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Hospital volunteers provide cuddling comfort to newborns
Loving hugs and touches help youngest patients thrive
0622cuddler5
Trained volunteer Louis Gibbs holds newborn Jamiracle Hammond inside the Intermediate Care Nursery at the Northeast Georgia Medical Center. Gibbs is part of a group of people who hold, rock and pacify newborns. The babies respond to the security of being held and comforted.
Every Tuesday, Louis Gibbs begins his shift at the hospital by scrubbing his hands with the intensity of a surgeon. He’s not a nurse or a physician, but the 78-year-old Gainesville man is tasked with caring for some of the hospital’s most vulnerable patients. He’s known as a “cuddler,” a volunteer who holds babies in the Northeast Georgia Medical Center’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.