Artful Healing: Respiratory Therapist's Paintings Bring Comfort to Premature Newborns

Nickie Brayton, who works in the NICU at Marian Regional Medical Center, is using her artistic skills to bring hope, comfort to families.

Being in a neonatal intensive care unit can be a harrowing place for new parents to find themselves. 

Unfamiliar pieces of equipment, likely keeping their newborn alive, make unfamiliar beeps and buzzes. There are new faces speaking in hushed tones. Uncertainty is all around.

As a respiratory therapist at the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Marian Regional Medical Center, Nickie Brayton knows all too well how mothers and fathers who see their newborns in her unit feel. 

Their babies are typically hooked up to various monitors, with different hoses and tubes. Sometimes, mothers and fathers aren’t able to hold their newborn while they’re being cared for in the NICU. 

Knowing how fearful a time that can be for parents, Brayton has been inspired by her faith to bring her caring touch to families in the NICU at Marian. 

Brayton creates personalized watercolor paintings that are given to families around the time they are ready to “graduate” from the NICU. 

Brayton custom mats the paintings and has them framed – after the borders are signed by members of the NICU. The pieces of art are then presented to the families as their babies get ready to leave the NICU. 

As a respiratory therapist, Brayton typically provides care for newborns in the NICU for months, a journey that forges a unique bond. 

“You get to know these kids really well – some of them you resuscitated,” Brayton says. “They were gone and you brought them back. You bond with the family – and the baby.”

Brayton says her primary goal as a respiratory therapist is to make sure her patients’ airways are secure.

“For a lot of these babies, these machines are their life support and that’s what we manage,” Brayton says, pointing to various ventilators and life support equipment. “We intubate them, get a tube down past their vocal cords, secure it, manage their life support and then try to wean them off of it as fast as possible, using different modalities. And in about three to four months we will get them home.”

Marian’s 21-bed, Community (Level III) Neonatal Intensive Care Unit is the most sophisticated and technologically-advanced unit in the region, providing exceptional care to the tiniest of patients.

“Beyond her exceptional professional skills, our trust and respect for her expertise as a NICU respiratory therapist, Nicki personifies our Marian values,” says the Director of the NICU and Pediatrics at Marian Regional Medical Center, Chris Jakowchik. “While we see our values in all of our staff, she regularly goes above and beyond. Nicki takes her personal time away from work and creates from her own resources, these works of art. They are imbued with such meaning and intention, connecting this difficult but special time in the NICU to a work of art that the parents will treasure forever.”

Some of Brayton’s art now adorns the walls of the NICU, adding her warm touch to the hallways. Brayton paints things like adorable animals, such as giraffes and ducks, or serene landscapes. And each painting that is given to a family is personal. 

She painted a baby duck for Jazmin Narez and her son Armando, who was delivered at about 24 weeks – or 16 weeks premature. Armando was in the NICU at Marian for 79 days. 

Why a duck for Armando and his family? Well, Narez’s nieces and nephews always call her “Ducky.”

“The gift from Nickie, it’s something to cherish. It reminds us of the journey Armando has been on and it’s just beautiful,” Narez says. “We get a lot of compliments on it, and people always ask us where we bought it and we say, ‘No, you can’t buy it. You can’t duplicate this.’” 

Narez says her son is doing “amazing” now and the family is thankful for not only the world-class care Armando received in the NICU, but the bonds the family made with the NICU’s staff.

“He’s just doing amazing and I know that the initial care he had there has had a lot to do with it,” Narez said. “It made it a lot easier that we didn’t have to transfer anywhere – our whole stay was here in Santa Maria.”

“We were there for 79 days and everyone in the NICU was just amazing,” Narez added. “They were very comforting, they understood what it’s like – a lot of the staff had had preemies themselves. It made it easier to relate to things.. It made it a lot easier to go home at night because we knew he was well taken care of.”

Brayton has been a respiratory therapist for 12 years and has worked in the NICU for three years. Around the time she began working in the NICU, Brayton, who always dabbled in art, started working with watercolors. 

“I always wanted to try painting and I’m self taught – YouTube University,” she quips. “One day, I wondered, ‘What am I going to do with these paintings?’ I prayed about it and I really felt the Lord leading me to give these to babies who have been in our services for a long period of time – and that’s what I did.”

Brayton says hopes the paintings provide a “light at the end of the tunnel” for families during their stay in the NICU.

“I can’t imagine what the families are going through here in the NICU and the major reward, obviously, is that they get to take their child home,” Brayton said. “But it’s fun to give them something to let them know that we are rooting for them and we’re here for them 24/7 — if they need anything they can call us. It gives them a sense of reassurance and something to come home with.”

For additional information or questions about Marian Regional Medical Center’s NICU please visit Dignityhealth.org/Marian.