Once upon a time, Josef Alexander Fedora lived in a safe, protected place.

During his first few weeks of life, Josef grew undisturbed inside his mother's womb. Sometimes, his butterfly movements made her giggle. Other times, his tiny body rolled around inside her like a little ball.

Then, on Nov. 14, 1999, after eight months, he stopped moving.

Although his life ceased before he tasted his first gulp of fresh air, Josef still has managed to impact the world through his mother.

When her boy died, Leticia Fedora could find no clothing suitable for burial. She never forgot how painfully perplexing that was.

So, in July, Fedora, 44, of East McKeesport, founded the first Pennsylvania chapter of Newborns in Need, a nonprofit, faith-based organization whose members sew, knit and crochet clothing for undersized, often premature, babies like Josef. A second chapter formed in Harrisburg early this year.

Since 1992, when the charter group started in Houston, Texas, 25 chapters have sprung up across the country.

Fedora's group, the southwestern Pennsylvania chapter, consists of about a dozen members who gather on the third Tuesday of each month at St. Robert Bellarmine parish in East McKeesport. Mostly mothers, aunts and grandmothers, the members range in age from 35 to 55, Fedora said.

They handcraft teeny "onesies" (one-piece undergarments that combine T-shirts and briefs), blankets, caps, sweaters, booties and special gowns with Velcro openings on one side and down the 7-inch chest area.

"They're for babies who are in neonatal intensive care so that its easier for [hospital personnel] to get to them [in an emergency]," Fedora said.

Most of the items are created from patterns developed by the national chapter. According to the Web site, www.newbornsinneed.org, an 11-week-old preemie's weight may register zero on a standard hospital scale to as much as 7 pounds. The circumference of the head may be as small as 2.5 inches or as large as 13 inches. The chest may be less than 4 inches across to 12.9 inches.

The patterns are available to the public for $6.50 per set at the organization's Web site, Fedora said. The miniscule gowns, which are the organization's unique design, are being tested by the staff at Allegheny General Hospital.

Hospital spokesman Dan Laurent said the gowns were being used and "are well-received by the nurses."

Besides Allegheny General, mothers at Sister's Place, a single parents shelter in Clairton, and those at the Latrobe Area and Westmoreland Regional hospitals have received most of the 30 newborn and several burial layettes that Fedora's group delivers in specially decorated baskets.

In January, though, at least one set went to the Alfieri Funeral home in Wilmerding.

"I think it's a wonderful program," Funeral Director Rose M. Alfieri Castagnola said about Newborns in Need. "It's a ministry. They're reaching out to people in need. It's healing for people who have gone through [the loss of a baby]. It's been a healing for me." Her own baby boy died before birth in 1990.

In the mortuary business for more than 25 years, Alfieri Castagnola said that she used to tuck and fasten burial togs around the palm-sized bodies of premature infants.

She was grateful that Fedora's group was around in January when an infant who had been "perfect in every way" came in for burial.

The boy had been born after six months gestation and weighed 1 pound, 8 ounces. His body was slightly larger than a woman's hand, Alfieri Castagnola said, his lungs too small to sustain him.

The funeral director called Fedora that morning because she knew the group had been formed. But Fedora realized she had nothing available for the dead child.

Although her living room was usually filled with boxes of donated and handmade baby clothes, white cotton or flannel fabric printed with colorful toy trains, happy frogs or baby crabs, there was nothing appropriate.

Fedora said she got busy sewing.

"I knew that there was a baby that was going to wear [it]," she said. "I knew that there was a baby that needed clothes."

It took her and other chapter members two hours to complete the tiny cap, booties and gown. Now, as a matter of course, the group regularly creates burial layettes crafted from white satin, lace and frills, "like a christening outfit."

Along with the clothing comes a 10-inch-by-4-inch bunting meant to fold around the fetus or underdeveloped infant.

The situation brought back memories for Fedora of when she, too, was confronted with the heart-wrenching task of locating clothing for Josef, her still-born son.

"Nobody realizes that you cannot find anything to bury a newborn in," she said.

She finally dressed Josef in one of two oversized sleeper gowns meant for a full-term baby, which she'd purchased before he was born, and socks that a girlfriend donated. Then she wrapped him in a gift blanket from another friend.

Alfieri Castagnola, who made the funeral arrangements, had encouraged Fedora and her husband, Tim, to spend time with Josef and to dress him for burial.

Fedora has three other children, Jessica Waitman, 21; Victoria, 11; and Nikolas Andrew, 4. And though it has been nearly six years since little Josef died, Fedora keeps a lock of his black hair, the pictures she and Tim took at the hospital and the words of Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran scripted on the keepsake box holding their treasures:

When night comes, the flower fixes its petals and slumbers with love.

At dawn it opens its lips to receive the sun's kisses.

Bespeckled by quick dartings of clouds which come, but surely go;

The life of flowers is hope and fulfillment and peace; tears and laughter.

For more on the local chapter of Newborns in Need, call 412-823-4272 or e-mail swpa@newbornsinneed.org.

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