Our Story
"Our daughter Gisèle inspired us to create the Gigi Bib. Her strength and determination continues to inspire us every day".
Hi, I'm Chrissy, and this is my husband Tony.
We have two daughters — Lena and Gisèle (Gigi). We love being parents. But our journey to get here hasn't been an easy one.
We experienced fertility issues and the devastation of multiple miscarriages, but eventually we were able to conceive through IVF.
In 2017, we welcomed our rainbow baby Lena to the world. Then eighteen months later, we were lucky enough to have our our precious Gisèle too.
But as Gigi grew, we started to notice a few things that didn't seem right. She wasn’t reaching her milestones the way Lena had at the same age.
She was very hard to settle to sleep as a baby. Feeding her was the only way to get her to sleep, but taking off her bib would always wake her. She would cry for hours every night. It was heart-breaking.
I couldn't find a bib that was easy to remove with one hand to avoid waking her. They all either had fiddly press-studs, loud scratchy velcro or had to be pulled off over her head. Our whole family was fast becoming sleep-deprived and desperate!
So I set about designing my own unique one-handed, 'wake-proof' bib - one that would be so easy and quiet to remove while nursing Gigi, that I could easily transfer her straight into bed without waking her.
At four months old, Gigi was diagnosed with three vision impairments. And instead of sitting upright, she was still floppy in her upper body. She took a long time to roll and has never crawled.
We desperately wanted to believe it was just a global developmental delay, as the doctors suspected. But in our hearts we knew that something more was at play.
After countless scans, blood tests and genetic testing, our fears were confirmed. Gigi was diagnosed with an extremely rare genetic condition called Mosaic Trisomy 20.
We were devastated. This wasn’t the life we had imagined for our baby.
There are so few cases of Gigi’s condition that her doctors don't know what it means for her future. The not knowing is the hardest part.
What we do know is that she is loved. And with the support of her family and her amazing specialists, educators and therapy team, she'll live a happy life.
Thanks for stopping by, and for reading our story. We hope the Gigi Bib makes your life a bit easier too.
