Around this time of year, as Christmas approaches, Greg Phelps dons his Santa suit, puts on his white beard, fake belly and black boots, and drives to Ascension SE Wisconsin Hospital — St. Joseph in Milwaukee.
He walks to the neonatal intensive care unit, a place all too familiar to him and his family.
He comes to visit the babies.
"It makes us feel special and brings a little glimmer of hope and Christmas magic during this special time that (parents are) supposed to be home with their families and celebrating," said Shawnda Van Derel, one of the lead nurses on the day shift in the NICU.
Greg, who turns 60 this month, takes pictures with the babies, holds them if circumstances allow, and visits with family members who heard he's coming.
His son, Kyle Phelps, 27, comes along. Kyle hands out stuffed animals for each baby and attached to each toy is a note detailing his family’s story.
"Even though we don’t know you," it says in part, "we understand what you are going through and our prayers are with you. We hope your baby will be home soon. Merry Christmas.”
Kyle was born at the same hospital three months prematurely, on Nov. 24, 1998. He weighed 2 pounds, 9 ounces at birth, and spent the first 98 days of his life at the hospital, most of the time in the NICU.
The experience stuck with Greg and his wife, Marlene, who didn't have family in the area, and who also had a toddler daughter, Caroline, at home.
"It's a pretty intimidating environment, especially when you first walk in," Greg said.
Inspired by a special visit
A few days before Christmas 1998, a man dressed as Santa came to the NICU. He took pictures with the infants and spoke briefly to Greg. The man's baby granddaughter had recently been in the NICU, Greg remembers the man explaining.
"You know, every outcome, every patient scenario, is different," Greg said. "But for a few minutes, it just really helped to make us smile and remember it was Christmas, and for that minute or two it just kind of took the stress off our back."
As a souvenir of the visit, the Phelps family got a Polaroid picture of Santa with Kyle, who is difficult to spot within the trappings of his Isolette. Santa leans over and faces the camera.
On Kyle's first birthday, the family returned to the NICU to deliver a sheet cake to thank the nurses. The cake delivery turned into a yearly tradition.
When Kyle was about 4, one of the nurses told the family that the previous Santa had moved or retired. The nurse asked if Greg would like to take Santa's place.
"It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment, 'Yeah, I will,'" he said. "And it's been a tradition for a couple decades now."
In addition to bringing in a cake every year on Kyle's birthday, father and son return closer to Christmas for the Santa visit. They haven't missed a year, even when the family moved to Portland, Oregon, for about five years.
In 2019, they were featured on a segment of the "Today" show for their NICU visits. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when in-person visits weren't allowed, Kyle created a stand-up cutout of a larger-than-life-sized Greg in his Santa suit — "COVID Claus" they called him — and nurses posed the cutout next to the babies for photos.
'A beacon of hope'
Greg and Marlene live in Pewaukee, a western suburb of Milwaukee. Kyle lives in Minneapolis and works in media production for a real estate agency.
It's important to Kyle that he shows up at Christmas, too.
"You certainly want to be like a beacon of hope in that moment," he said. "You know, it's a very vulnerable moment for them. No one wants to spend Christmas in the NICU. So me just being there can kind of serve as a way for these parents to see that their kids are going to be OK, or they can grow into a healthy individual."
Kyle loves the tradition with his dad and recalls his perspective of the job when he was younger and still believed in Santa. "There was that, 'Oh, I know Santa is real, but my dad is like Santa 1.5,' which I really liked. It was really cool," he said.
One day, Kyle said, he will take over the Santa duties, but he and his father aren't finished as a duo just yet.
Van Derel said the NICU staff is happy that Kyle and Greg continue their long tradition. "We're grateful that the Phelpses had such a positive experience at Ascension St. Joseph and honored that they return to our NICU every year," she said.
Greg remembers those times in the NICU with his baby son, including the dark day a doctor thought Kyle had an intestinal infection and might die. It's a story he keeps to himself during his Santa visits.
"With Kyle's outcome, I always think — and I tell this to parents when I'm there, too — is that hope can be a lot stronger than fear, and the seemingly insurmountable can be overcome," he said.