Skilled Doctor Sews A Baby Blanket As A Present To Every Newborn He Delivers

Mar 29, 2020 by apost team

Dr. Erik Bostrom, a family medicine doctor at Riverwood Healthcare Center in Aitkin, Minnesota, sews a personalized baby blanket for every infant he delivers.

Dr. Erik Bostrom specializes in family medicine and obstetrics. According to Riverwood Healthcare Center's website, he graduated from medical school at the University of Minnesota, and chose to practice in a rural area and entered a special U program geared toward rural practice.

On his personal philosophy/approach to obstetric care, Dr. Bostrom says, "I believe that each patient is unique and requires individual attention, coaching, and guidance to achieve a positive childbirth experience. My goal with every pregnancy is to have a healthy mom and a healthy baby at the end! Delivering babies is the most rewarding part of my job."

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When he first started at the center, Bostrom thought it would be nice to give a personalized gift to newborns in hopes of building goodwill. A colleague suggested baby blankets, which had the doctor scratching his head at first. “I’ve sewed a lot of people, a lot of skin,” he told Star Tribune. “But I never sewed fabric.”

An experienced woodworker, Bostrom decided to give sewing a try. He watched a video and consulted with his mother and his sister-in-law, who has a small business making decorative pillows. “They taught me how to use a sewing machine. It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be,” he said.

At first, Bostrom sewed only the blankets, using soft, cuddly fabric on one side and flannel on the other. Then he sent them out to be embroidered with the baby’s name, date of birth, length, and weight.

When his go-to embroiderer moved out of the state, he taught himself to do embroideries. He found a secondhand, “very fancy” sewing machine that can do both regular stitching and embroidery, and learned how to operate it.

Bostrom spends three to five hours on each blanket, with the embroidery typically using about 20,000 stitches. He sews several blankets at once, then adds the embroidery later.

“If you had told me I would be creating gifts for people by sewing, I would have laughed at you,” he said.

“But making something for someone makes it that much cooler. I never thought sewing could be so much fun.”

Bostrom looks forward to making a few extra-special blankets in the years to come.

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