Intensive Care Unit Babies Become Superheroes In Kansas City

An itty bitty Batman rests in the NICU of
St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City. Photo by Sally Morrow

I'm not a dad, but I can imagine how crushingly scary it is to have a newborn baby in the intensive care unit.

These parents really just want their kids to have a nice, normal childhood free of hospital stays and worries about health and death. 

You can't take ill babies out the NICU, but you can take them into Halloween, and the normal kid stuff they should enjoy today.

So, the NICU at St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City and the March of Dimes teamed up to make sure these little babies had their own Halloween costumes, says Good Morning America.

The kids are too young to understand Halloween, of course. (Hell, I'm 54 and I still don't understand Halloween). But the parents get a little levity and "normalcy" for themselves and their kids.

Parents get to pick out the Halloween costumes, based on the personality of their kids. There's lots of superheroes and butterflies and princesses in the NICU, and a couple of the obligatory Kansas City Royals baseball players.

Additionally, the families get the following, says Good Morning America:

"......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 babies can read together next year."

This is a great idea that I hope spreads to NICU's all over the nation.