Photographers help babies in Kansas City NICU celebrate Halloween
By Kelly Eckerman
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KANSAS CITY, Missouri (KMBC) — New parents look forward to celebrating their baby’s first holidays. But everything changes when your baby is born prematurely. Some local families who are spending Halloween in the neonatal intensive care unit are getting a special surprise.
Meet Lena Rae Bennett. She was just over 2 pounds at birth, and she has been in the NICU at Saint Luke’s Hospital since July.
“It’s hard, seeing all the tubes, and the alarms and everything so you just got to take one day at a time and find those little moments,” said new mom Tiffany Brayboy.
This was one of those moments. The hospital teamed up with the March of Dimes, providing special Halloween costumes and volunteer photographers to create a memory for these families. Lena Rae was a mermaid.
“I was excited because even though, you know, she’s still here and hooked up to monitors, she still gets to be cute and adorable,” Brayboy said.
One baby was dressed as a jack-o-lantern and another as a Chiefs player.
For photographer Helen Ransom, it is a labor of love. She said she once spent a lot of time in the NICU with her own children — triplets. She said she loves bringing a little normalcy to these families.
“If your baby is in the NICU, you’re delaying how long it can be before you can take them to a photographer, and so I can come in here and I can gift them that experience in a really hard, unnormal time,” Ransom said.
Capturing these adorable creatures does bring joy.
“I like to reassure parents, ‘Hey, I’ve done this, and, you’re going to come out the other side, your baby is too,'” Ransom said.
Five photographers teamed up for the project. All five spent time in the NICU with their own children. They plan to do it all over again at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
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