Former Sequim resident Jennifer Stelmakh said she has never sewed so fast in her life as when she created the CozeeCoo.

This product helped her baby stop scratching himself after he was diagnosed with severe allergies and eczema triggers in 2019.

“Once I put it on him, he was just smiling because I couldn’t stop smiling,” Stelmakh said. “It worked and it was such a relief.”

Stelmakh said she doesn’t know what she would have done without the CozeeCoo because neither she nor the baby were sleeping. This product, however, allowed them to make their baby’s medical journey more comfortable.

“What it does is it just holds the baby’s arms in a loop so that they can’t reach above their chest but they can still move their arms, elbows, hips and legs,” Stelmakh said.

With the invention of the CozeeCoo, Stelmakh said her son started eating and sleeping again.

They were also able to go back outside again because the CozeeCoo can be used in car seats.

“It helped so much that our doctors really encouraged me to sell it,” Stelmakh said. “I knew at that point that I had been given a responsibility, so I changed my career path completely to support this.”

After officially launching the CozeeCoo in March 2021, Stelmakh — a 2002 Sequim Irrigation Festival princess who now lives in Seattle — said they have been able to help 3,000 babies worldwide.

What she hopes parents get out of the CozeeCoo is a sense of relief.

CozeeCoo customer Amberleigh Smith said she found out about this product through the company’s Instagram after learning her son would have a cleft lip at their 20-week ultrasound.

The CozeeCoo holds a baby’s arms in a loop so that they can’t reach above their chest but can still move their arms, elbows, hips and legs.

“That Instagram account opened up my eyes to an entire community of cleft lip and palate moms,” Smith said.

“It was truly a blessing, not only in the product but in opening my eyes to a community of moms and parents that I really needed.”

Smith said that her son had to have three surgeries, all within the first year, the first being when he was 3 months old. She said she doesn’t know what she would have done without the CozeeCoo because it made his recovery so much more comfortable.

“To watch your child go through something like that is extremely difficult,” Smith said. “But knowing that we had the CozeeCoo and knowing that he was more comfortable … it just gave me such a sense of relief.”

The alternative to the CozeeCoo is an arm brace that immobilizes the elbow, but babies can still hit their faces in the brace and they have also found that 90 percent of babies can remove these arm braces, according to Stelmakh.

Smith said that out of all of the things she bought for their cleft lip journey, the CozeeCoo has been the best because it made a significant difference in her son’s recovery.

“It’s truly an amazing product,” Smith said. “You can tell it was made by a mom who was doing anything and everything to help her own kiddo.”

Stelmakh is running a campaign to help CozeeCoo expand globally and meet demand. To learn more about the campaign and the company, visit cozeecoo.com.