The Power of Loving Touch and Affection
There’s nothing like the smell, grace and promise of a beautiful new baby. It’s like they symbolize a fresh hope for the world. Connecting with, and cuddling, a newborn is a sweet and magical experience, but for thousands of babies around the world, it’s something that is vital to their wellbeing.
Increasing numbers of babies are being born into a fight for their lives, as their bodies desperately try to rid themselves of the drugs their mothers took during pregnancy. With varying degrees of painkillers or heroin in their little bodies, their first days of life are a traumatic and painful experience.
These tiny babies experience intense withdrawal symptoms of diarrhoea, shaking, vomiting, crying and intense pain. If you imagine what a drug-addicted adult experiences when they go cold turkey – that’s what these vulnerable babies go through as well.
The number of drug-affected babies born in the US has quadrupled in the last decade.Nurses report that drug affected babies shake, sweat, cry, get severe acidic diarrhea that burns their skin, as well as suffer the pain of being overstimulated by lights and sound. But, there is hope; the same nurses note that when held and cuddled for long periods, these babies are comforted and can cope with their ordeal much better.
It is vital to their recovery that they get tender, loving care so they can survive this painful experience so early on. One nurse has started a program calling for volunteers to cuddle these babies.
The Birth of The Program
Jane Cavanaugh, a nurse at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, is encouraging volunteers to hold, cuddle and soothe the babies suffering through withdrawal. She told the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News:
These babies going through withdrawal and need to be held for extended periods … They need human touch. They need soothing. They need talking.
Often they spend months alone in hospitals as they are weaned off the heroin or painkillers that filled their bodies during their time in the womb. Sometimes the infants have been removed from their parents, or their drug addicted mothers are attending drug rehabilitation programs, so there is no one there to comfort and soothe them, except the already overworked nurses and hospital staff.
Loving touch and soothing is a lifeline to these babies.Doctors have also reported that volunteers cuddling the babies reduces both the amount of medication they need, as well as the length of their stay in the hospital.
Cabell Huntington Hospital, in West Virginia, was one of the first hospitals to recognize a need for specialized care for these chemically dependent newborns, with the opening of a second neonatal unit specifically for withdrawal babies. It also has an off-site rehabilitation center, Lily’s Place, where babies are given dedicated treatment.
Lily’s Place opened its doors in October 2014 as the first Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) Centre in the United States, with specialized care and a volunteer program, housing newborns away from fluorescent light and noise of the busy hospital.
Cuddle care programs are popping up all over the US in response to the soaring rates of drug-affected babies being born. Most hospitals have seen huge success with having cuddlers come in to soothe premature babies, and now hospitals can use the same loving care for these vulnerable babies battling to heal their drugged systems.
