(Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class (AW) Nikki Carter) Megan James, 2, plays in the sand during the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit reunion. This event is held annually and gives families a chance to share personal experiences.

Marguerite Niemoeller, division officer for Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, said the reunion helps maintain strong bonds with families and Bethesda’s health care team.

‘‘The reunion allows former patients and their families to exchange addresses, phone numbers and invite their [unit] roommates to birthday parties and things like that,” Niemoeller said. ‘‘We’re a military community, a lot of these people have no family in this area, some of them come from other parts of the country and we become extended family.”

Niemoeller said the neonatal unit cares for approximately 350 babies a year.

‘‘A lot of these babies have been very, very sick and there were times we never thought they were going to make it out of Bethesda,” Niemoeller said. ‘‘And then they come back and we see how they’ve grown and how they’ve progressed.”

Staff Sgt. Matthew Avery, a father of two daughters who graduated from the unit, said sharing experiences with other parents helps him to see how far his girls have come.

‘‘It’s nice just to have a day to relax and let the kids [play] with the other kids,” Avery said. ‘‘We got to meet some of the people here and talk to some of them about similar experiences.”

Niemoeller said the oldest child to come back to the reunion was an 18-year-old nursing student who still keeps in contact with the nursing team at Bethesda.

‘‘Families come to their first [reunion] and then they move a few times and end up coming back years later and call and say ‘when’s the next picnic? I want to come to it!,’” Niemoeller said. ‘‘So they come back with a five or six year old and we don’t recognize the babies; we recognize the parents. The babies change too much.”

Beth Beason, discharge nurse at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, said she arranges the infants’ discharges and it’s nice to be able to see how the babies are progressing on their own.

‘‘It’s really hard for families to go through with having their sick babies in the unit,” Beason said. ‘‘And to be able to be the ones to help their babies get well and go home is a very rewarding experience for us...It’s also helpful to us to see that the babies do grow up and get better after such a rough start. We put in our heart and soul to get them there.”

Lt. Col. Stacey Cockrell, mother of one-year-old twins Christina and Robert, said she seen a lot of people she knows at the picnic from the unit and enjoyed sharing experiences with the other parents.

‘‘I got to see a lot of people I know and it just amazes me how many kids were in the same situation I was,” Cockrell said. ‘‘The babies were real premature and now everybody is running around and all smiles. It’s the good side of everything that’s come around.”