Nurses give preemies leaving NICU their own graduation ceremony

A NICU grad.
(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/Inside Edition)

For the parents of babies leaving the neonatal intensive care unit, being able to take their newborns home is a momentous occasion, and a nurse in North Carolina is going out of her way to make patients feel special on the big day.

Melissa Jordan, a neonatal nurse at CaroMont Regional Medical Center, first got the idea to celebrate discharges after a baby named Wyatt, born at 29 weeks, went home in a onesie that said "NICU grad." Jordan made him a graduation hat out of cardboard, and asked a photographer if she would come to the hospital to take Wyatt's photo before he left. "I wanted to make it special for them because it had been a long time," she said. The nurses sang and danced for Wyatt, and it was the start of a tradition.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.