SUDBURY – Volunteers have made close to 1,000 hats for the Period of Purple Crying program.
It helps parents understand the period of increased crying most infants go through and the importance of never shaking a baby.
Among the volunteers was Diane Hayes who has knitted more than 11,000 hats for newborns in the Sudbury area.
"I was at the hospital delivering baby hats to the nursery and a nurse came after me and asked me if I would do knitting for other people and I said 'well I didn't really, I just do volunteer work,' and she said that they needed knitters for their special program of purple hates and she needed 100 hats. So I volunteered to make the hats," explained Hayes.
After the Health Unit receives the hats from volunteers, parents receive a new cap from their nurse, along with some strategies to use while caring for their newborn who might not stop crying for hours on end.
"Parents can try to soothe their infants, increasing carrying, comfort, talking, walking with their infant… that doesn't always work and sometimes infants resist soothing. So in that case, we want parents to know that it's okay to be frustrated and it's okay to put your baby down in a safe spot somewhere where they can be safe and you can walk away," said Nicole Stewart, Public Health Sudbury & Districts.
Stewart says the best thing to do is to calm down before you get even more worked up, as sometimes, frustrated parents resort to shaking their babies.
She says "shaking a baby can lead to serious and permanent damage and injury and also death."
The volunteers who knit the hats say each one takes between two and three hours to complete, and officials with the Health Unit say they are always looking for more donated hats.
