New born babies at Royal Surrey get a special Christmas delivery
Babies born with us over the festive season, are enjoying a brrrrilliant start to life thanks to a merry army of voluntary knitter elves.
Each baby born at the Trust is gifted a bobble hat, with the December arrivals wearing some especially Christmassy ones.
As well as looking extremely cute, these bobble hats have a crucial purpose and are a key part of the Trust’s Bobble Hat Care initiative.
After birth, each newborn is given a bobble hat to help keep them toasty warm. This initiative was created by two members of the maternity team after they noticed that full term babies were being admitted to the Special Care Baby Unit as a result of becoming cold, despite there being a warm ward environment.
Normally a baby would receive a red hat if they are born prematurely, amber is for those who have endured a difficult labour and green for those deemed low risk.
For the holiday season however, the hats given to the babies were made up of reindeers, Christmas trees and Santa hats. The Trusts' Maternity Department is rated outstanding by the Care Quality Commission and is accredited as ‘Baby Friendly Gold’ by Unicef.
Katy Lucas, Maternity Matron, said: “We are only able to provide these hats to our newborns thanks to the local knitters who take the time and effort to make them and send them in.
“These hats are a fundamental part of the care we give and enable us to make sure that we are giving the appropriate support to parents and babies.
“Thank you to all of those who kindly donate and help us ensure the babies get the best start in life, we hope you have a very merry Christmas.”