Students Customized a Baby Stroller for Dad in a Wheelchair

• Jeremy King, who has been in a wheelchair since 2017, was worried about how his impaired mobility would affect caring for his first child.
• So his wife enlisted the help of her colleague and students to build a customized baby stroller for him.
• Thanks to the WheeStroll, a child seat that attaches to a wheelchair, Jeremy can easily go on walks with his son.

Jeremy King, 37, has been worried about how his impaired mobility would affect caring for his first child. But thanks to a special wheelchair stroller created by a group of students, he can now easily go on walks with his newborn son.

Jermy has only been engaged to Chelsie for three months when he had to undergo an eight-hour surgery for a brain tumor in October 2017. This left him with impaired mobility.

When Chelsie got pregnant, he expressed his concern “with the safety of myself and our child especially with Chelsie having to potentially support both of us.”

The couple searched for a product that could help but after no luck, Chelsie asked help from her colleague, innovation and technology lab coordinator Matt Zigler, who wanted to include students in the design and creation.

So Chelsie, a middle school theatre instructor at Bullis School in Maryland, enlisted the help of her students.

The kids interviewed the family and the fire department, who helped provide infant car seat installation training. The school team then purchased or 3D printed the required parts and borrowed a wheelchair from the school nurse to test on.

The WheeStroll, a child seat that attaches to a wheelchair, was completed in time for the baby’s birth on March 4 this year. Within a few weeks, Jeremy was taking baby Phoenix for a walk.

Jeremy said he was “emotional and elated.” The WheeStroll helped increase his independence with his son, and allowed him to experience a lot of new things. “It allows us as a family to have more freedom of movement,” he added.

Chelsie shared, “Being able to see Jeremy have some independence with our son is a gift… It has given us the ability to do something simple like take a walk as a family; something that a lot of families don’t have to think twice about.”

Jeremy added, “I never thought I would be able to do something safely like taking a walk with my child.”

Jeremy stated, “We hope that people will see this story, and know there are ways around their challenges and can build this for themselves at a low cost.”

He also expressed his gratitude to the “students for taking my situation into account and developing this amazing device.”

Source: Good News Network