Indiana Mom Offers Free Salon Services to Parents of NICU Babies

An Indiana mom volunteers to encourage exhausted parents of high-risk newborns and remind them they’ve “got this.” The mom of a former NICU baby has opened a hospital hair salon to spoil other parents of high-risk newborns. Sarah Pulley knows the NICU inside and out because her daughter Amelia was born premature and spent four months in the neonatal intensive care unit at two different hospitals in Indianapolis.

Last year, Pulley became a volunteer at the hospital’s Ronald McDonald House Family Room, a program under the global nonprofit Ronald McDonald House Charities. When Pulley, a salon owner, heard that Riley Children’s Health wanted to open a hair salon in one of its two family rooms, she excitedly took the lead on the initiative.

Pulley donated a chair from her salon, Three Seventeen Hair Design. She also contacted her distributor, which agreed to provide $150 worth of free hair care products, and she volunteered her hair styling skills. Beauty Bar is located on the third floor of Ronald McDonald Family Room Maternity Tower at Riley.

Parents can relax in a HydroMassage chair, doze in a nap pod and snack on fruit and granola bars. Pulley also goes out of her way to pamper and style postpartum moms and sleep-deprived dads at no charge. “We shampoo, blow dry and give scalp massages on the second Wednesday of each month,” she explained. Most moms who deliver at Riley have high-risk pregnancies or babies who need immediate medical support. The salon is open to all patients who deliver there.