I Got You, Babe My Handmade Toys Save Lives

DAWN’S TURNING CRAFT INTO COMFORT

- Fleur Guthrie

By day, she’s a mild-mannered registered valuer. But by night, she becomes ‘octo-lady’. At least, that’s what Dawn Harpur’s two teenage sons like to call her.

It’s all because the craft-loving Cambridge mum uses her spare time to crochet tiny colourful octopuses in an effort to soothe premature babies in neonatal hospital wards across the country.

The ‘octopals’ are used to help prevent the wee bubs from pulling out their life-saving tubes while in an incubator by grabbing onto the soft tentacles instead, which are thought to feel like an umbilical cord.

Dawn first heard about Octo Project, as it was then known, when a cousin in England sent her an article about hospitals trialling the hand-knitted sea creatures as therapeutic aids in 2016. Medical staff reported that they calmed babies, led to improved breathing and cardiac patterns and, as a result, increased the levels of oxygen in their blood.