Some of Long Island’s tiniest babies got in the spooky spirit with Halloween costume festivities in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at NYU Langone Hospital—Long Island. This much-anticipated annual tradition, features the likes of mini-witches and mermaids, candy corns and Cookie Monster, fledgling astronauts and more. Costumes are often lovingly handmade, as they must fit babies who may be only a couple of pounds in size. Nearly two dozen babies took part in the Halloween event.
The holiday event also provides the parents of these newborns, including many born prematurely, the opportunity to create a special memory while their infants are still in the hospital, since they cannot yet stroll among trick-or-treaters in their own neighborhoods. Fortunately, the infants have excellent PPE—incubators!
The NICU is a special nursery for babies born prematurely (before 37 weeks) or with other medical problems such as breathing disorders, feeding issues, heart problems, infections or conditions requiring surgery. Premature babies often have more than one problem because their systems are immature, and they need to grow before they can go home. NYU Langone—Long Island’s NICU is ranked among the best in the world regarding its outcomes, both in terms of overall survival and survival without complications in extremely premature babies. This is when compared to more than 1,000 NICUs by the prestigious Vermont Oxford Registry Network, an authority on the measurement of care and outcomes for high-risk infants.
