Regardless of the outcome of Sunday’s game, the New England Patriots are already making dreams come true.Shelly Sepulveda, a local NICU nurse, has been battling cancer for the last two years. The mother of six, five of whom were adopted, has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer three times since 2024.”I know I have limited time here on this Earth, so I created a bucket list and one of the things on that bucket list was to go to a Pats game,” she said.Sepulveda didn’t go to just any game; she went to last week’s playoff game against the Los Angeles Chargers.”I got to go on the field, I got to go in and see the players up close and personal,” she said. “I cried when I went on the field. It was just an amazing experience.”The game was a highlight for Sepulveda in what has been an unimaginable two years.The Kraft Foundation heard she was a fan and invited her to the game. And the excitement didn’t stop there.Kraft gifted her a ticket to the Super Bowl. “I’ve been on Cloud Nine ever since, even though I had some unfortunate news,” Sepulveda said.This past Tuesday, she found out her body is no longer responding to chemotherapy.She’s now trying to get into a clinical trial.The Super Bowl ticket is giving her hope and inspiration as she fights this disease.”I know that it’s a gift from them, but I don’t know really if they really understand how much it impacts me mentally, physically,” she said. “I want them to know how much this is keeping me going. And I have the Pats to thank for that.”
Regardless of the outcome of Sunday’s game, the New England Patriots are already making dreams come true.
Shelly Sepulveda, a local NICU nurse, has been battling cancer for the last two years.
The mother of six, five of whom were adopted, has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer three times since 2024.
“I know I have limited time here on this Earth, so I created a bucket list and one of the things on that bucket list was to go to a Pats game,” she said.
Sepulveda didn’t go to just any game; she went to last week’s playoff game against the Los Angeles Chargers.
“I got to go on the field, I got to go in and see the players up close and personal,” she said. “I cried when I went on the field. It was just an amazing experience.”
The game was a highlight for Sepulveda in what has been an unimaginable two years.
The Kraft Foundation heard she was a fan and invited her to the game.
And the excitement didn’t stop there.
Kraft gifted her a ticket to the Super Bowl.
“I’ve been on Cloud Nine ever since, even though I had some unfortunate news,” Sepulveda said.
This past Tuesday, she found out her body is no longer responding to chemotherapy.
She’s now trying to get into a clinical trial.
The Super Bowl ticket is giving her hope and inspiration as she fights this disease.
“I know that it’s a gift from them, but I don’t know really if they really understand how much it impacts me mentally, physically,” she said. “I want them to know how much this is keeping me going. And I have the Pats to thank for that.”
A Virginia NICU nurse’s innovative approach to infant feeding has earned national recognition with the prestigious Magnet Nurse of the Year Award for leading a culture shift in neonatal care.
A D.C.-area nurse had an idea to change the way her hospital fed babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and her project just won her national recognition.
“It is a big deal, and it was shocking,” said Renee Bloom, who is an NICU RN Unit Supervisor at Inova Fair Oaks Hospital in Virginia.
Bloom, 61, has been a nurse since 1986 and has worked in various units throughout her career.
She was recently named one of five nurses nationally to be awarded with the Magnet Nurse of the Year Award. It honors nurses who excel in nursing practice and innovation.
“It’s the first Magnet Nurse of the Year that we have received at all of our Inovas,” Bloom said.
The project she was recognized for has been in the works for years.
Previously, NICUs fed babies every three hours and they found as the children grew, “that we were almost force feeding these kids to eat, and we’re just like, ‘there’s something wrong with this,’” she said.
So they started looking at other ways to know when to feed them. And they came up with readiness cues.
“You’re watching their stress cues as you feed them. You watch what quality of what that feeding was like. You know when to stop,” Bloom said.
And they found the babies were getting out of the NICU faster.
“Our kids ended up going home about six days sooner,” Bloom said. “It’s a whole progression. We felt … we were getting them to full oral feeds faster.”
Now, it’s a whole cultural change at her NICU and others at Inova. She said not having feeding issues helped the NICU babies avoid other issues, such as speech or developmental trouble.
“This affects them long term. And all three other NICUs now do infant-driven feeding,” she said.
Bloom said the award was less of a personal achievement and meant more for her because her team and their project was chosen to be recognized.
