"All Wrapped Up" MD Publishing OR today, spotlight on nursing
3/1/2011 12:00:00 AM by: Mandi Campbell
While working with expectant parents as a childbirth educator, Kim Stolte, RN was inspired to make life with a newborn baby just a little bit easier. She vividly recalls a particular class in late 2004 when a group of seven couples surrounded her in a semi-circle as she demonstrated the traditional up, down, tuck and fold swaddling technique. Swaddling is second nature to this labor and delivery, postpartum and newborn nurse who has been working at Providence Memorial Hospital in Hood River, Ore., since 1997. However, when she looked up, she saw bewildered expressions and mouths agape.
Her students wanted to learn how to swaddle their newborn babies properly, but it just looked so complicated. “There’s got to be an easier way,” she thought. Stolte let her knowledge of the needs of newborns and their parents guide her creativity. “I’m a sewer, so I went home and worked with a few real simple designs,” Stolte says. “Parents have all the receiving blankets they could ever use, so I didn’t want to develop a blanket. I wanted to develop something to make the blanket work better.”
A Business is Born
A few months later, in January 2005, Stolte went into business selling the Swaddle Keeper.
To create a Swaddle Keeper, Stolte strategically places Velcro on a triangular-shaped piece of fabric. The fabric comes in a wide variety of colors and designs. The Velcro secures the fabric and tightens the swaddle. A snug swaddle helps newborns—and their parents—get more sleep. Newborn babies have a startle reflex, which causes them to jerk their arms and wake up suddenly. When properly swaddled, the reflex is contained, and the newborn can sleep longer with fewer interruptions. The Swaddle Keeper also has a head support built in to make it easier to hold babies with undeveloped neck strength.
Stolte tried three or four prototypes, but the final product came closest to her original design. “It was really just a matter of tweaking the placement of the Velcro,” she says.
The Swaddle Keeper comes packaged with several more items to help parents get their babies to sleep and ease their anxieties about common troubling issues. A DVD, which she calls “the Kim Channel,” features Stolte giving concrete advice on how to soothe and care for newborns. She hopes that the information parents get from her DVD is just a repetition of the lessons they have learned from their doctors, nurses and books, but she knows that getting so much information before it is applicable can be overwhelming and confusing.
“Everything I teach in childbirth class is in the DVD,” she says. “All of the advice is very simple, but our society today doesn’t always respect or understand the importance of new parents’ need to have time alone and time to sleep.”
“Parents have the ability to take care of babies if we give them the tools to figure it out,” Stolte says. As a newborn nurse who works the night shift and a mother of three boys, she understands the hardships of sleep deprivation and the benefits of sleep. “Sleep is the number one cure for most ailments. The postpartum period puts so many demands on the body. Even just catnaps take the edge off and make the late night feedings easier.”
She intends for the Swaddle Keeper and all her advice to make parents realize the benefits of sleep so that they are more comfortable asking their friends and family to respect their need to sleep and relax after the baby comes home. Along with the Swaddle Keeper, she includes earplugs and an eye mask for the parents in her “Sleep in a Box System” to encourage them to take some time for relaxation. Her sleep system is like a “nurse in a box,” she says. And this nurse is wrapped up in minimal, eco-friendly packaging.
Nurturing Her Growing Business
Even once she figured out the design, contents and packaging of her product, Stolte still was uncertain about going into business. Her life as a full-time nurse and mother caused her to question the wisdom of adding more work to her already demanding life.
Positive feedback from people who tried the Swaddle Keeper encouraged her. Stolte was especially motivated to sell her product by fellow nurses who were already experienced and skilled swaddlers. They repeatedly told her, “This is the bomb!”
The Swaddle Keeper makes swaddling “easier for even those of us that are good at swaddling,” she explains. But the people who need help swaddling—the parents—are the ones who would benefit most from the product. Stolte recalls one mother who was hesitant to try the Swaddle Keeper because she did not think she needed another swaddling blanket. After trying it, though, the mother ecstatically reported that she had slept for nine hours for the first time in years. Once the product hit the shelves, it was clear that consumers agreed. Her product worked, and it was in demand.
Stolte’s popular product meant that she would have to turn to others to help her keep this business going. She refers to her sewers as “sew-at-home-moms.” She depends on four women who have young children at home to step up and help when she receives big orders.
Stolte’s biggest challenge is keeping the stores stocked. She sells the Swaddle Keeper online (www.swaddlekeeper.com), in several stores throughout the Pacific Northwest and even as far away as Texas and Louisiana. Storeowners often contact her to request more; however, her work as a nurse is very demanding, and she loves that work the most. She has considered going back to school to earn a degree in business, but she loves being a nurse too much to give it up. Instead, she is considering hiring someone to help her market the product and manage the business. “I’m a great nurse with a great product, but that doesn’t equal being a good business person,” she explains.
Her True Calling
Stolte is a good nurse because she sincerely cares about her patients. She knows that her time with them in the hospital has the potential to affect their lives positively once they leave her care. Just as Stolte’s business is the result of her desire to help parents cope with the challenges of bringing home a new baby, her success as a nurse stems from the pleasure she gains from changing people’s lives for the better.
Stolte’s own experiences giving birth to her first two sons led her to pursue an education in nursing. “Ironically, the first nurse was not very good. She didn’t talk, and she smelled like smoke. My second nurse, however, was very helpful. She had me changing positions and was very attuned to my needs, always moving to the right place at the right time,” she remembers. The contrast between the two nurses made her realize that “someone could make a big difference just by smiling,” and that she was well suited to become a good nurse.
Stolte had originally wished to become a teacher but decided nursing would likely provide her with more job security. Now she realizes that “nursing is a kind of teaching—it is about information sharing.” Her passion for caring for others by sharing her knowledge is evident through her work as a nurse and her thriving business. She explains that the best part of nursing is “making a difference. Being really supportive can have a life-changing effect on a woman’s life. I am encouraging and supportive so that she can have good self-esteem, and good self-esteem makes a better mom.
Quick Facts about Kim Stolte
Favorite Music: Country Western and Rock and Roll
Preferred Reading: Detective novels; she recently enjoyed “61 Hours” by Lee Child and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson
Favorite Food: Sushi
Favorite Vacation Spot: Anywhere on the water; loves the Columbia River Gorge
Other Hobbies: Skiing in the winter and biking in summer
SwaddleKeeper Baby Sleep System
541 380 1389
1767 12th St. #107
Hood River, OR 97031
www.SwaddleKeeper.com
