As part of the “Babies with Books” read-a-thon to encourage family reading and support NICU infants and families, nurses, families and hospital staff have been reading to babies at the Abrazo Arrowhead Campus’ Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
Abrazo Arrowhead nurses have been handing out children’s books to families and encouraging reading while they are in the hospital. Reading from birth onward helps advance brain development, language skills, vocabulary, listening and memory skills.
“September is NICU Awareness Month,” said Ramya Kumar, developmental coordinator at the Abrazo Arrowhead NICU. “This is one of the activities that we are participating in, as reading to babies promotes brain development and provides an important opportunity for families to bond with their babies.”
Studies show that preterm infants who are not exposed to language while in the NICU have lower language performance at age 2. Reading to babies helps build language, literacy and social-emotional skills at a critical time in a child’s development.
“These are especially important activities for babies with prolonged hospitalizations. Anyone can read to the babies,” Kumar said. “This has engaged nursing students, medical team members, our rehab team and others to participate in the read-a-thon.”
According to reports, NICU babies can be at a high risk of poor neurodevelopmental outcomes due to prematurity, critical illness, prolonged hospitalization, low socioeconomic status, and family emotional and economic stressors associated with hospitalization in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
For Kumar, providing parents and other caregivers books and encouraging them to read with infants in the NICU provides an important route for increasing infants’ speech and language interactions and supports bonding and family involvement with their infants’ care in the NICU.
“It’s not only good for the babies and parents, it helps build morale in the NICU and labor and delivery units,” Kumar said. “The read-a-thon offers opportunities to participate in initiatives through the hospital’s clinical ladder and volunteer programs, and we have staff donating items to the NICU for future events. Many families like to also do a book drive on their former NICU baby’s birthday.”
Serving Glendale and the Northwest Valley since 1988, Abrazo Arrowhead Campus is a destination for maternity care. More than 3,500 babies are born annually at Abrazo Arrowhead Campus, which offers a Level IIIA NICU for high-risk patients and high order multiple births.
For more information on Abrazo Arrowhead Campus, visit abrazohealth.com.