“It definitely feels like a team win for our NICU, that we were able to change the culture for these babies and not affect them later on down the road,” she said.
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ROCKVILLE CENTRE, Long Island (WABC) — She came into this world more than three months earlier than expected, and now a “micro-preemie” on Long Island is finally heading home.
Trinity Alexandria Rose weighed less than two pounds when she was born in April, and on Wednesday, she was discharged from the NICU at Catholic Health’s Mercy Hospital, weighing a healthy 11.5 pounds.
It takes a village, but in this case, more like an army, and they enjoyed every minute of this, because it was a rollercoaster for little Alexandria Rose, and her parents, Latashia and David, from Freeport.
“And here we are 146 days later, and we’re going home,” Latashia Morris said.
They’re grateful to the whole team of doctors and NICU nurses here at Mercy Hospital in Rockville Centre, who provided way more than medical care… they delivered hope, because Alexandria Rose was born at just 1 pound, 14 ounces. They called her a “micro-preemie.”
“But the nurses and the doctors were on me like, ‘nope, we’re not going down to that dark place, like she’s going to be OK, we got you, we got her.’ And they really did,” Morris said.
“I was scared. I was scared but happy, especially with how she came out,” said Trinity’s father David Taylor.
Alexandria Rose was delivered while she was still in the embryonic sack.
“That’s a technique I use, sometimes very small babies get traumatized as they come out so it’s best if you keep the bag in tact,” said Mercy Hospital OB-GYN, Dr. Jahanshah Seraji.
From that point on, they said the first two weeks were critical.
“She had some lung problems, she had some eye problems, and she had some heart problems,” said Mercy Hospital Neonatology Director, Dr. Swarna Devarajan.
But now, Alexandria Rose is healthy after her record-breaking stay of nearly five months.
“It’s very difficult because they’re here so long,” said NICU nurse Lisa Pino. “We become attached to them, so when they have a setback, we have a setback.”
Alexandria Rose will be back here in just two weeks for her first checkup, and after that, every two months until her second birthday. But she’s reached 11 pounds, 8.5 ounces now.
Her favorite song, not surprisingly, is “Hakuna Matata.”
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After decades of debauchery and an untold number of conceptions, revelers at Burning Man celebrated a rare birth at Black Rock City on Wednesday morning, after a festivalgoer unexpectedly went into labor on the Playa.
Some longtime Burners have dubbed the infant “Citizen Zero.”
“Baby girl arrived weighing 3 lbs 9.6 oz and measuring 16.5 inches long,” the infant’s aunt Lacey Paxman wrote in a GoFundMe appeal for the family. “She is currently in the NICU, gaining strength every day. Mom and baby are both doing OK, but she will need to stay in the hospital until she is ready to come home.”
Family members said the woman did not know she was pregnant until she felt the baby coming early Wednesday morning. According to one Redditor, an obstetrician and a pediatric trauma nurse were both camped nearby and rushed to aid the delivery when she went into labor.
The parents then drove themselves to the campground’s medical facility before being airlifted to a major hospital where the baby could receive specialized intensive care, the Redditor said.
“Since this is their first child and the pregnancy was completely unexpected, my brother and his wife don’t have anything prepared — no baby supplies, no nursery, nothing at all,” Paxman wrote.
“On top of that, the unexpected circumstances have created a heavy financial burden: NICU care (with no release date yet), medical bills, and travel and lodging expenses while they are far from home,” she said.
Surprise deliveries are uncommon but far from unheard of, experts say. About 1 in every 500 pregnant women discovers she’s expecting more than 20 weeks along — a phenomenon known as “cryptic pregnancy.”
Cryptic pregnancies are more common among very young mothers, as well as those who may have other health conditions that mask pregnancy symptoms such as nausea, exhaustion and even missed periods. Like the Burner mother, a subset of such parents only discovers they’re pregnant when they go into labor.
Pregnant women, young children and even babies are a regular feature of the nine-day Burning Man festival, which draws tens of thousands of people each year to a desolate strip of the Nevada desert about 120 miles north of Reno.
Still, births are all but unheard at the celebration of “community, art, self-expression and self-reliance.”
The surprise delivery occurred just hours after a white-out dust storm ground incoming traffic to a halt as festivalgoers streamed in and attempted to set camp on Monday.
