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Dear Debbie...

I won an IV layette and regular layette from Baby Blog Addict recently. I received them in the mail yesterday. First of all, I have to say that was incredibly fast for a custom order- very impressive. But, perhaps most importantly, I wanted to let you know just how beautiful they are. You really put a lot into each part of these. Every single detail is perfect and it is very clear that you really care about what you are doing. I would have loved these when my twins were in the NICU, but luckily they were both well over 5 lbs so things were reasonably easy to find (but still very expensive). I am going to find someone who can put to good use the blue layette, it is just too precious to go to just anyone. I know whoever uses it for their baby boy will just LOVE it. The pink one was also going to be donated, but for having almost 2 year old twins, the girl looked at it and brought me her cabbage patch doll and wanted to dress her in the pink "jammies". I did let her and she was tickled.

You do incredible work and I sent your info/website up to the local NICU that my twins were in (used to work at that hospital) and they were VERY thankful to have a place to now order things for itty bitty babies from.

Thanks again!

Brianne Gibson

Is It Really Fall Already?

Where did summer go? Sometimes I swear I spend so much time in the basement the world moves along faster than I think! This summer seems to have just disappeared! Be sure you read Brooke's Blog to see what has been happening with Elliot!

We have been working on lots of new things for Elliot's Preemie Tees! We will be rolling out several new products very soon! The one I am most excited about is our new website!!! It is going to be awesome thanks to my awesome and smart son-in-law and my artsy, super talented daughter! It should be ready by the end of September. (I hope!) It is going to be super cool and the thing you will notice the most right off is how the awesome graphics will build the Preemie Tees right before your eyes! so be watching for that...you won't want to miss it!

In the next few weeks we will have several new products in our preemie clothes line, a dress, diaper cover and pants! We are also building new fabric offerings including a new selection of thermal cotton knits for the cooler weather months.

Also, we will be branching out into other areas not necessarily related to Preemies. Everything we do is because it relates to our personal journey and what we found we needed. One thing that was a particular interest to Brooke is her sense of fashion and the lack thereof in the diaper bag department! Diaper bags are in fact...ugly. She wanted a diaper bag that was fun! So we made her one. And like everything we do...one thing led to another and we made a few more as gifts for friends and neighbors who drooled over our handmade creations. Then one day my neighbor's sister, who was a recipient of one of the above gifts, suggested that we SELL the diaper bags. "No seriously, she said, I have people stop me everywhere I go and ask me where I got it. If you give me your business card I could sell a ton just by walking around the mall!" So we will be launching our amazing diaper bags that are very functional and beautiful in the next few weeks. What do you think about a matching monitor bag?

It is almost Halloween time again! For those who don't know we offer NICU friendly Halloween Costumes and those will be available in the next few weeks. We will have returning our Cat, Pumpkin and Ghost along with a few NEW ones! Stay tuned for a sneak preview! We will get pictures up for you to see as soon as we have them.

I have almost gotten the new preemie toddler sized training pants down! It has been a bit more challenging than I expected. And we don't want to put anything on our website to sell unless it is the best we can do! After dozens of test and feedback from customers who participated in the test we finally have it about right! We have been able to figure out how to make them as simply as possible and that is a good thing for pricing! Our prices will be low like all our other products. To give you an idea look at other training pants prices which are comparable to what we found out there on the web! We also figured out that the gap in the market is for toddlers who are ready to potty train but are still in clothes size 12-18 months. Our training pants will fill this gap! Anyway we hope to have them available for purchase by the end of September! Yay!!!

As you can see we have been working super hard! We love what we do and we are so glad that we can use our tough times and trials to bless others who have to go through what we did. One thing you can know with certainty is that we "get it!" We know what it's like and isn't that what life is all about to use your experience and wisdom to bless others? Pay it forward!

Elliot's Preemie Tees Video

My son, Brent, made this video for me just before leaving on a two-year mission for our church. We only had one week to work on it between his last day of work and leaving on his mission. It isn't perfect, but I think it is wonderful!

