'It hurts the heart': Volunteer baby-cuddling is not for everyone

There are always the sad days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Winnipeg's St. Boniface Hospital.

Volunteer baby cuddler Hélène Clarke sometimes finds it tough to see a baby with so many tubes attached and machines sounding off. She says "it hurts the heart" when there's sad news that a baby failed to thrive and died.

But instead of the sad stories, she focuses instead on the positive impact she can have on a child's life.

"If in some way I can contribute to making a child's journey better, I'm accomplishing the goal of being a volunteer here. We just want to feel like we're helping. And I think we are."

Babies in the NICU are given extra warmth, affection and hugs as part of a volunteer baby cuddling program that's now in its fourth year.

The program is so popular there's a three-year waiting period for new volunteers.

Clarke has been a volunteer baby cuddler in the program for over three years, something she says she's wanted to do "forever."

She was part of a patient and family advisory council at St. Boniface Hospital when she heard about the new pilot program.

For a few hours every Thursday, Clarke deals "with the most vulnerable of little beings."

She will cuddle a baby for about 45 minutes to an hour, then move to the next infant in need of affection. The babies are very vulnerable, and proper protocols need to be followed — from thorough hand-washing and hospital gowns to being careful with the tubes and machines attached to the child.

The cuddlers are not allowed to pick the babies up. Instead, the infant must be handed to the cuddler by a nurse or by a parent.

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"Some people might think it's glamorous but it's not," she says.

There's no soft music playing, no comfortable rocking chairs. Instead, she sits quietly in a very tight space holding a baby close in the corner of a small room that's filled with machines, parents, nurses and doctors.

The mostly premature babies are extremely small and light, Clarke said. "Some of the babies have a head that's tiny like an apple."

'Feeling of security'

Cecile Porter was instrumental in creating the hospital's volunteer baby cuddler program. As the  continuing education instructor for child health, Porter developed first the research, then the training protocols for the cuddle volunteers.

The NICU cares for babies ranging from those that are born at very premature gestational stages to full-term babies that are sick. The cuddlers focus on the babies that are stable enough to be held safely. Babies with breathing tubes cannot be cuddled, but those with nasal prongs and intravenous lines can. 

Porter says that the goal of the cuddlers is to give the babies that feeling of security, containment that they would be feeling if they were "still inside mom," adding that the comfort of being held, cuddled, and coddled benefits their neurological outcomes as well as their physical growth and their ability to eat.

Can't get attached

But not everyone can be a baby cuddler. Porter stresses the importance of understanding a person's motivation to become a cuddler in the first place.

"Potential volunteers should not be motivated to cuddle babies looking for an emotional attachment. Volunteers, for example, who have experienced losing a child and have experienced something untoward and are trying to find that replacement" are not good candidates for the role, Porter said. 

Volunteers are told the parents' stories so they understand the angst they feel when they can't be with their babies all the time, sometimes because they have to care for other children at home or who live far away and can only fly in once or twice a week. 

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Clarke says her goal is to get babies home with their families as quickly as possible.

"If this were your baby you'd want to help baby grow and get home as quickly as possible," she said. 

"My task is to help them achieve this quickly in their journey."

The program is not taking applications for baby cuddlers at this time with a waiting list of up to three years.