The idea for Mommy Moxie came in June of 2009. Being married to an ICU nurse, I had waddled up onto the unit to bring my husband lunch while eight months pregnant and happened to catch something going on in one of the rooms; let’s just say it wasn’t pretty and involved a large amount of bodily fluids. I asked him what happened to the gown after patients were done wearing them and he informed me they went to be washed by the housekeeping department. Of course, my next question was, “do they have separate gowns for the labor and delivery unit?”, to which he answered “no”. Ewww! I was not wearing a gown that someone had bled all over, vomited, urintated/defacated or died in! Not on one of the biggest days of my life! I went home and promptly hopped online to see if there were maternity hospital gowns out there, but the prices scared me. I then asked my husband if I could borrow one of the hospital gowns for a pattern, and after a couple of drafts, designed my own gown, based on one approved by the hospital in a pattern that was definitely “me” and that no one had ever worn.
When I was forty weeks and two days, my OB decided to induce. I went in at 6:30 am to the labor and delivery unit, and when the nurse handed me a standard hospital gown, I informed her I had brought my own. I received an uplifted eyebrow, but she said okay and walked out of the room to let me dress. Once I was dressed, the nurse re-entered the room and gasped! She then proceeded to pull all the other nurses on the unit into the room to check out my gown. They asked a lot of questions and a couple suggested that I make more of them. When my OB came in to check on me, she complimented my gown and told me if I ever decided to start a business making them to let her know. During labor, the gown was a dream and the pictures afterwards look great. I couldn’t have been happier-that’s my husband, me in my gown, and my son below.
Fast forward to December of 2009. My son was then four and a half months old and I had been taking him to work with me every day when I was laid off due to the economic downturn. Not wanting to put him in day care, I thought back to when it had been suggested that I start a business making gowns. Since then, I had also been making bibs, burp cloths, carrier covers, bib caddies and other baby items for myself and a few friends. I was about to start my last semester of my degree, and needed a senior project…viola, the idea of blogging about starting my company, writing a business plan and actually creating a business came to be. My project was approved in January of 2010 and this blog will chronicle the process from start to launch. Stay tuned for more info, but in the meantime, check us out on Twitter (@MommyMoxie) and soon on Facebook.