Thank you Brent for all of your hard work, love and a gentle spirit that allowed you to create such a warm, touching and heartfelt production. I think you were able to capture the heart and soul of what we do! Thank you and I love you so much!! I will miss you!

A Word About the Music
If you LOVE this music like we do then you can find her amazing and uplifting music on her website - Hilary Weeks. Hilary wrote these songs long before Elliot was born. We have known her and loved her and have been her fans for a long, long time. Little did we know what impact her music would have on us. Brooke and BJ listened to these songs on the drive to and from the NICU everyday. They say that Hilary's music gave them as sense of peace and calm during this very difficult time. We are so grateful to Hilary for her beautiful music and lyrics - Thank you Hilary!

A Word About Artistic Property
Please be respectful of other's talents and do not reproduce the video or music without permission. Talented people deserve to have their time, talents and gifts respected.

Thank you!

Extra! Extra! Read All About Us...

Recently Elliot's Preemie Tees has gained some media attention. We are so happy that we are beginning to be recognized for our story and the impact it has had on our lives. We do what we do because of the the trials we experienced. We hope that from our experiences we are able to bless others who are having the same experiences.

I am re-posting the full article here for you to read and you can click on the link (article title) to go to the full article. Feel free to leave a comment here or with the article:


Preemie clothes fill a big need
By Elizabeth Stuart
Deseret News
Published: June 2, 2008
CEDAR HILLS — It almost didn't look like a baby, the fragile little body, naked beneath a mass of tangled wires and tubes in the neonatal intensive care unit. She couldn't touch him. She couldn't feed him. Her son, born 10 weeks premature, teetered so precariously on the edge of life that she was almost afraid to let herself love him.

"It's hard to feel like a real mother when you can't take care of your baby," said Brooke Cardon, 26, of the harrowing weeks her son, Elliot, spent in the NICU after he was born June 9, 2005. "I felt so helpless."

Debbie Besselievre, Cardon's mother, couldn't stand to watch her daughter hovering so wistfully over Elliot's incubator. The thought came to her, as if in answer to prayer: If only Cardon could dress her little boy like a healthy, full-term baby, then mother and son would bond.


Debbie Besselievre of Cedar Hills plays with grandson Elliot Cardon, who inspired her clothing line for premature infants. She creates customized clothes for babies in intensive care units all over the country. (Jason Olson, Deseret News)

That was the beginning of Elliot's Preemie Tees, a Cedar Hills-based company that specializes in customized clothing for premature babies.

Besselievre quickly discovered that the majority of clothing manufactured for premature infants drowned Elliot, who weighed only 1 pound 12 ounces at birth. Smaller styles either didn't accommodate Elliot's IV or "looked like something an alien would wear," she said.

"Elliot looked so scary with all those tubes and monitors," said Besselievre, who manages Elliot's Preemie Tees out of her basement. "I thought maybe if Brooke could dress him in normal, cute baby clothes, it would relieve some of the fear that he wasn't going to make it."

So, armed with 25 years sewing experience, the new grandmother went to the drawing board.

She researched preemie sizing online, bought the fabric store out of preemie-sized patterns and, with the help of a NICU nurse, took little Elliot's measurements. After that, all it took to make Elliot the best-dressed baby in the NICU was a quarter yard of fuzzy fabric and some colored snaps.

Besselievre fine-tuned the details of the little tees using Elliot as a guinea pig. A tag was too scratchy for his sensitive skin, so she ironed a label on the outside of his clothing. The oxygen tube got in the way when she tried to pull a tee over his head, so she made the outfits snap over each shoulder.

"Elliot's favorite trick was to loop his finger around the oxygen tube and pull it out of his nose," she said. "That's where we got the idea to make the sleeves so they could cover his little hands."

Now Besselievre, through Elliot's Preemie Tees, is dressing babies in intensive care units all over the country.

