A North Carolina nurse made preemie costumes for little ones in the Catawba Valley Medical Center neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in an effort to spread some cheer this Halloween, CBS News reported.
Katie Windsor put her crochet skills to good use and whipped up dozens of adorable costumes for the premature babies, which she then handed out at the unit.
Some of the babies received "Star Wars" inspired outfits while others looked adorable dressed up as a mermaid and a chicken.
However, Windsor’s favorite crocheted costume of Princess Belle from "Beauty and the Beast" went to Phoenix McCorkle, a three-pound preemie, according to CBS News.
"It makes me feel like this is more of a family environment than just her being in the hospital," the baby’s mother, Paige McCorkle, said, according to the network.
Windsor explained that the motivation behind the costumes was to restore a sense of normalcy to families at the NICU.
"If you had your baby at home for your first Halloween or your first Christmas, you'd be doing normal stuff with them," she told WBTV. "You'd be doing Halloween stuff with them and you'd be dressing them up."
This is the second year that Windsor has crocheted extravagant costumes for the babies at NICU.
Last year the nurse spent weeks making costumes for 17 babies ahead of Halloween.
"I was on Pinterest looking around for ideas and I saw something that sparked an idea," she told People magazine. "I thought these little babies need to be superheroes because they already are little heroes."
Speaking about the parents who had to leave their babies at the hospital, Windsor told People it was not a normal family thing to do.
"This kind of normalized things for them and at that moment it made them happy," she said.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.