“NICU Babies Get Special Tiny Halloween Costumes” originally appeared on ABC News and was reprinted with permission.
The babies in the NICU at St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, got a special Halloween surprise!
Their nurses and volunteers with The March of Dimes made creative Halloween costumes for them, along with crocheted, candy-filled pumpkins to mimic trick-or-treating.
“The __parents were able to choose their babies’ costumes to match the babies’ personalities,” Michelle Manuel, the hospital’s director of media relations, told ABC News. “The idea is to be able to allow __parents to have a sense of normalcy. In the NICU you might be there for weeks or months and this is to help spend that first Halloween and those special first moments together — make those special family memories with us.”
The pint-sized, handmade felt costumes range from butterflies to ladybugs to Kansas City Royals players, and of course, superheroes, because “these are our NICU super babies,” said Manuel.
In addition to the sweet Halloween costumes, the volunteers and nurses provided the families with a “trick or treat, smell my feet” card with the newborns’ tiny footprints, a hand-crocheted pumpkin filled with treats and a Halloween book that the parents and their babies can read together next year.
The festive fall idea has had such a positive response that NICU staff are already plotting ideas to celebrate the 12 Days of Christmas.