A Spook-tacular Halloween for babies at Royal Surrey | News

Babies at the Trust are enjoying the Halloween spirit, thanks to our dedicated voluntary knitters.

These fang-tastic hats have been donated to make sure our newborns' first Halloween is scarily good.

These Halloween hats also have a very important purpose and are part of the Trust’s bobble hat care initiative.

Midwife, Claire Worthington, and Advanced Neonatal Nurse Practitioner, Jo Macleod, created the initiative after discovering that full-term babies were being admitted to the Special Care Baby Unit as a result of becoming cold, despite a warm ward environment.

It sees each newborn given a colour coded woolly hat to wear straight after birth, which not only keeps them warm, but also assists midwives in making sure new mothers receive the appropriate level of support.

For example, 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.

However, for Halloween the babies will have scarily good bobble hats featuring pumpkins, bats and ghosts.

Clare Cardu, Deputy Head of Midwifery and Transformation Lead Midwife said: "These hats are a very important part of the care we give to our newborn babies and we are extremely grateful to our dedicated knitters who take the time to create these for us.

"As well as looking very cute, the hats ensure that our babies are warm and having the best start to life."