LIFE & COMMUNITY inspiration
Baby Love
How an army of volunteers is helping to heal sick babies— one cuddle at a time.
THERE’S A QUIET hum of activity inside Southlake Regional Health Centre’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Nurses speak in hushed voices as they check Isolettes (self-controlled incubators) that house the hospital’s tiniest, most delicate patients— babies too sick, too weak and too small to go home. The soft glow from the Isolettes bounces through the unit, which is kept warm, peaceful and dimly lit—it’s purposely womb-like and puts newborns at ease. Connor and Kyle are two-week-old twins. Their mother, Krissy, has tucked the boys into her shirt; they look like little joeys, heads poking out of her tank top. Lying on Mom’s chest, the babies, born at 32 weeks, instinctively sidle up to each other. Kyle, who’s more alert than docile Connor, puts his tiny arm around his brother as they settle in for skin-to-skin time. The boys, now free of the masks and wires that helped them breathe, are a lucky pair. Krissy, a mom 52 | CANADIAN LIVING NOVEMBER 2017
of four, has help at home with her two toddlers, allowing her to be at the Newmarket, Ont.–based hospital so she can feed and hold her sons, giving them the snuggling all babies instinctually crave and need to thrive. But there are times when neither she nor her husband can make it to the NICU. That’s when Krissy— like other parents who can’t be with their babies— relies on a small team of carefully selected, highly trained volunteers to cuddle her boys. “It’s a huge consolation for a parent to know that if you can’t be there to hold your baby, someone else is there to do LW IRU \RX ´ VKH VD\V DV KHU WZLQV GULIW R̆ WR VOHHS “Babies need to be held—not only to reduce stress, stabilize heart rates and reduce pain but also to support their brain development,â€? says Sandra Payne, Southlake’s nurse educator for NICU and pediatrics. Five years ago, Payne, who’s been a nurse for almost 20 years, got a call from a colleague in the
PHOTOGRAPHY, DAVID WEINGARTEN
TEXT LISA VAN DE GEYN
