NICU Awareness Month: Working together for babies born sick or premature
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2020
NICU Awareness Month is a time to highlight the importance of Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) and Special Care Nurseries (SCN), and their amazing staff around Australia. Miracle Babies Foundation wants to say thank you to these amazing hospitals for offering vital, specialised care to vulnerable newborns and making a difference to the more than 48,000 babies born premature or sick each year.
NICU Awareness Month allows us to shine a light on ways we can improve the lives of these babies and their families. 132 babies are born each day requiring specialised care, sadly today only around 1 in 3 families have access to vital support, we need your help.
Throughout NICU Awareness Month we’ll share ways you can help, from donating, holding a World Prematurity Day fundraising activity, taking part in research, thanking NICU staff, or simply just spreading the word on social media.
World Prematurity Day
NICU Awareness Month also plays host to an important day on the calendar for our Miracle families, and that is World Prematurity Day on Tuesday 17th November 2020. In honour of this important awareness day Miracle Babies Foundation is proud to be launching Nurture ‘E’ – The EEE Impact, a ground-breaking, evidence-based online resource for families of premature or sick children.
Nurture ‘E’ – The EEE Impact is an information hub on the newly updated Miracle Babies website, providing new and improved evidence, education and empowerment for families of premature and sick babies, as well as the children themselves as they grow and develop.
The Nurture ‘E’ section of the website delivers information on life stages from pregnancy, in hospital, going home, the early years, the preschool years, primary school, high school and adulthood. Each stage provides Evidence, Education and Empowerment for numerous health concerns or risks that have been identified with longer term outcomes for those born premature or sick. All the information has been created in collaboration with parents and health professionals to provide families with Evidence, Education and Empowerment.
“Nurture ‘E’ has been in development over the past 18 months and we are thrilled to finally be able to share this to benefit our community. The support for improved long-term outcomes is progressing, however, it is still a relatively new area for research. Our work on the Primary School years has been very interesting. It has revealed the vital need for schools and teachers to be more aware of the learning challenges experienced by children who were born premature or sick. One way to help schools identify at risk children would be for them to include a question asking if the child was born premature or sick when collecting medical history and information.” said Kylie Pussell, CEO & CoFounder.
Nurture ‘E’ – The EEE Impact, continues our vision for ‘better, healthier outcomes for newborns and their families challenged by prematurity or sickness’ and helps to highlight the 2020 World Prematurity Day message of ‘Caring for the Future’.
World Prematurity Day Fundraising
There are many ways for you to get involved and raise funds for a cause close to your heart. With more than 132 babies born each day requiring specialised care, we need your help to reach more families with the vital support that they need for this emotional and challenging experience. It costs $67 to provide full support to one family.
With World Prematurity Day around the corner, it's a perfect time to get together to raise funds for our most vulnerable by hosting a fundraising activity throughout November.
Register your World Prematurity Day Fundraising Activity
Be part of the change through research
You can also take part in important research to improve the lives of Miracle families. Can you help by completing important surveys to influence better outcomes for newborns and families challenged by prematurity and sickness?
Paid Parental Leave Survey
Are you a parent of a baby who has required hospitalisation in a neonatal intensive or special care nursery directly after being born on or after January 2013?
The Miracle Babies Foundation, the Centre of Research Excellence for Newborn Medicine at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and The University of Melbourne are undertaking an important research study. This study will help us to learn more about your experiences of receiving Australian Government or industry paid parental leave schemes in Australia and the financial impact of having a baby (or babies) requiring hospitalisation directly after being born.
Watch the short video for more information:
We plan to use the study results to help advocate for changes to paid parental leave schemes around Australia. Taking part involves completing this online survey.
Learn more about taking part in the Paid Parental Leave Survey
Be Sweet to Babies: Contribute to research into pain reduction
Sick, premature babies require painful medical procedures in hospital. This is distressing for both parents and babies and can have long-term consequences for brain development. The good news is that there are some safe, simple strategies that families can use to effectively reduce their babies’ pain during painful procedures. If you are the parent or caregiver of a sick or preterm baby, the Be Sweet to Babies research team at the University of Melbourne, in partnership with Miracle Babies Foundation, are inviting you to participate in the following survey,
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT Active SURVEYs HERE
Join our Nurture Network, to be notified of more surveys. The Nurture Network is a valued community of parents who have had a baby born premature or sick, contributing to vital research, surveys and initiatives to achieve better, healthier outcomes for vulnerable newborns. By joining the Nurture Network, you will provide a parent voice in these important studies.
Thank U NICU Day will be celebrated across the country on Friday 27th November!
Miracle Babies, with the help of our support partner BabyLove, brings a day of special recognition for NICU and SCN staff around Australia. Follow our Facebook and Instagram pages to see all the NICU messages of appreciation and what inspires our nurses to do what they do.
Share a message for a NICU/SCN team by clicking on the link below!
CLICK HERE to leave your Thank U NICU Messages
Finally, help us raise awareness by adding the World Prematurity Day frame to your Facebook Profile Pic.
