How reading and singing to NICU babies can help their health and development

Not hearing enough parental language in neonatal intensive care can delay infant verbal development. The BabyTalk reading initiative is helping babies catch up

Baby Sunnie photographed at his home in Monasterboice, County Louth. Photo: Barry Cronin

THE song You Are My Sunshine was sung every day by Leona and Fintan Lacey to their newborn for the six weeks he spent in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

The Co Louth-based parents never expected Sunnie would arrive 10 weeks early and spend time in NICU, first in the Coombe, then in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda. Leona says: “In the early days, I wasn’t allowed to change his nappy or feed him. He was six days old before I was allowed to hold him. There’s only so long you can sit there and look at your child in an incubator.”