Kansas City Star | Photos of Kansas City’s costumed newborns go viral

Photos of Kansas City’s costumed newborns go viral

BY RICK MONTGOMERY | RMONTGOMERY@KCSTAR.COM

Decked out as Superman, Captain America and local sports heroes, Kansas City’s adorable newborns have gone international.

Photo by Emmalee Schaumburg

As part of an effort to inject Halloween happiness at St. Luke’s Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, the March of Dimes recently teamed with hospital staff members to outfit the tiny patients in handmade costumes.

The resulting photographs — snapped by volunteers whose own infants spent time in the ICU — went viral.

“This week has been crazy,” hospital spokeswoman Michelle Manuel said Friday. “ABC News, CNN, BBC News, CBS News ‘This Morning.’ ”

The website of The Daily Mail of London proclaimed that the 35 infants “are celebrating their first Halloween in style.” Its story quoted Carli Neider, the mother of infant Myla (Wonder Woman), expressing thanks to the hospital for allowing her baby to “participate in her own kind of Halloween here.”

The thinking was to treat these patients as everyday tots, not to make them global celebrities.

“They might be in the NICU ... but (the organizers) wanted to create a sense of normalcy” for families and staff to have fun with the holiday, Manuel said. “To the parents it’s very special.”

The March of Dimes also provided the babies a “Trick or Treat, smell my feet” card with their footprints, a hand-crocheted pumpkin filled with treats, and a Halloween book that families can read together.

Rick Montgomery: 816-234-4410