Christmas day is a day for families to get together, be together and make memories. For hundreds of families this Christmas, their memories will be different to most with their baby (or babies, in the case of multiples) in a neonatal unit. There are over 360 incubators and cots in neonatal units (NICUs and SCBUs) across New Zealand. While the unit is the best place for the care of their baby (or babies) they would love to be home at this time.
We wanted to acknowledge the day and make it a little bit more special, running ‘Neonatal Secret Santa‘ for a third year.
With the generous help of donators and supporters (who provided items for free, or at generous discounts) we have provided a special pack to all Christmas Day neonatal families to brighten their day. As well as the goodies, each pack includes handwritten messages of suppport from neonatal graduate families, grandparents, etc. (and we included a copy of our support resources for Reading to your Baby and Kangaroo Cuddles).
Our huge thanks to . . .
This support would not have been possible without the generous support of a number of organisations and people.
HELL who provided a voucher for a Double Gourmet pizza for every pack
Mojo who provided coffee for every pack
Whittakers who provided a Peanut Slab for every pack
Small Babies who provided a special Christmas milestone card for every pack
Bauer Media who provided 2 x magazines for every pack
Natasha, a neonatal mum, who kindly designed the card
The 2018 NZ Charity Golf Classic. Their support helped to print the support resources (Reading to your Baby & Kangaoo Cuddles) that were included in every pack.
The wonderful donators who helped make this support initiative happen and provided the wonderful messages to go into the cards (handwritten by volunteers).
Our thanks (as always) also go to the wonderful Wellington BizDojo, who support us with their wonderful co-working space. It is from the BizDojo that the phonecalls and organising took place to make the Neonatal Secret Santa ‘pick-me-up’ packs happen. Plus, we used their event space to put together the packs with the help of wonderful volunteers (the majority from LexisNexis New Zealand)
Finally, HUGE thanks go to Mainfreight who kindly transported the packs to every neonatal unit in New Zealand
ps, we organised and paid for the paper (not plastic!) bags that the items were placed into. If there’s a friendly packaging company that would like to help out for our future activity like this . . . we’d love to hear from you! (info@littlemiraclestrust.org.nz is a great first step).
Want to help more of this happen?
Neonatal Secret Santa is one example of how we support neonatal families. You can see more in this gallery.
If you want to help our support of families going through the stress and anxiety of a neonatal journey, you can donate here.
- The Little Miracles Trust provides support to families of premature or sick full-term babies as they make their journey through Neonatal Intensive Care, the transition home, and onwards. We do not receive any Government funding and are entirely reliant on the generousity of individuals, companies and organisations in the form of donations, value-in-kind donations, grants, sponsorship and fundraising events to supplement operating costs and fund our services and initiatives.
- As we are a registered charity (CC42886) with Charities Services New Zealand we will send you an IRD compliant tax receipt – this will happen automatically by return email.
- Some specific examples of the our activity are shown below and you can also see a full gallery of support examples
