These preemies are all grown up!
Coney Island Hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit hosted a group birthday party on Oct. 1 for the hospital’s premature infants who are now tenacious toddlers and thriving teenagers. The second-annual celebration for doctors and patients was like a family reunion, according to a hospital spokesman, because the staff view the kids as their kin.
“I can see it in their faces — the love for them when they come back — almost like their own children,” said spokesman Robert Cooper. “You become a surrogate mother and surrogate father there.”
At the big bash, there were gift bags for the children, prizes for youngsters wearing kooky costumes, and a raffle. But one local who attended the event with her two-year-old grandson said the true prize was seeing all of the nurses and doctors who nurtured her grandson to health at the most vulnerable point in his young life.
“I’ve been going to the hospital ever since he was born — they have been absolutely super in the NICU unit,” said Anita Yankow, whose grandson, Jacob Malan, weighed just four pounds and three ounces when he was born. “It is wonderful to see them and for them to see the kids.”
Cooper said the event made the hospital, which can sometimes seem impersonal, feel homey.
“There is a lot more good that you don’t get to see, or hear about — like something like this,” he said. “It makes the hospital more human.”
