Our Story
Most children's clothing is designed to be put on. Almost none of it is designed to be opened.
That is a small distinction until your child has a feeding tube or a central line. Then it becomes the difference between reaching a site in ten seconds and undressing a sleeping baby at three in the morning.
Meet the Founder
Lisa McMican Ryle
Founder & Engineer
I have spent nearly four decades as an engineer in automation. The work always comes down to the same questions: what has to move, where does it need to go, and what keeps getting in the way?
PediaTech grew out of an invitation to help with a medical device. The device was one problem. What I kept hearing about, from parents and from the nurses who care for their children, was another. Around every child with a feeding tube or a central line, the people who love and care for them were working against the clothing. They cut off snaps, put onesies on backwards, and lifted a sleeping child just to reach a site. No one had designed for it, because the number of children who need it is small.
Small is not the same as unimportant. These children spend long stretches in hospital and longer ones at home, and the families caring for them deserve things made with the same attention they give every day. So I approached it the way I would approach any system: start with the line, and build everything else around it.
I read every message that comes in, and I answer them myself. Tell me about your child.
— Lisa
What already existed
Adaptive clothing for tube-fed children mostly works the same way. Take a garment that was already designed — a bodysuit, a onesie — and add access to it. A snap here. An opening there.
It helps. It also leaves most of the problem untouched, because the garment was never designed around the thing that makes it difficult.
We started at the other end
Not how does a child get into this, but:
Where does the line leave the body? Where does it travel from there? Where do a caregiver's hands need to be, and how many times a day?
The garment came second. Everything in it followed from those three questions: a lined pouch that holds the line against the body, guides that route it away, sleeves that open for an arm line, and a garment that opens completely flat. How It Works explains each one in detail.
A deliberate choice
These are textiles, not medical devices. That is a deliberate decision, and it changes who can reach them. Families can purchase them directly, without a prescription or prior authorization.
Purpose-built access features, engineered into clothing that lets a child simply be a child, at the hospital, at home, and everywhere in between.
Why a kangaroo
A kangaroo carries her young in a pouch. So does every garment we make. You will find Elaroo™ on the PediaPouch™ of every one.
She began as a character in a story about a child who carried something, and who was carried in return.
Four garments. That is the whole line.
Two systems, one decision — where does the line leave the body. TubeWear™ for G and J tubes, with the pouch at the abdomen. LineWear™ for central lines, with the pouch at the chest.
We could make more. We would rather make these four properly.