Two nurses at an Edmonton hospital have created costumes for the tiniest of babies.
Karine Leclerc-Keshwani and Jenny Blood are registered nurses on the Grey Nuns Community Hospital’s neonatal intermediate care unit (NICU), where premature or sick newborns can stay for weeks. Since at least 24 babies will be spending Halloween on unit 32, the crafty care staff cut, pasted and crocheted one special outfit for each of them.
“It’s scary to have your baby in the NICU,” Blood said. “So if we can do little things like (offer costumes) to bring some normalcy… and to just bring some happiness to (families), we want to do that for them.”
“It’s probably very overwhelming for (parents),” added Leclerc-Keshwani. “There’s a lot of sound, people, wire, tubes… things between them and their babies. And it’s not what most of them expected.”
The costumes took about 30 hours to create, and include animals, Mr. Potato Head, superheroes and sushi. The cookie, milk and Cookie Monster trio is for triplets.
Stephanie Ternovatsky chose a ninja turtle costume for her son, Lucas. He was born on Oct. 27 – five weeks early.
“(The NICU) is stressful, but… everyone takes good care of you and they reassure you lots, so it’s good,” said Ternovatsky.