Okay, so there is a bit of a catch. But it's not too bad, really!
As most of you know by now, my second child, my daughter, was born four months early. That meant a long hospital stay, a lot of nail-biting, and a very long-awaited home-coming.
Once we were settled in at home, I expected to make and receive a zillion phone calls about medical appointments and equipment. What I hadn't expected was a phone call from a research nurse. She wanted our permission to sign our daughter up for a feeding study designed to determine a better calorie formulation for preemies (and some other groups of babies, like those with specific heart defects, but we were not part of that group). I told her I'd discuss it with my husband.
We talked about it a lot that night and we came to the same conclusion: As long as these studies would not hurt or traumatize our daughter, we wanted to do everything we could to help them improve the precision of care for future preemies. There are a limited number of former 23- and 24-weekers who are healthy enough at four months (or newborn, corrected) to do these studies. Since we were blessed with one of them, we agreed to do it.
When I called the nurse back, she told me (regretfully) that it was not a paid study. That they would not be able to compensate us monetarily. However, she added, they would give us 14 bags of diapers as a "thank you". Fourteen bags of diapers? We considered that a paid study!
Between the three phases of that study and two other small studies (one was just a questionnaire), we have received over 50 bags of diapers and $150 in gift cards. That's not actually why we signed on... but it sure was a nice bonus.
To see if there are any studies you might be eligible for to help find solutions to causes near and dear to you, check out this site.
For more frugal ideals, check out Frugal Friday, hosted at Biblical Womanhood.
We have also participated in research studies with Addyson. We felt the same as your family... it was our way of paying it forward, as long as it doesn't hurt her, we're in. We recently did a 2 day study (no overnights) and received $100 check. They also validate parking when you participate, which was great.
ReplyDeleteInteresting idea. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThanks for this info. I'm passing this along to my sister-in -law who had a preemie.
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