HOLDING THE BABIES
Sometime around 2001 I had decided I wanted to do some volunteer work. I was feeling frustrated as a parent and needed to have something that felt like a success. Being a parent to my newly teen aged son was hard to say the least. He challenged me on every level and I felt like I wasn’t doing anything right.
I had heard about baby rockers. Hospitals or clinics have volunteers come in that rock babies that need extra rocking and holding. I thought this would be a great job! Sitting and rocking babies. Even with all my hospital anxieties I still was excited to find a place to help out.
I found a place call Pediatric Interim Care Center. They took in special needs babies that were specifically drug addicted. I had no idea what I would encounter. My shift was assigned to me 9-11 every Wednesday night, they said 2 hours was a lot, as it was pretty overwhelming. I just hoped there wasn’t any blood or needles for me to see.
When I first started I did mostly laundry and cleaning for these little people. Lots of blankets, sleeping outfits and cloth diapers. You learn your way around and the nurses get to know you and if your lucky there will be baby holding. Not the amount of baby rocking I was hoping to do, but I was willing to wait to be trusted with the task. I was happy helping out and I got to see the babies so it was all good. They only had about 15 babies at a time, which really for the time was not very many. I remember thinking where do all the other babies go, there had to be a 1000 times that many drug addicted babies out there.
Every once and awhile the nurses would get busy and they would need an extra hand. Yes! I would get to hold a baby. They told me not to look them in the eyes, that even at the young age of a few months that they were addicted and didn’t like eye contact. They had to stay tightly bundled as they liked that feeling. That was really hard, babies are so beautiful, most of the time I couldn’t help myself, but I am a rule follower so I tried not to look at them.
I usually would never get to hold the same baby twice, so I tried to make my time special with them. Somehow, I felt, by holding them I could let them know how special they were. That whatever their parents had done to them was not the way the world was and they will find people to love them. Because who knew which of them would go back to their parents, another family member or another family altogether. For a few minutes I loved them and held them. I told them everything would be ok.
This weekend I was feeding our youngest granddaughter, she’s 10 months old. I couldn’t help but look into her eyes and see her. She also wanted to be heard right before I fed her! Such simple, yet complicated needs for these little ones. How many of us just want to be seen and heard?
Sometimes life is like that, simple needs met.
I think about those little babies a lot. Where are they, who are they and what have they become?