Premature babies find comfort from volunteers
Human touch important when parents can’t be there
INDIANAPOLIS – When Paul Looney’s grandson was born eight years ago, the newborn spent three days in the neonatal intensive care unit of a St. Louis hospital. Looney noticed people rocking some of the babies. He found out the “cuddlers,” as they were called, were volunteers.
In 2012, Looney began volunteering at Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University Health. Riley uses volunteers throughout the hospital. But to help in NICU, volunteers have helped out for at least a year elsewhere in the hospital.
Looney worked for about 10 months in the hospital library, taking the book cart around to kids and reading to them. Then he worked in the teen program, where patients have their own room to hang out, play games and cards and do crafts. But what he really wanted to do was rock babies. When the opportunity finally came, Looney said he was honored to be part of the program.
Riley Child Life specialist Abigail Rainey said volunteers must put in a year of service because staff and the families must be assured that the volunteers are “passionate, caring people that are here for the long haul. They’ve proved that they are consistent and that they’re great volunteers,” she said.
If parents want their baby to be in the program, Child Life puts them on the schedule to be rocked and held by one of eight volunteers. Babies spend an average 31 days in the NICU, but some stay for months.
“We love having volunteers,” Rainey said. “It’s really important just for help soothing them when they’re fussy. It’s a great help to parents who can’t be here all the time due to work or other responsibilities at home, to know that someone’s here rocking their baby, cuddling their baby, spending time reading to their baby, singing to their baby, holding them while they’re sleeping.”
On one evening in November, Looney left a stressful day at his job at AT&T to find his own therapeutic calm, rocking babies. He often sees the same babies,
but on this night he was rocking Kizzie Turpin for the first time. Kizzie furled her little brow as she heard a new voice, seeming to study everything about this person with a strong hold, but gentle touch. The new but calm voice slowly grew on her, and she yawned the kind of yawn that takes hold of the entire face. Then she broke into a huge smile.
“Oh my gosh,” said Kizzie’s nurse, Erin Bevis. “I have never seen her smile so much.”
“You’re showing your movie star qualities,” Looney told the baby. “Such a pretty smile.”
Looney sees his volunteering not only as a way of giving back, but for what he gets in return.
“It’s comforting for me. It’s relaxing. You know, I can sit and just enjoy them and focus on them and nothing else. It’s very therapeutic, from a selfish point of view,” he says.