Overall Research Project Description Approximately 360,000 premature babies are born in the US each year, which means 1 in 10 babies are born before the 37th week of the 40-week gestational period (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2022). This pre-term birth rate is among the worst of high-resource nations (March of Dimes 2021 Report Card, 2021). Moreover, premature delivery often results in the baby requiring time in a hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The NICU provides premature babies with crucial medical assistance that is necessary for the baby’s health and survival. However, the NICU also creates many barriers for mothers to participate in essential activities including breastfeeding and kangaroo care. Kangaroo care is a method of holding a baby that involves skin-to-skin contact. This activity has been shown to promote breastfeeding and increase breastmilk supply, which in the NICU may be inhibited by biological and environmental barriers. Research has shown that mothers who give birth prematurely are less likely to initiate breastfeeding and the duration in which they breastfeed is shorter compared to mothers who give birth to full-term babies. Thus, the goal of this project is to address this problem by creating a series of garments that would help to facilitate kangaroo care in the NICU. As a result, the garments would help to promote breastfeeding (and milk expression) for mothers and their premature babies in the NICU environment.