Some say the clothes do more than keep the babies looking cute and cuddly. According to an observational March of Dimes study, parents who are able to clothe their premature babies develop a bond through caring for their child that they otherwise don't experience.

"A mother that has a baby in a newborn nursery feeds the baby, changes the baby and cleans the baby," said Laura D'Alessio, a registered nurse who works in the NICU at Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York. "In the NICU, parents don't get that interaction. A lot of times they feel a total disconnect because doctors handle everything and they don't have much to do with the care of their baby."

D'Alessio was searching for preemie clothing that wouldn't interfere with hospital care when she stumbled upon Elliot's Preemie Tees online. She keeps a stash of the little outfits on hand to pass out to struggling parents.

One young mother, D'Alessio said, was having trouble producing breast milk for her baby in the NICU. D'Alessio gave the woman one of Elliot's Preemie Tees to try on her little girl. The baby's skin was too sensitive to leave the outfit on, but the mother took it home with her.

The smell of the baby on the clothing triggered something in the mother, she said.

"It was the most amazing thing," D'Alessio said. "She took that home with her and it helped her to produce enough milk to feed her baby."

Stories like that, Besselievre said, inspire her to keep sewing. The grandmother decorates her sewing room with photos, sent to her by grateful parents, of babies wearing her homemade outfits.

"We just feel so blessed that Elliot's alive and healthy," Besselievre said. "We just feel a tremendous need to give back and help other people who are going through a difficult circumstance. We know how hard it can be."

E-mail: estuart@desnews.com
© 2008 Deseret News Publishing Company | All rights reserved

Elliot's Preemie Tees Price Comparisons

At Elliot's Preemie Tees, we strive to give you the best deal possible on clothes for your preemie. Below, you can find a comparison between our average competitor's prices and our prices.

Item	Elliot’s Preemie Tees	Compare Us To Other Preemie Stores*
IV Tee	5.99	7.99
IV Body Tee	8.99	9.99
IV Gown	11.99	13.95
Tees	4.99	6.95
Body Tee	5.99	9.50
Gown	10.99	24.95
Hat	2.99	3.95
Bib	1.99	4.99
Layette	17.99	27.95
IV Layette	17.99	25.95
Shirt Set	10.99	12.95
Dresses	9.99	15.00
Diaper Cover	3.99	6.95

We have said that we have the lowest prices anywhere on the internet for NICU Clothes for Preemies. Recently we set out to prove our position by gathering data on 5 of our biggest competitors. So that we do not draw negative attention to any of these companies individually who, I believe, are working to provide more choices to preemie parents, I decided to do a generic comparison. We took the prices of comparable items from each of these companies and averaged them together. So these prices are an average of the total prices of the 5 companies. In every case but one, the items we used for comparisons started out higher than Preemie Tees™. The only price we found lower than Preemie Tees™ was a hat for $1.99. It is a single knot hat and of not very good quality, but if you contact me I will tell you where to find this hat.

I was surprised, to say the least, that not much has changed in the 3 years since I looked for clothes for Elliot. I don't spend time looking at what my competitors are doing. This is the first time I have really taken a serious look since Elliot was born. So this was shocking to me to see that these teeny tiny clothes are still so very expensive. But please, don't take my word for it! Do your own comparisons! You will discover what our thousands of customers already know - We have the lowest prices and the best quality NICU Preemie Clothes on the market!

Preemie Halloween Costumes

Our customers have requested that we make Halloween Costumes for the preemies in the NICU. This is a bit of a challenge because whatever we make cannot interfere with the care of the babies. After several tries we think we have come up with something that will work! A bib and hat combination. We have three styles to choose from a pumpkin, a ghost and a cat. As time goes by we will develop more styles but this looks like what will be available this year! Here they are:


The Cat


The Pumpkin


The Ghost

To order your Halloween Costume go HERE Watch for Christmas bib and hat sets!

Birthday Celebration and Our 500th Customer!