The dramatic weather recalled torrential rains that flooded the camp in 2023, leaving thousands stranded in deep, sticky mud.
CASTLE ROCK, Colo. — September is Neonatal Intensive Care Unit – NICU awareness month and a Colorado non-profit is helping families in a big way by making very small pajamas.
Castle Rock resident Martha Logan’s daughter Lily was born premature and spent 6 weeks in the NICU. She’s now a happy and healthy 4-year old but Logan says it was hard to dress her during those early weeks.
“She was wrapped in a blanket (in the NICU) and once she hit about five pounds we went to Target and Walmart and had gifts of preemie pajamas and outfits that were given to us, and they were huge on her,” Logan said.
Martha started a non-profit Faith’s Footsies that makes a patented pair of pajamas. They come in sizes as small as 1.5 pounds, and are made from hypoallergenic bamboo for delicate skin. The pajamas also have several openings to allow for tubes and easy access for doctors.
“We really wanted families to know to keep the faith. Because even though you’re in the midst of something really, really hard, there is another side of it when you come out of it that is just beautiful and amazing,” Logan said.
Faith’s Footsies pajamas are also currently being tested to see how they help regulate body temperature, which could allow babies wearing them to be out of incubators sooner. All families receive the pajamas for free. Anyone with a loved one in a NICU can fill out a form on the website.
Logan has also expanded to helping families with other necessities and plans to start a virtual support group as well.
Watch Nicole Brady’s interview in the video player below.
Faith’s Footsies designs pajamas for babies in the NICU
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As newborns perish at besieged Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza, human rights organizations are urging U.S. President Joe Biden to “intervene” and demanding that Israel cease its attacks in the territory.
Health officials in Gaza say Israel has laid siege to Shifa, making the hospital a deathtrap for the thousands of healthcare workers, patients and displaced people inside. While Israel has carried out airstrikes on the territory since the unprecedented October 7 attack by Hamas, Israeli officials have denied attacking the hospital, which has been left without electricity and vital supplies.
The hospital’s last generator ran out of fuel on Saturday, leading to the deaths of three premature babies and four other patients, the Associated Press reports, citing the Hamas-run Health Ministry
The Health Ministry said another 36 newborns are at risk of dying and that there are 1,500 patients at Shifa, 1,500 medical personnel, and more than 15,000 people seeking shelter at the hospital.
Al-Shifa Hospital director Muhammad Abu Salmiya told Al Jazeera on Saturday that “medical devices stopped” and “patients, especially those in intensive care, started to die.”
The hospital director also said that Israeli troops were “shooting at anyone outside or inside the hospital.”
Pictured is a newborn infant receiving care inside an incubator at a neonatal intensive care unit at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on September 29, 2022. Health officials in Gaza say Israel has laid siege to the hospital and blocked crucial supplies. As a result, officials said three premature babies had died after the hospital’s last generator ran out of fuel on November 11, 2023, while another 36 babies were at risk of dying because there was no electricity. MOHAMMED ABED / AFP/Getty
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Sunday in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that Al-Shifa “is not functioning as a hospital anymore.”
A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told Newsweek in a statement on Sunday that IDF placed 300 liters (79 gallons) of fuel near Shifa Hospital overnight for an emergency generator powering incubators for premature babies as well as “other urgent medical use.” However, the military blamed Hamas and said the militant group prevented the hospital from receiving the fuel.
Israeli officials have claimed that Hamas operates its command headquarters underneath the Shifa Hospital complex. The Israeli military released an illustrated map of the hospital with alleged locations of underground militant installations, without providing additional evidence to support the claims. Hamas and hospital staff have denied these claims, according to the Associated Press.
IDF told Newsweek that forces are engaged in “intense battles” near the hospital, but said that, “Unlike Hamas, the IDF is taking all feasible measures under operational circumstances to mitigate harm to civilians.”
IDF said a humanitarian corridor has been established to allow people to evacuate from the hospital south of Wadi Aza, through the streets of Al Wahada and Salah al-din.
As the fighting near the complex wages on, advocacy groups say it inhibits civilians from being able to safely flee and puts those who can’t in mortal danger. Numerous people and organizations took to social media to demand a ceasefire.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, demanded that the Biden administration “urgently intervene to stop the Israeli government’s ongoing siege of Al Shifa Hospital.”
