FL Mom Celebrates Daughter By Donating Halloween Costumes To NICUs
ELLENTON, FL — When her youngest daughter, Everly, now 4 years old, was born with a chromosome abnormality in 2020, landing her in the neonatal intensive care unit for more than two months, Emma Dorics dreamed of bringing her newborn home in time for Halloween.
She was released from the NICU on Oct. 27, 2020, just in time for the holiday. To celebrate her daughter, Emma has purchased and collected costumes for NICU patients at three Tampa Bay-area hospitals for the past four Halloweens.
Everly was born at Sarasota Memorial Hospital on Aug. 20, 2020, and transferred to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, where she spent 69 days.
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Because this was right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Emma and her husband, Troy, couldn’t be with their daughter at the hospital at the same time, the Ellenton mother told Patch.
They traded 12-hour shifts to watch over the infant, who also wasn’t able to meet her older sister, Emily, now 8, or extended family.
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Halloween was the holiday closest to her birth and became a goal for the family, which they wrote on the board outside Everly’s room.
“We wanted her to be home by Halloween and meet her sister, finally, and be home for a holiday,” Emma said.
In 2021, she donated her first batch of costumes, about 120, to All Children’s Hospital.
“We wanted to celebrate Everly and give thanks to the nurses and also give families hope, because we know how hard it is,” the mother said. “Even a simple holiday like Halloween, you feel like you’re missing out and like you have no hope. We wanted to give them some joy and hope and something to look forward to, sometime to bring back some slight normalcy to them.”
She calls the initiative Everly’s Costumes and each August, she posts to her personal social media pages asking friends and family to purchase and donate costumes for the project. While she doesn’t have a website or social media page for the project, she uses #EverlysCostumes so people can easily find her.
Last year, Emma received a call from a Sarasota Memorial Hospital nurse who followed her on Facebook asking if she could bring costumes to their NICU. It had always been her goal to bring costumes to SMH, as that was where Everly was born.
Now in her fourth year with the project, she’s added Manatee Memorial Hospital, where her daughter attends therapy. This year, she distributed about 220 costumes between the three hospitals.
“They all meant so much to making our Everly as strong as she is now,” Emma said.
Her daughter has “defied all odds” since birth, she added. “Our Everly is an amazing little girl. She’s a fighter.”
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