‘So much more than a costume’: Nurses dress up NICU babies for Halloween at Sacred Heart to bring ‘normalcy’ to families

The first book 2-month-old Asher Hansen’s parents read to him from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit was Harry Potter. The beloved series starts with a chapter entitled, “The Boy Who Lived.”

“I know it’s cheesy, but in the book, it was his mother’s love which protected Harry Potter from the death curse. I’d like to think it was our love which encouraged Asher to fight his infection rather than giving up,” said Asher’s dad, James Hansen.

It’s fitting, then, that little Asher – born Aug. 21 at 24 weeks – will be dressed as Harry Potter for his first Halloween, decked out along with the other babies of Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center’s NICU in a range of costumes, including cows and sushi rolls.

“They don’t get to experience holidays like this in a normal way,” registered nurse Chandy Thorn said. “This is something fun for them.”

The felt costumes for babies in the NICU were hot-glued together by nurses on their days off, a fun holiday idea that Thorn and fellow nurse Claire Fayant came up with. This is the third year nurses at Sacred Heart have made costumes for NICU babies.

In October, the nurses spent six hours making around 60 felt Halloween costumes for their patients, and on Halloween, Thorn will spend the morning laying the costumes over babies and taking photos of them for their parents. She said this project is about bringing brightness to families who are going through a difficult time.

“It’s their first Halloween, and they’re never going to get their first Halloween back,” Thorn said. “Most moms, even if they’re not in the NICU, report they have some degree of postpartum depression or anxiety, and then you couple the NICU on top of that, and I think that it’s a very, truly difficult time for them.”

Asher was septic and fought an infection for several weeks while in the NICU, said his mother, Rosalie Black-Hansen.

“Nothing could quite prepare you for the NICU,” Black-Hansen said. “But I will say, from the second that we stepped through these doors, we knew we were in good hands.”

There have been times Black-Hansen has been at Asher’s bedside as he crashed and doctors breathed for him manually while trying to figure out the cause. It’s obvious that she’s not the only one who cares deeply about Asher, Black-Hansen said. That has been evident not just through the care Asher has received while at Sacred Heart, but also through holiday celebrations the nurses created for every baby in the NICU, Black-Hansen said.

“We didn’t even have Halloween on our minds,” she said. “These costumes, … it’s so much more than a costume, because it gives us a sense of normalcy that we wouldn’t have otherwise. It helps bring some of the outside world in.”

This difficult time is marked by extensive time by their baby’s bedside, Nicole Fish said. Fish gave birth to her son Duncan three months ago, and since then she and her husband have spent their days inside Sacred Heart.

A lot of families, including the Fishes and Hansens, aren’t local, so they stay at the Ronald McDonald House. The Hansens live in Moses Lake, and the Fish family lives in Walla Walla.

Duncan was born with omphalocele, which is a rare abdominal wall defect where the bowel, liver and other abdominal organs extend into the abdomen near the base of the umbilical cord. Fish knew that Duncan would be born with the defect because it was visible in her 20-week anatomy scan, but that preparation doesn’t make Duncan’s NICU stay any easier.

She and her husband, Conor, come to Sacred Heart every morning around 9 and stay until 5 p.m., when the two have dinner and play cards together. Two hours later, they’re back at the hospital with Duncan.

“That’s about as long as we are comfortable being away from him right now,” Conor Fish said.

Making time for each other away from the beeping monitors and hospital walls is important, Nicole Fish said. After their break, they come back to Duncan’s bed for several hours before heading to the Ronald McDonald House for the night.

Dressing Duncan up as a lion is a welcome hint of normalcy, Nicole Fish said.

“My sister’s kids are going trick-or-treating, and I wish Duncan could go trick-or-treating with them,” Nicole Fish said.

Something as simple as a costume makes the couple feel a little more normal and a lot more loved.

“The love and care that we feel, that the nurses feel for our baby, is very important,” Nicole Fish said. “It makes us feel better leaving Duncan here overnight.”

Now, at a little over 2 months old, Asher may be mostly out of the woods. He just needs to continue to grow healthily, Black-Hansen said. The goal would be to leave the hospital by Christmas, Black-Hansen said.

As for Duncan, it’s unclear what the future holds. Many kids who are born with omphalocele have surgery to fix the defect in their early years, but it’s unclear when that will happen for Duncan, Fish said. So for now, they’ll be patient and hope for the best.