Wow! Elliot and Elliot's Preemie Tees are both REALLY growing! We hit these two milestones in the same week!

Let me tell you about the most important one first! Elliot is two years old!! Here a a couple of pictures to mark the event. This first one is a photo shoot we did for his party invitation the caption read; "Come Help Us Celebrate as Elliot Tumbles Head First Into the Terrible Twos!"






The next picture is of him at his party. I think he is the cutest toddler to ever live...but that's just me!












Our next important milestone was that Elliot's Preemie Tees reached our 500th customer. In honor of this monumental event this customer got her order FREE! And what an order it was too!!! Our lucky customer is Gloria Wilkinson of Redding California and her niece is expecting quints. That is right...5 babies! Two Boys and Three Girls!!! So this will really come in handy for them. I am so excited that they receive the free order, it couldn't happen to anyone better I think! If you would like to learn more about this wonderful and special family you can follow the pregnancy and delivery on their website www.wilkinsonquints.org

Congratulations Wilkinson Family!!!

Where Do You Find Your Fabrics?

I have had several customers ask me where I find our super cute fabrics. That is a very good question because it has a very hard answer. Our fabrics, especially knit fabrics, are very hard to come by! Out of all I have to do to run Elliot's Preemie Tees I would say this is the single most difficult task. I am telling you this not to scare you but to help you have an appreciation for the quality and number of fabrics that we carry!

The first thing is I had no idea how hard it is to find knits. Most fabric stores don't carry them and if they do the selection is very limited. I quickly came to know if I see it and I like it - I better buy it - RIGHT NOW! I cannot tell you how long and hard I looked for suppliers of knit fabrics, I even traveled to Los Angeles to the garment district, which gave a me few good leads.

It is not by accident that we carry a large number of prints to choose from - we did that on purpose! We wanted you to have choices!! When I set that goal I didn't know how hard it would be to achieve. You see, fabric mills do not want to deal with someone as "small" as I am. You have to be Wal-mart to get most of them to even talk to you. I am not kidding! I had so many people laughed at me I was starting to get a complex. When you call a fabric mill the conversation goes something like this -

"Hello, I am the owner of Elliot's Preemie Tees and I would like to purchase knit fabrics from you wholesale."

"How many yards are you planning to purchase of each print?"

"About 25 yards."

"What? Are you kidding me? We don't sell less that 500 yards per print!" (Some of them won't sell less than 100,000 yards! That is a LOT of Preemie Tees!)

And then they hang up! That happened to me about a dozen times, but undaunted I persevered and we now have several vendors who sell to me in much smaller quantities. This is the main reason that most places who care preemie clothing do not carry more than a few prints or colors. It is just too expensive to carry more when you have to buy hundreds of yards of fabrics to manufacture the clothes. And this is how I began to understand that this had to change.

There are several good things our customers enjoy because of the way we buy our fabrics. 1) More fabrics mean more choices! 2) Smaller yardages mean you are purchasing limited editions! You will not find your preemies clothes everywhere and because you pick the designs, fabrics and snaps - not everyone will have exactly the same outfits, so we really are "designer" in every sense of the word! We purchase no more than 25 yards of any one fabric and when that fabric is gone - it is gone. (The only exception to this is the solid colors.) If I try to repurchase a popular fabric later it is gone 99% of the time so I can't even get it if I wanted to so our fabrics turn around constantly. You may want to remember this when ordering - it might not be there when you come back later - when it is gone - it is really gone! 3) Lower prices for the customer because we sell directly to you the middleman is cut out and we can afford to offer lower price even with paying higher prices for the fabrics.

We really are on the cutting edge in Preemie Fashions! Nobody else does what we do - because they can't. Sometimes it is better to be small! But when I get bigger I still have plans for doing business just like I do now. I found a place that will let me design my own prints in smaller runs. I am looking forward to having my own designs - made just for Preemies. I think it is ironic that a small company would have the solutions for societies smallest customers - it is a perfect fit - a Preemie Fit!

