Going into the medical field, Nickie Brayton knew she wanted to work with infants and their families. As a respiratory therapist for Marian Regional Medical Center, she began working in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) three years ago where she and her team help the youngest patients in the hospital.
“It’s been a great transition for me,” Brayton said. “I absolutely love it; it’s where God wanted me to be. I think they’re absolutely precious, such a gift.”
As a respiratory therapist, her primary job is to ensure a patient’s lungs, heart, and kidneys are functioning properly, Brayton said. Infants can need intensive care if there are difficulties during birth, they are born early, or they have existing health problems.
“I started doing watercolor painting right around [COVID-19] and I always wanted to learn how to do watercolor. I would try, and it would just not work out. I just didn’t understand it,” she said.
When taking a watercolor class at Allan Hancock College, someone told her she was using the wrong paper. When she followed their suggestion and bought watercolor-specific paper, it was a game changer, Brayton said. During the pandemic shutdowns, she taught herself how to paint with the help of YouTube tutorials.
“I started painting and had all these paintings, and I didn’t know what to do with them,” Brayton said. “I was having this conversation in my mind at work, and I prayed about it; the Lord led me to paint these paintings for kids in the NICU.”
Brayton has since made about 25 paintings for infants in the NICU and their families in her own time. At a small desk in her family room, she sketches something out, paints it, and decides who to give it to at a later time, she said. She also buys her own supplies, frames each painting, and has fellow staff members sign and leave a personal message on the painting’s matting.
“Whenever these babies come in, generally I can’t make them all paintings, but when they’ve been incubated or on life support for three months or a long stay, I paint them something I feel led to paint,” she said.
Three or four weeks ago, she drew a rose for a new painting, she said. While Brayton said she doesn’t like painting roses, she continued sketching.
“I had gone to work the next day, there had been a baby in our services, and I was talking with the mom,” Brayton said. “I had asked her what her daughter’s middle name was, and she said her middle name was Rose. I said, ‘That’s who this painting belongs to.’”
While she loves giving families her work, the added personal messages from fellow staff members make these gifts better, she said.
“With a baby in the NICU, you become entwined in the family. We’re with them 12 to 13 hours a day,” Brayton said. “You get to know the kids and the parents really well. You get to know the parents in a sense. You pass around the frame, and everybody has something personal to say.”
During the NICU reunions—when families take their children back to see the NICU staff—families have told her they still have her paintings in their child’s room or in their family room, she added.
“I hope they take away [from my paintings] that they’re not alone, and that we’re here to encourage them and … we’re rooting for them,” Brayton said. “They’ve been through something that probably would have just wrecked me, but whatever they’ve gone through, we’re here for them.”
Brayton said that she plans to continue painting the gifts as long as she can to continue leaving families with messages from staff and something to lift them up.
“I’m just here to serve the community,” she said. “I was born and raised here. [I’ll do] whatever I can to help and show people love. We’re all in this together.”
Highlights
• The Dorothy Jackson Family Resource Center has relocated to the Family Service Agency (FSA) office at 101 South B St. The move allows FSA to provide its family support services, mental health counseling, and senior programs at one central Lompoc location. FSA’s Dorothy Jackson Family Resource Center seeks to support and strengthen families and individuals who face poverty, homelessness, violence, substance abuse, unemployment, and other barriers to family wellness. The center provides a safe environment to support basic needs, provide parent education, and build social connections so that families and communities thrive.
• The School Employees of San Luis Obispo County (SESLOC) Credit Union is hosting the Central Coast Kids Got Talent show with an April 25 application deadline to sign up. The qualifier will be held on April 27 at the Santa Maria Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram—1918 S. Broadway—at 10 a.m. Kids ages 7 to 17, separated by age groups, will put on their best performance to become a finalist for the showcase on May 30, the Santa Maria Rodeo’s opening night. During the showcase, three local judges will choose a winner in each category for a $200 prize and the “overall winner” will receive $500 plus $500 will be donated to a local nonprofit of their choice.
Reach Staff Writer Taylor O’Connor at [email protected].
