just with the basics of eating, sleeping; just basics of getting by, and he was on the verge of being labeled “failure to thrive”, which meant that he would have to be hospitalized.
So, at this time I was actually working for the county, local county, and we were setting up these facilities around the county that specialize in working with drug-exposed and trauma-exposed infants. So, I was kind of immersed in this world and I also had access to a great multidisciplinary team, and one of the team members was Dr. Kiti Freier Randall. And so, I met with her multiple times and she did assessments with Oliver and one of the things that we really discussed was the importance of swaddling. And I thought, “This is something I know I can do.” And I went out and got every swaddle on the market and anything I could do to help my son, and nothing worked.
He would sweat, nothing could contain him properly and he would just scream, and it was miserable. And I could see some of the needs that he had. I knew he needed a certain kind of pressure on his muscles. I knew he needed to have something that wasn’t making him so hot that he would wake up, or he would wake up sweaty.
There was nothing out on the market that could meet the needs of my son, so I set out and I created this thing for him. And I didn’t know what it was called at this time; it’s now called the Ollie. But I created this thing for him and once he started using it, I started seeing these dramatic changes in him. He started sleeping, and that was the most important thing: is starting to get these couple of hours of sleep. And once he could sleep, then he could eat. And once he could eat, then we could work on things like bonding and attachment and developmental milestones and tummy time. I started seeing these incredible changes in him and it was amazing to witness and to be a part of, and it was an honor to be in the life of this little boy.
And, eventually Oliver was adopted by a beautiful, amazing family, and it really gave me the opportunity to look at how his life had been changed and I knew I wanted to have an opportunity to make the difference in the lives of other infants and share this with infants and parents all over the world.
And we’ve gotten such wonderful feedback from parents and families who love their Ollie and tell us that it has made a difference in their lives and in the lives of their little ones. Our Ollie family means the world to us and they are the reason why we do what we do. And we’re committed to having more opportunities to make a difference in the lives of little ones and create new products and continuing to build our relationship with our amazing Ollie family.