Eight Manchester Organizations Team Up to Create Baby Baskets
The Manchester Baby Basket
If you are pregnant or have a new baby and live in the Manchester School District, you can receive a free “Manchester Baby Basket”. Eight Manchester organizations, headed by the Manchester Ladies Society, teamed up to create the basket full of baby care supplies and information.
The Ladies Society intends this to be an on-going project and that from now on, every pregnant woman in Manchester will receive a basket. The contents may change each year, but every 2014 basket will contain a onesie, four pairs of baby socks, a bib, a headband (for girls), a handmade receiving blanket, a handmade hat, 6 baby washcloths, baby-safe laundry soap, 2 board books and a growth chart, all in a small laundry basket.
The Manchester Ladies Society cut out and edged close to 500 baby-sized washcloths. Each basket will contain 6 in a variety of colors.
In addition to the baby care supplies, each basket contains information from all of the Manchester agencies and groups that deal specifically with babies. This is one of the two goals for the baby basket, to collect in one place all the information that a new parent in Manchester could use, and to give it to them. New parents often times have no idea what resources for parents exist right here in our village, even if they have lived here their whole lives. Jessica Bushaw, president of the Ladies Society explains that this was what led her to come up with the Baby Basket idea in the first place, “I was handing out flyers for a fundraiser for an early childhood program and no one in town knew the program. I couldn't believe that something so good for infants and young children was not even known to a lot of people. My idea came from this.”
Theresa Herron and Michelle Gregory package up the baby-safe laundry soap. Each packet contains enough to do 16 loads of laundry.
Expectant families have a few different ways of requesting a basket. They can visit www.manchesterladiessociety.com/baby-baskets and use the on-line form. They can email manchesterladiessociety@gmail.com. Or, they can pick up a paper form at the CRC office or Manchester First Steps (both located at 410 City Road), fill it out and return it to either location. When their basket is assembled, they will be notified and they will be able to stop in the CRC office, whenever it is open, to pick it up. It will be waiting with their name on it.
Jessica Bushaw and Kristy Hammond roll and tie receiving blankets.
Bushaw was adamant that everyone who is pregnant receive one, regardless of income or number of children the mother already has. “If this is their first baby or their sixth, they deserve a basket." If they are pregnant with twins? They get two! Although their target is families inside the Manchester School District, The Ladies Society is also including families who live outside the school district but who send children to Manchester Schools through School of Choice.
The second goal for the baby basket is more of a long term goal. Bushaw stated, “My ideal basket would be everything a new parent would need for a baby for the first year of their lives. Clothes for every season, blankets, bibs, thermometer, nail clippers, and of course all the info needed to raise a baby in Manchester.”
The Civic Club and Community Bible Church donated baby socks. While most are in gender neutral colors, some will be used in baskets specifically for girl babies or boy babies.
She went on to say, “The Baby Basket is hard to explain to people. Some organizations really understood what we were trying to do, some not so much.” The Ladies Society hopes that once everyone sees what the Baby Baskets are and how they work this year, that next year more Manchester organizations will choose to participate and the Ladies Society will be able to expand the contents of the basket.
Receiving blankets handmade and donated by In Stiches, the group of knitters and crafters who meet Wednesdays at 6:30pm at the library.
In addition to the Manchester Ladies Society, the organizations contributing this year include the Men's Club, the Civic Club, the "Chain Gang", In Stitches, Community Bible Church and Manchester United Methodist Church. The CRC volunteered to act as a distribution point for the baskets. Local businesses including Unforgettable Photos and Andrews Family Chiropractic donated coupons and Linda’s Diner donated a gift certificate for each basket.
Dawn Chizek affixes a label to the back of a board book. More than 100 board books were donated by members of the community. Only books in good condition were selected. Each page of each book was washed, disinfected.
Handmade hats donated by the "Chain Gang", a group of Manchester knitters and crocheters who create and donate thousands of hats a year to hospitals for premie babies and chemotherapy patients.
Manchester Baby Basket ready to be delivered to the CRC for pick-up.
The Manchester Ladies Society meets once a month and all women are invited to join and/or attend meetings. Their next meeting is Saturday, Feb. 15th at 1pm in the Village Room.
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