ODESSA, Texas — The miracle of life is a special day for mothers and babies alike.
There’s no greater feeling than holding your newborn baby in your arms for the very first time.
And even though they can’t understand you quite yet, there’s a really simple way to bond with your new best friend: reading to them.
"And I know a lot of parents experience some type of depression and sadness, that they don't get to bond with their baby while they're here during their stay," Samantha Serrano, MCH Children's Miracle Network Program Manager, said. "So as the babies get to hear their voices, they recognize their family and loved ones, and [...] it just helps them stay stable as well. It helps reduce stress, helps regulate body temperature and overall, just produce a great help for the baby. Some of our babies are not able to get out of their bassinet. So just having someone to read to them and maybe touch their little fingers or something like that just to have that human contact is really helpful."
Not only does it bond the mother and baby, it also can help the baby’s future development.
"[It] helps with brain development, helps with the words, helps with voice recognition, hearing different tones will really accelerate them when they start school and in those early years of education," Serrano said.
The MCH Center for Women and Infants has put that to the test with their “Babies With Books NICU Read-a-Thon!”
"So it was here to help promote parents and family and friends to read to the babies that are here in our NICU," Serrano said.
The MCH library has also been stocked with a variety of books that parents can read to their newborns.
And already, the library has received nearly 1000 books donated to the program.
"The big project was to get also books donated through our book drive, which we hosted here on campus and our other locations," Serrano said. "We have a couple of our credit unions who are corporate partners to Children's Miracle Network who offered to be drop locations. We even had one credit union donate over 800 books to our NICU book drive so that was a really big boost in our confidence to also just get our community involved in what we do here on our campus."
And 1000 books sure is a lot of pages.
"We don't have enough room now for all the books we received," Serrano said. "But that's a wonderful problem."
And there’s also nothing wrong with a little friendly competition between the mothers and staff members.
"It was mainly just to see who can get the most readings," Serrano said. "Every parent every time they read to their baby, they will fill out a little slip and they will put in our boxes and we did a final count. And so now we get to do a little gift bag for the family who read the most so it's been fun. It was a fun little competition of parents just to see how involved they could get and you know, who doesn't love a little prize?"
A little prize that’s just the cherry on top of the main prize these mothers are receiving.
A prize that they will cherish and take care of for the rest of their lives.
And that life starts now, and reading to your baby is the first step to a long but exciting adventure of raising a child.