05/27/2026
Sharing a sweet former patient & UAMS NICU Graduate, Oliver, & his annual birthday project! 💙
With Oliver’s 5th birthday quickly approaching, we wanted to kickstart our book drive for the NICU at UAMS Hospital.
🌟 Our WHY: Oliver was born at 28 weeks and for the first two and a half weeks of his life Chris and I weren’t allowed to hold him, he was just too fragile. During that time the only thing we could do was sit next to his isolette and read to him. It gave us a sense of normalcy and it gave us something to do as a family. During all of the uncertainty of our situation, reading to Oliver gave us hope and it allowed us to escape the trauma that we were going through. Our son spent 83 excruciatingly long days in the NICU and now we’ve made it our mission to give back each year on his birthday. To date, we’ve raised over 1,000 books and almost 300 octopals in the last four years in Oliver’s honor.
We hope these books will give parents the opportunity to spend quality time with their children. And by reading, we hope their voice will carry over the loud machines, beeping and chaos. We also hope the words on the pages will bring both the parents and their babies the same peace that it brought us.
🌟How you can help: Purchase books from our amazon wishlist https://www.amazon.com/registries/gl/guest-view/EA1RDJMJHDOR?ref_=cm_sw_r_mwn_ggr-subnav-share_5RJO3OCI50ECR88DNYD7&language=en-US 📚 Books will be donated to UAMS NICU in September to kick off their Read-A-Thon.
As Oliver grows up we want him to be a bright light in the world. We want him to know that no matter how dark the world may seem, he can do good and inspire others to do the same. Our little passion project that we dreamt up one night during our own NICU stay has now turned into a yearly charity drive with donors over multiple states. Family members, friends, and strangers alike all come together with one goal in mind, to give back. None of this would be possible without the support from our family and friends! Thank you for loving us and rooting for us.
Love,
Chelsea, Chris and Oliver
