Job advert for volunteer to cuddle babies in NICU

[columbosscruffycoat]

My local health authority has just advertised for volunteers to go and work in the nicu cuddling babies. It’s not a joke, it’s a genuine advert. I can’t imagine any parent would want some random person cuddling their poorly baby. I can’t believe the nhs has come to this. Just wondered what people think about this and whether it’s happening anywhere else in the uk. I’m in the northwest uk.

This has been around for ages and I understand a lot of parents are very grateful for it. I think I'd want to know my baby was getting human touch and love if I couldn't be there all the time, instead of lying alone. Newborn stage is so formative in establishing their capacity for attachment, I'd want them to learn that they will be cuddled and comforted no matter what.

Then there are babies who have been relinquished or abandoned who would have nobody to cuddle them otherwise.

Me to! I'm a huge fan of baby cuddles 🥰

You are lucky to be in the position where you could be there. Not everyone can be if they have other children. Do you think it is better to just leave those babies with no human contact?

Or they have been removed from their birth parents due to their drug addiction

That must have been so hard to hear & could only have added to your stress & no doubt (misplaced) guilt, what an absolute gem that student was

My twins were in NICU for weeks. My smallest twin was in for 7 weeks and his brother in for 6 weeks. Babies born at 22-26 weeks are likely to be in for several months. I was in a privileged, if difficult position, in that my parents stepped in with my eldest and my husband drove me to the hospital everyday whilst I recovered from my C-section. We were also lucky that my husband's employer were very supportive and allowed him to arrive in late and leave early whilst our boys were in hospital. With all this there were still hours when our boys were alone. We still had a child at home who needed to see us.

Life goes on for people around you. People have jobs. People don't drive. Babies can end up in hospitals miles away from your home. Twins can end up in hospitals miles away from each other if there aren't enough beds in a NICU or they have different needs. Mothers die in childbirth or are very ill and need the support of their family.

There are all kinds of reasons why those babies don't have someone with them all the time. PP above have mentioned the children born addicted to substances.

I wouldn't have minded, in principle, but would have been very worried about infection transmission from too many people handling.

But unless you know their situation and I'm not talking about just a 5 minute chat. How do you actually know why they are leaving?

There's also nothing wrong with taking a break. Driving yourself to exhaustion with no breaks can't be beneficial to a baby.

Babies going through drug withdrawal are meant to be ''Inconsolable''.
It's meant to be such a painful thing to go through for an adult, but a tiny baby has no idea what the wretched pains and raw sensitivity is, no wonder they scream relentlessly, poor souls.

A soothing volunteer won't be able to take the pain away, but just the physical closeness and warmth from another human might help that poor baby, emotionally. <3

Sadly not all children have that. I know of a charity in another country which consist of volunteers that accompany children who are in hospital age children, not just babies. Often these children are very vulnerable and have no one that can be with them. And having someone there who cares with them helps then recover quicker.

Have you ever had a baby in a NICU?

I was put in an induced coma after an EMCS. I’m glad there was volunteers able to hold my son in nicu because I couldn’t. If you don’t have many relatives then it’s not possible to have constant support of visitors and as you know they limit the number of visitors to reduce chance of infection coming into the nicu ward. These people are heavily vetted and give their time to help soothe babies who unfortunately can’t be looked after by their parents or midwives because the NHS is so understaffed.

Lovely post. Sorry you had such a rough time of it. The nurses make all the difference there and volunteers will be just as useful.

When my son was in neonatal unit, I had a bed next to his cot as part of the transitional care area, for a while. The idea was all care was done by parents except medical needs like giving medicine by drip. One night I woke to find him starting to wriggle but was so tired I drifted right off again. When I woke next a wonderful nurse was standing next to him shushing and stroking him, and had found the Ewan the sheep and put his lullaby on. I was so grateful and happy to have her help and hearing the lullaby takes me right back. She could've left him to wake me by properly crying but she knew how exhausted I was. I wrote a good feedback message about her on the hospital website.

It’s a brilliant scheme.
Love in unquantifiable.

As a parent who had a child in ICU (thankfully only for a short time) there were no beds available for me to be near my child, we weren’t allowed other family members in because of covid.
I physically had to sleep only a few hours but needed to for survival.

one day he was put in a huge room on his own and I was terrified of him being alone and forgotten.

I’d have been grateful for a hug for me or my child at the time.

Even to work in a Hospice as a volunteer with adults one needs an enhanced DBS check and training- with vulnerable babies the successful applicants will be extremely diligently supervised and trained.

That must have been heart-breaking. I remember hearing a midwife from Dublin speak about the babies that were born addicted to drugs.

The judgement on this thread is incredible.