Why We Make Preemie Tees

From time to time someone will ask me about Elliot's Preemie Tees. The questions that I get the most from non-preemie parents is "Why do you make Preemie Tees?" or "Is there a market for that?" Depending on how the question is asked I sometimes have to fight the urge to not to stare in disbelief at some people. But then I remember how dumb I was before Elliot came into my life. The short answer to these questions are, "I make them because I want to help others like us and, yes, there is a market for them." The long answer is what follows. I hope it will give you some insight into why we do what we do. Enjoy!

When Elliot was born he weighed in at a whopping 1 lb. 12 oz. He was so tiny I hardly knew what to do. The first time I saw him I was horrified, not because I thought he was ugly or anything, I just thought he was so small and there was an IV or wire coming out of every conceivable place. It was scary! What worried me more was the way my daughter interacted with him. She seemed afraid of him. Instinctively I knew that she needed to bond with him and fast. As a struggled to think of ways to help this happened I started to think about what "normal" parents do to bond with their babies. I realized that parents basic responsibilities, when it comes to caring for their babies, are to love, feed and clothe them. I knew Brooke loved Elliot. She was also working so hard to feed him by pumping breast milk and leaving it at the hospital and freezing it at home for later. So my next thoughts turned to clothes. Where could I find clothes for such a tiny person? Was there even such a thing? Would the NICU let her dress him? I had all these questions and more so I set out to find the answers. What I found shocked me and then made me angry. I found preemie clothes alright, but there wasn't much of a variety, the sizes were very odd, the quality not very good and the prices were high.

I did buy some clothes for Elliot and it cost me $14.99 for a tiny t-shirt and hat set. I was appalled. It was thin and not very well made. But it was kind of cute so I washed it and took it to the hospital. What happened next absolutely astounded me. This seemingly small act of dressing her baby was a huge milestone for Brooke and our whole family. She loved dressing him and he looked so much better and more like a regular baby that it completely changed the way she saw him. For the first time she began to think of him as her baby! It was a miracle!! Could clothes make that much difference? It turns out it does. The March of Dimes just did a study in New York and they found that bonding occurred faster if the Mom could dress the baby and the mom did better as a result and so did the baby. It improved the overall outcome. I know this because the NY Chapter of the March of Dimes contacted me about Preemie Tees and they told me about the study. They just proved what I had already witnessed for myself!

I had been a seamstress for 25 years. I had made prom dresses, blessing gowns, baptism dresses, wedding gowns, smocked and heirloom clothes for my children. My girls never wanted me to just make a dress from a pattern. They wanted this sleeve and that bodice and a different skirt. I was constantly remaking patterns into original designs. Brooke's wedding dress is a good example. There is nothing like it. Made from two patterns and part of it I pulled out of thin air. (This is a picture of her with my other two children, Brent and Ashley at Brooke's wedding.) The point is, if I could do this I could certainly make clothes for Elliot and do it better and cheaper. So that is exactly what I did. The patterns had to be simple and they had to go on easily and come off easily, because he couldn't be disturbed and messed with like a regular baby. So...I decided the "fun" of it had to be in the prints and not the designs. Designs...simple. Prints...fun! So I measured him and set out to design the first Elliot's Preemie Tee. I kept all of these measurements. When he grew so did the patterns.

The first set of clothes I brought to him in the NICU caused quite a stir. Everyone wanted to see them and my daughter couldn't wait to tell everyone "Look what my Mom made for Elliot!" All the nurses kept telling me, "You should go into business, there is a real need for preemie clothes that fit." It was fine to do for Elliot, I loved him and it wasn't any work because I was helping my Brookie. Could I really do this all day long, everyday for complete strangers?


