No more baby cuddlers, pet visits at hospitals: 'We used to have volunteers to do that'

Terry and Jeff Stadler with their dog, Lucile, outside Ochsner Medical Center on Thursday, December 31, 2020. They are NICU "cuddler" and pet therapy volunteers. Because of the coronavirus, volunteers haven't been allowed into the hospital since March -- Terry, who is an Ochsner employee, is one of the only people allowed back in to comfort babies and visit staff with her pug. (Photo by Chris Granger | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)

Almost every week for the past five years, Jeff and Terry Stadler have spent their Saturdays volunteering to cuddle babies.

In the neonatal intensive care unit at Ochsner Medical Center in Old Jefferson, Terry Stadler, 58, likes to play music while she holds the critically ill infants. Her go-to is Pandora streaming service's heavenly lullabies.

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Jeff Stadler, 61, who says he can't "sing worth a darn," talks baseball with the babies. He tells them that they’re going to get better and break out of the unit.

"We talk about everything, just to talk, so they can hear a voice," said Jeff, who works for the Marine Corps in New Orleans. "It's a distraction from the normal sounds they hear in the NICU, the beeps and all that."

That stopped abruptly in March, when the coronavirus pandemic abruptly changed policies for at hospitals and nursing homes for relatives and nonessential staff. They closed their doors to volunteers who had staffed gift shops, held babies, made deliveries, helped patients navigate the maze of hallways and provided art, music and pet therapy.

Lucile, who visits Ochsner Medical Center as part of the Visiting Pet Program, has her own ID badge. (Photo by Chris Granger | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)

Terry Stadler, who also volunteers with the couple's dog, Lucile, for pet therapy, was in Ochsner's Benson Cancer Center with the pug visiting patients when the order went out that nonessential workers should leave. Their usual visit cut short, Lucile cried as they drove out of the parking garage.

Hospital and nursing home staffers try to fill the gaps where they can, but they sometimes don't have time for the things that volunteers usually do to make a stay more bearable: rocking a baby to sleep or sitting with an elderly resident feeling the softness of a dog's fur, for example. At Ochsner, where Terry is employed as a milk technician in the NICU, 1,000 to 1,500 volunteers across 40 hospitals normally fulfill those duties.

Critically ill babies are some of the patients who benefit most from volunteers. While doctors and nurses in adult ICUs worried about patients dying alone during the beginning of the pandemic, neonatologists worry about babies coming into the world alone.

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"The big difference for us is that once a mother goes home, we don't have people coming in to help cuddle and nestle and sing to them and do the things they did before COVID," said Dr. Jay Goldsmith, a neonatologist at Tulane Lakeside Hospital in Metairie. Lakeside, along with other hospitals around the United States, suspended volunteer services in March.

Parents can't always be around to sit with their hospitalized newborns. Sometimes there are job and transportation conflicts. They often have other children to watch, and they go home to sleep.

"For us, the average length of stay is 16 days in the NICU, which is a long time to be away from your mother," Goldsmith said. "Babies do best when they’re held a lot and cuddled and touched and sung to. We used to have volunteers to do that, and now they can't."

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For babies with neonatal abstinence syndrome, enduring withdrawal from pre-birth drugs in the mother's system, cuddling is part of the medical care. Those babies shake and tremble, sometimes having seizures. They have trouble breathing and digestive issues, often diarrhea and vomiting. Swaddling and holding babies helps them recover.

"You can see the heartbeat go from 200 beats per minute and slowly start to come down," Jeff Stadler said. "You can feel the baby start to relax. Their expression on their faces - there's that angry look - and they relax and they just get in a calmer place."

It's not just the patients who benefit from volunteers. Hospital and nursing home workers rely on them for relief when the census is high and other critical duties keep the staff occupied.

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"I walked into a room one time and a nurse said, ‘Oh, I could kiss you,’" Terry Stadler said.

The same is true for pet therapy.

"I can't tell you the number of times nurses stopped me in hallways, got down on their knees and hugged the dog and said, ‘You don't know how much I need this today,’" said Barbara Hyland, who volunteers with her greyhound, Alex, at East Jefferson General Hospital in Metairie. LCMC Health, which operates East Jefferson General and five other hospitals, had 1,100 volunteers before they were put on hold in March.

Terry Stadler recently received permission to resume her volunteer activities because she's an Ochsner employee. Visiting Pet Program, the New Orleans-based group with which she is affiliated, used to have about 130 volunteers visiting hospitals and nursing homes monthly. They're all eager to return to seeing patients and staff.

Right now, Terry may take Lucile to see staff members only, but the response has been overwhelming.

"They were so excited. One pharmacist, when she saw Lucile, said, ‘I think I’m going to cry, I’m so happy to see her,’" Terry said.

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Patients who can't talk or have long stays at the hospital are those who most benefit from Lucile, the Stadlers said.

"Dogs just know," said Terry. "There was an autistic girl we had seen a few weeks in a row. Lucile got on the bed and belly crawled up to her and gave her a kiss, laid across her chest. There was no talking."

The dogs also visit patients nearing the end of life. When Lucile visited a woman who was very sick in hospice care, the patient moved her fingers through her fur.

"They said that was the first she had responded to anything," Terry recalled.

Terry is one of two Ochsner employees who have been allowed to volunteer with pets again at the main campus. She's the lone critical cuddler in the NICU; before the pandemic, there were about 12 regular cuddlers.

Volunteers get their own kind of medicine when they lend a hand.

"I’m going through my own kind of withdrawal here," Jeff Stadler said. "I miss my babies. I miss being able to help out. I know they need it. I completely understand and agree with the policy, but I’m looking forward to getting back on board."

Emily Woodruff covers public health for The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate as a Report For America corps member.

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