For parents, the birth of a child is a holiday. But if the baby is in a hurry and was born ahead of time, the holiday has to be postponed. The baby will spend some time in the neonatal intensive care unit. He will go home later, when he is strong enough to survive on his own.
These are the rules, they are the same practically all over the world. But there is one medical center where they approach nursing premature babies a little differently. More precisely, they take care of them responsibly and in the best possible way, but they let them go home in a special way. At the Caremont Medical Center in North Carolina, a mini-graduation ceremony is arranged for young patients. And this ceremony becomes the first holiday in the life of babies.
Kids are dressed up for a photo shoot: they put on a graduate cap made of foam. Then the portrait and the hat are handed over to the parents.
“When they leave our walls, it is a huge achievement for both the child and the parents,” said Melissa Jordan, a nurse. “Graduation is a way to celebrate an important milestone in a baby’s life.”
The idea that it would be nice to have such ceremonies came to Melissa’s mind when the clinic staff sent home the baby, who spent 62 days in the medical center.
“He was born in the 29th week of pregnancy, can you imagine?” Says Jordan.
On the hats, the nurses write how many days the child spent in the intensive care unit, as well as a mini-parting word: “… days are behind, a whole life is ahead.”
“When the baby goes home, it’s very happy. But it’s still a little scary and alarming, because the child had to fight for life from birth, says Melissa. “This is how we try to calm down the parents, let them know that everything will be okay.”
Now the medical center has a photo gallery of 14 graduates, whom the clinic staff left for six months. And the plans are to assemble a whole wall with photographs of the kids who are finally going home.