With this thought in the back of my mind I made more clothes and changed the designs, perfecting the construction, trying this and seeing how that looked. Elliot didn't care and Brooke loved it. I could make 4 tiny t-shirts out of a 1/4 of a yard of fabric of a cost of about $1.50 each. That is when I got mad! Most people who know me know you never want to make me mad because that is when I get enough fire in my bones that I will actually DO something about it. It was about this time that the medical bills were piling up and Elliot was approaching the $250,000 dollar baby with more to come! How could anyone take advantage of the parents of preemies like that? How could they charge so much for their tiny little clothes that they grow out of in weeks? I had seen gowns for $25 to $30 dollars for these teeny weeny babies. It just wasn't fair!! And it made me mad to think people were taking advantage of people when they were the most vulnerable. That is how Elliot's Preemie Tees was born - cause I got mad!

And I did a lot of research. it took me 6 months to get everything together. The hardest thing was and still remains the fabrics. I decided early on to use knit fabrics exclusively. They are stretchy and have some give to them and they are soft. But the cute ones are hard to find. It is my single hardest task - to find cute fabrics! I also figured out that in the NICU parents lose all ability to make choices. they have no choice over anything in the NICU and for very good reason. But the fact remains it takes away the control leaving poor mommies and daddies feeling helpless. So part of our business model was to give choices back to parents by letting them choose what clothes their babies could wear. Most of what is out there is ugly - let's face it! And the choices are sometimes between ugly and uglier. The best compliment I have ever gotten came by way of a gift card note for a customer, it said:

"A girls is never too young to be concerned about her wardrobe, hope these clothes put you on the cutting edge in the NICU!"

I couldn't have been more thrilled!! This is exactly what I was hoping to achieve with Elliot's Preemie Tees. When a parent comes to our website they will pick a style of clothing and then choose a fabric, then finish it off with their choice of snap colors. With 8 styles, over 30 fabrics and 3 snap colors to choose from the possible combinations are in the thousands! Where else can you get choices like that? So what what we are helping parents to do is to order something that is made for their baby - made to order exclusively for your baby! There is nothing else like it anywhere!! We are, literally, a one-of-a-kind business for preemies.

Our sizes set us apart too. Don't believe me - go take a look for yourself! Preemie sizes are often 1-3 lbs, 4-6 pounds. There is a big difference between 1 pound and 3 pounds! Then to make it worse, most of the variety in preemie clothing starts at 6 pounds. If you have ever had a preemie then you know that 6 pounds is almost full grown and there has been a awful lot of time and NICU stay to get to 6 pounds. If you have to wait to get to 6 pounds to dress your Preemie that is a lot of bonding time, parenting and enjoyment that has been missed. Sadly, most of the retailers just don't get it! But we do! Our sizes are 1-2 lbs, 3-4 lbs, and 5-6 pounds. I found that when I made clothes for Elliot these sizes gave him enough room to grow without being too big and he also could wear them for a good amount of time before he grew out of them. We call this sizing, "Preemie Fit Sizing", because it fits, it is a simple as that.

We have been open for business for a little over a year now. The question remains, could I do this day in and day out for complete strangers? The answer is a resounding YES! First, you are not a stranger to me, you are a fellow traveler on a similar journey and your path is my path. Second, I have yet to make a dime from my business. so your clothes are really a labor of love for me. I do love it! I love making people happy and I love making a difference in their lives. I love getting notes and pictures, it keeps me going. Someday I hope to have a profitable business, I am sure I will, but it is perfectly ok with me the way it is!

I have big plans for Elliot's Preemie Tees! We are designing a NICU dress for little girls and some pants for boys. A diaper cover is in the works too! Some people have asked for smaller sized blankets so we are looking into that too. A big project for the future is a toddler line of preemie clothes. As you know, preemies grow differently than other babies and the clothes never do really fit. Elliot is always losing his pants - some days he crawls or walks right out of them! So we are looking into that too! I don't see us doing this for a few years though unless we get a really BIG investor. If you have an idea or suggestion you would like us to try - let us know. We are here just for you! You are what matters the most to us!