Halloween is a fun time for children to dress as their favorite characters and trick-or-treat for yummy goodies. The babies at the Sheldon B. Korones Newborn Center are having their own Halloween celebration, although they don’t need capes to prove their superhero powers. These babies have all the powers already.

But the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit team helped the babies look the part this Halloween with their own superhero costumes to get in the spirit.

“We feel like our babies are our superheroes,” said Kay Conlee, RN, assistant nurse manager of the Neonatal ICU at Regional One Health. “We deliver the tiniest babies in the Mid-South. They come out kicking. We have babies in here right now who weigh 1 pound, 1 ounce. We feel like they’ve come such a long way and we want to celebrate that.”

The Superheroes of the NICU began in 2016 as a small celebration for the families of our newborn superheroes who are fighting daily. This year, the babies were joined by Wonder Woman (nurse Jenetta Holmes) and Super Man (nurse Joseph Omedeo) for what is expected to become an annual celebration in the NICU.

“It’s that time of year, everybody’s kids are dressing up to trick-or-treat and we wanted to give something special for our families,” Conlee said. “It helps them to be involved and to feel like their baby is a regular well baby.”

One Club volunteers and March of Dimes-Tennessee Chapter created the tiny superhero costumes.

The Sheldon B. Korones Newborn Center is named for its founder, Dr. Sheldon B. Korones. The center is one of the oldest and largest neonatal intensive care units in the U.S. where approximately 4,500 babies are born annually. More than 1,300 of those babies are born premature or critically ill and are treated in the NICU.

Since opening in 1968, more than 55,000 premature babies have been treated successfully, some weighing just one pound.