Former patients and families invited to Neonatal Intensive Care Unit celebration

Marian Regional Medical Center will host the fourth annual Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Graduation Celebration on Nov. 4. The event will include an opportunity for toddlers who were born premature to reunite with the caregivers who nurtured them to health immediately after birth.

Former patients and their families are invited to the celebration at the Marian Regional Medical Center’s Tau Monument, located at the corner of South Palisade Drive and East Church Street in Santa Maria. There will be games, according to a Marian press release, food, face painting, fingerprinting, family portraits, and a local fire engine, all for kids to enjoy.

A spokesperson for Marian Regional Medical Center said those “graduating” are premature babies who were nursed to health through the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Patients like Ellie Moomey, who was born 15 weeks early and weighed less than 2 pounds, and their families will have the opportunity to meet the physicians, medical staff, nurses, and volunteers who helped save the patients’ lives.

Other children who graduated the program in recent years, dating back to 2011, are also invited to this year’s event. Last year, the spokesperson said, Marian had more than 60 graduates and 400 guests at the celebration.

“This special day will celebrate the courageous beginnings of hundreds of infants, many now toddlers, who often came into the world weighing less than 3 pounds,” the press release said.

Marian’s 21-bed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit is the most sophisticated and technologically advanced unit in the region, according to the release, and is rated among the nation’s top 10 percent for cardiac care.