CAIR said in a statement on Saturday that if the White House allows the Israeli government to “murder” newborn babies there will be “no coming back.”
“The Biden administration must intervene right now, right this minute, to stop the unfolding crime against humanity at the largest hospital in Gaza,” the statement reads. “Besieging a hospital, using snipers to murder fleeing families, and cutting off resources needed to keep newborn babies alive is beyond the pale, even for Netanyahu’s openly racist, genocidal Israeli government. If the White House allows the Israeli government to murder these newborns, other patients and their doctors, there will be no coming back for this administration’s standing within our nation and around the world.”
Newsweek reached out via email on Sunday to representatives for CAIR and Biden.
Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), a UK-based nonprofit that works with Palestinian communities to help “uphold their rights to health and dignity,” joined the call for a ceasefire on Sunday, saying that is the only option to save the three-dozen premature and critically ill neonates at Al-Shifa.
MAP’s Chief Executive Officer Melanie Ward said on Sunday in a series of posts on X, formerly Twitter, that babies in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit are dying from lack of oxygen as Al-Shifa has no electricity or fuel to run generators.
Ward warned that more newborns at that facility will die soon unless power is restored.
“The only safe option to save these babies would be for Israel to cease its assault and besiegement of Al Shifa, to allow fuel to reach the hospital, and to ensure that the surviving parents of these babies can be reunited with them,” Ward said.
In a subsequent post, Ward expressed concerns over the Israeli government’s plan to move the babies to a “safer” hospital.
“We are deeply concerned by uncritical media reporting regarding the Israeli military’s statement that it will help move premature babies trapped at the hospital to a ‘safer hospital,’” Ward said in a post, which contained a photo of rubble-filled roadways and heavily damaged buildings.
“We are deeply concerned by uncritical media reporting regarding the Israeli military’s statement that it will help move premature babies trapped at the hospital to a “safer hospital”.” (3/6)https://t.co/Y68zKMawsy
She said with ambulances unable to reach Al-Shifa and no nearby hospitals able to accept an influx of patients, there is “no indication” of a way to safely transport the newborns.
“It is imperative that the international community demands a #CeasefireNOW, allowing the hospital to operate safely,” Ward said in a follow-up post. “We say again international law must be upheld. The life of every patient, health worker and displaced person in Shifa is precious and must be protected.”
Newsweek reached out via email on Sunday night to MAP for comment.
Ghebreyesus also joined the calls on social media for an immediate ceasefire. In a post on X, he said that WHO officials have been in contact with Shifa Hospital staff, who described the situation as “dire and perilous.”
“It’s been 3 days without electricity, without water and with very poor internet which has severely impacted our ability to provide essential care,” the director general said in the post. “The constant gunfire and bombings in the area have exacerbated the already critical circumstances. Tragically, the number of patient fatalities has increased significantly. Regrettably, the hospital is not functioning as a hospital anymore. The world cannot stand silent while hospitals, which should be safe havens, are transformed into scenes of death, devastation, and despair. Ceasefire. NOW.”
.@WHO has managed to get in touch with health professionals at the Al-Shifa hospital in #Gaza.
The situation is dire and perilous.
It’s been 3 days without electricity, without water and with very poor internet which has severely impacted our ability to provide essential…
In a televised address over the weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected growing international calls for a ceasefire without the release of the estimated 240 hostages taken by Hamas in the October 7 attack that sparked the unrest.
Israel has said its goal is to crush Hamas and will pursue militant fighters wherever they are. Experts and rights groups have accused Israel of committing war crimes, including genocide.
Israel has come under mounting international pressure over the plight of civilians in Gaza, where roughly 2.3 million Palestinians are trapped, half of them children. The Israeli government also cut off the supply of food, medicine, water, and electricity in Gaza, igniting a wave of criticism.
As of Sunday, the Gaza Health Ministry says more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, while about 2,700 have been reported missing or thought to be trapped or dead under rubble, The Associated Press reported.
On the Israeli side, at least 1,200 people have been killed, most of them in the Hamas attack last month, the AP reported, adding that 46 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the beginning of the military’s ground offensive.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
