NICU

cud.dle "Hold close in one's arms as a way of showing love or affection"


I am finding the neonatal intensive care to be a holy place, a sanctuary.  The combined noise of the life-sustaining machines, the chatter of the staff and the crying of the babies all combine and become for me a celestial music.  I know a little about music and I can tell you that this is beautiful music. From the time  I open the door to the NICU until the time I leave,  I feel that I have been in a place of solitude, a place of remarkable love and deep emotion.

I learned about "the Cuddler program" in the NICU of a local hospital nearly three months ago.  I immediately completed the online application for volunteers.  The process has taken all this time. Hospitals are very careful about who has access to their newborn babies. As it should be.

After this long application and orientation process I have finally cuddled babies two different times. I have no idea what I'm doing for these babies, but I know what these babies are doing for me. The nurses and attendants seem to think the time is worthwhile for the babies as well.  "She's been fussy all afternoon, but I haven't heard a peep since you've been holding her." And another stopped by to say, "I think she loves you.  She's going to think you're her grandfather."

The reason hospitals employ the volunteer services of cuddlers is because for a number of reasons the parents are not available for all the newborns.  And also there are not enough nurses to go around to afford them the luxury of holding babies for hours at a time. As a cuddler, I have nothing better to do. I literally have nothing better to do.

I had imagined the experience to be extraordinary and I have not been disappointed.  It's an awesome thing for me to hold a tiny stranger in my arms. And to think that in a few days this child will go on to her family or into foster care and I will probably never see him again.  But for these few minutes this baby's entire being is in my arms. In my care. For these few minutes I'm his mother, his father, his grandmother, his grandfather.  I'm all he's got.  Or so he thinks. So I rock and I whisper and I hum and I love.

Although the hospital does not have strict expectations for the cuddlers, they do hope that we will show up at least once a week.  In my case they may have trouble keeping me away.  Once I've been in the NICU, the NICU is in me.  I can feel it and hear it now.   Those babies are there now.  When I wake up in the middle of the night, those babies are still there.  And some of them just need to be held and rocked and fed.

I knew that I would enjoy holding the babies. I enjoyed rocking my own baby and then his daughter some  years later. I've rocked many babies over the years.   What I didn't predict is how quickly I would become attached to these newborns. When my cuddle time is over I'm not ready to put them down.  When I leave the hospital, for a while all I can think about is that baby.  I asked my supervisor how she deals with the phenomenon of wanting to adopt them all.  She said, "It's a problem for all of us. We all deal with it in different ways. You'll get used to it.  Just keep cuddling. And pray a lot."

All those years my mother kept "the bed babies" in the nursery, I thought it was her gift to the church, I realize now it was those babies' gift to her. She never "kept" those babies.  Those babies kept her.