During her December night shifts, when the only sounds in the Cabrini Special Care Nursery are the breaths of the tiny babies gaining strength, and the occasional beeping monitor, nurse Talia Rhind busies herself making beautiful, personalised gifts for the families of the babies in her care.

As a reminder of just how tiny these little Cabrini patients were at birth, Talia cuts a length of Christmas ribbon that matches each baby’s exact birth length, and coils it inside a clear Christmas bauble, gifting it to each family on Christmas morning.

“Being in the Special Care Nursery is hard enough as it is, let alone on Christmas Day,” Talia said. “So having a special little surprise for the families is just something small that we can do for them to make things a bit easier on the day.”

Talia also created a poem to attach to the Christmas bauble.

“The poem explains that when they unwind the ribbon, they’ll see it’s the exact same length as they were at birth,” Talia explained.

“It’s a nice reminder for the parents of how far their babies have come, but it’ll also be good when the kids themselves are older and they can open it and ponder, ‘my gosh, look how little I was’.”

The smallest baby who Talia created a bauble for was just 28 centimetres long at birth and was a pre-term bub. But not all the babies who stay in the Special Care Nursery are born premature, with some babies born at-term also requiring Special Care Nursey support, Talia said.

“Being in the Nursery is a challenging time for all the families, not only for those with very small babies,” she said.

“For the babies born at-term, the parents are expecting a healthy baby so having to go to the Special Care Nursery is difficult, especially over Christmas. It’s not what they had imagined their first Christmas with their babies would look like. Having to leave your baby here and go home to spend Christmas without your baby can be a really stressful time for parents.

“I think it’s why I like working on Christmas Day. Just being able to do something extra special for the families on the day, and being able to provide them that extra little spark and magic, I feel very lucky and heartwarming that I can do something small for them.”

Cabrini Special Care Nursery staff have cared for 262 babies so far this year, and our Maternity and Birth Suite team helps to bring about 2000 babies into the world per annum.

In Australia, almost one in five babies need care in a special care nursery or a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The most common reasons for admission to a SCN or NICU are prematurity, low birth weight, feeding issues, jaundice, blood glucose management or breathing difficulties.

Learn more about Cabrini Maternity Services