I had severe pre-eclampsia, my baby was delivered by emergency c-section 8 weeks early. I didn’t even get to visit her for the first 16 hours of her life as they had to monitor me to make sure I didn’t have a seizure and die. I then had to wait for someone to transport me to the NICU to see her for the first time. My partner had to go back to work after 1 day as we wanted to save his paternity leave for when baby came home. It was during Covid so no one else was allowed to visit.

I was discharged after 2 days as they needed the bed and there was no option to “bed in” the NICU as PP have called it.

I ended up driving my car after a week and half as I felt so guilty for leaving my tiny baby with no one to visit her. I definitely hindered my surgical recovery by doing this. However, on many occasions I turned up at random times, my baby was being cuddled by a lovely HCA or nurse. She absolutely received the best care possible and I wouldn’t have denied her a cuddle if she needed it when I wasn’t available.

I also consented to donor milk just in case I wasn’t able to get any of my own (due to my medical issues). Do we also judge new mothers for that?

From another perspective, I’m a social worker and have seen first hand the pain and loneliness of babies in withdrawal. I’d defy anybody to hear the scream of one of those poor souls and not want to pick them up and comfort them.

It is definitely I role I would consider once I retire. I’m so grateful to the lovely ladies to comforted my baby when she needed it.

Shame on the posters passing judgement with no experience of having a NICU baby and the trauma that can result from it.

@AGoingConcern I know nobody is stealing any babies. That's exactly my point and if you read my post I'm in favour of the volunteers.

In good faith I'll try and explain my question another way. Is it the case that:

a.) The volunteer works on the entire ward, cuddling babies as needed. They essentially act as an extra staff member but doing the cuddling rather than the feeding and medical care. This would include both babies whose parents are never there as well as parents who are often there but have had to pop off for an hour or two.

OR

b.) They only cuddle babies whose parents can't ever be there or parents who have to pop off for an hour or two and have explicitly opted in to the cuddling service in advance.

I ask this because in the case of option A, if a parent walked in to find a volunteer cuddling their baby, in a lot of cases they would react very angrily. This is where I included the example of a mother shouting "get off my baby" or accusations that the volunteer is a weird baby snatcher.

Even on this thread, people are saying they wouldn't be happy about it and some posters even comments about "sickos". Therefore option A would be a much more stressful role (for volunteers) than option B would be.

At no point did I imply that a volunteer would be used to replace the parents. I was asking whether parents are asked about whether they want this or not at the start before it happens.

My eldest son was in SCBU for a few days as a newborn. I had a room on the post natal ward and used to spend as much time as I could with him (basically any time I wasn’t sleeping, eating, having a shower etc). I remember the baby in the cot next to his whose mum I only saw visit once. She lived in a coastal town, didn’t drive and had other young children. Her baby had been born very prematurely and had been in the unit for a while with serious bowel issues (NEC). It used to take her an hour and a half each way on the bus to come and see him, which she did as often as she could. She was very young and for whatever reason didn’t have the type of support network to enable her to do more than this. I felt so sorry for her. When my son was there, the majority of babies in the unit didn’t have a parent there all the time like I was (probably for similar reasons as those I’ve described above). I felt like I was in a very privileged position to be able to stay with him and would not presume to judge parents who couldn’t do the same for whatever reason. I think it’s great that they have these volunteer roles to provide that human contact for the babies that they need and to support the staff in the unit.

I'm a nicu nurse. Before covid we had a volunteer who cuddled babies.
The parents loved it, parents can't be there 24/7 and us nurses would love to sit and cuddle them all day but have other tasks to do. The volunteer is fully checked out. I think it's lovely. We have some babies whose parents cannot visit due to numerous reasons.

😭😭 poor baby thank goodness you were there.

It’s a thing the US, I was in with my DD and would see older people coming in for cuddles. They robed up and washed. I thought it was a lovely thing, lots of ill babies don’t have parents that can be there all day every day.

Donor milk...DS had that as his first feeds- It REALLY upset me- I'd assumed he was being breast fed by another woman- but of course it was ''milk bank'' milk- which I was able to donate to later on.

I've heard drug addicted babies on TV scream, {Not in real life, thank goodness} and it is a really high pitched in pain sound.

I wasn't allowed to be with my newborn in NICU until he was 6 days old (covid). I know he wasn't cuddled. I would give anything to go back to make sure he was cuddled, even if by a stranger.

Op unless you've been in the situation of having a baby in NICU I don't think you could understand.

Yes, and if it's a volunteer (or parent) it frees up the nurses to care for the other babies. The night I witnessed was absolutely frantic, they have so many regular checks to do let alone the feeding and nappies and this baby sounded like it was being tortured all night long, only slightly better being held but there was an improvement at least.