As any parent will tell you, the gear you need to lug around for a newborn — diaper bags, baby carriers and the like — sometimes feels better suited for a bellhop.

But when your infant needs a constant hookup to an oxygen tank, the load is literally almost too much to shoulder.

That’s certainly what Michelle Staley thought after her son, Ty, was born. Ty was three months premature and spent the first months of his life breathing with the help of a 10-pound oxygen tank.

“You can imagine what it was like carrying the baby, the diapers and the tank,” said Staley, who lives in Fort Morgan with her son and husband, Scott. “It was really cumbersome.

“I went online and tried to find an efficient carrier, but found nothing,” she said.

So Staley, who trained at the Colorado Institute of Art, designed a small pack with a sleeve for an oxygen tank, plus plenty of pockets for other necessities. With its two shoulder straps and fabricated from nonflammable material, it looks like a day pack and frees the hands for other tasks.

In short, necessity was the mother of this mom’s invention.

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