Inside the neonatal intensive care unit at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh, roughly 80 babies spent this Halloween dressed as hot dogs, Elmo, candy bars, and even a pair of condiment-themed twins in ketchup and mustard outfits. Every single costume was handmade by NICU nurse Riley Smolksy with help from her mother, friends, and the Duquesne women's club soccer team, giving the tiniest patients a normal holiday memory.
Riley Smolksy, a NICU nurse at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital, created around 80 handmade Halloween costumes sized for babies of all sizes, according to WTAE. Smolksy said every baby received an individual costume for the first time, and she received help pulling off the project from her mother, friends, and the Duquesne women's club soccer team.
Smolksy has been a nurse for six years, and beyond the holiday costumes, she also creates keepsakes marking babies' milestones that families can take home after their NICU stays end. She said the costume effort could brighten families' difficult days during what is often one of the hardest stretches of their lives.
Two Babies, Two First Halloweens
Among the babies celebrating was Owen, who was born 11 weeks early and spent his first Halloween dressed as a hot dog. Baby Ezra, born at 33 weeks gestation, wore an Elmo costume for his own first Halloween, a fitting choice since his parents, David and Megan Schmiech, said Ezra's older sister was obsessed with Elmo and had already taken to calling her baby brother “baby Elmo.”
Other families found the tiny costumes meant something bigger than a photo opportunity. Sarah and Zoe Kreinberg said the team's effort made them feel included as a family, even while their baby remained hospitalized. The costume lineup also included candy-bar outfits, giving the NICU a full trick-or-treat lineup.
A Pattern Beyond Pittsburgh
Magee-Womens Hospital has leaned into themed newborn outfits before. The hospital has run a beekeeping program since 2018, and in the spring it dressed newborns in crocheted bee hats and onesies reading “sweet as can bee” for their first Mother's Day, according to CBS Pittsburgh. UPMC has also dressed newborns for occasions including the NFL draft, Valentine's Day, the holiday season, and the U.S. Open at Oakmont.
Pittsburgh is far from alone in costuming its most fragile patients this Halloween. At Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, nurses dressed NICU babies in hand-knit costumes for their first Halloween, with volunteer Valerie Atkinson contributing handmade costumes for NICU families for nine years, per ClickOnDetroit. Advocate Health children's hospitals in Illinois and Wisconsin held their annual NICU Halloween Costume Contest this year as well, with Wisconsin's lineup including a Slinky Dog, Winnie the Pooh and Piglet, a rabbit, a football player, and a tiny lion, as detailed by Nurse.org.
Out west, nurses at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane handcraft dozens of costumes for NICU babies every year, a program now in its third year that has produced around 60 outfits with help from about 10 nurses, according to Providence. Their designs have ranged from sushi rolls and popcorn buckets to cowboys and cups of noodles, all made with new materials and stored individually for single-patient use. Nurses interviewed about these programs have described the celebrations as a rare chance for parents to experience something that feels normal during an otherwise stressful hospital stay.
For families like the Schmiechs and the Kreinbergs, the handmade costumes gave their babies' first Halloween a sense of celebration that a hospital room doesn't typically offer. Smolksy's costume effort, built with help from her mother, friends, and a college soccer team, turned an ordinary NICU hallway into something closer to a neighborhood trick-or-treat route, one tiny costume at a time.
