Healing Hugs : Volunteers: Hospital aides cuddle and feed critically ill babies in hopes of nurturing them back to health.

Dorothy Steinberg sits in a rocking chair at Childrens Hospital, her hands carefully avoiding the feeding and oxygen tubes that surround the critically ill newborn on her lap.

“It makes me very happy to hold these babies because a lot of them are in trouble and cuddling cheers them up,” says Steinberg, a volunteer in the intensive care unit. She tends to the frail newborns who sometimes have to be hooked up to medical gadgetry to save their lives.

At Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, Kissiah Morrow places a bottle in the mouth of a hungry newborn while he nestles in the crook of her arm. “I do this because I love children and never get tired of them,” says Morrow, 72. “I do this because it’s a joy.”

Steinberg and Morrow are among a growing number of dedicated volunteers who hold, feed and cuddle hospitalized babies with special needs, including infants born with AIDS or addicted to drugs.

“In the old days the nurses used to have more time to pick up the babies and hold them and do those kind of things,” says Lesley Holden, a nurse at Childrens Hospital. “Things have changed in the hospital and health-care systems.”

Among the changes are an increase in the number of children found to have AIDS. From 1982 to 1986 there were 32 cases in Los Angeles County, according to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. During the next five years, the number more than doubled to 75--and about 39% of them were 1 or younger, according to Toni Frederick, an epidemiologist with the Pediatric AIDS Study, which was funded by CDC.

And a study by a coalition of county agencies released last week shows that there were 1,458 drug-addicted babies born in the county in 1990, down from 1,313 in 1989. Officials say the decrease, the first on record, could be linked to a change in reporting.

At Martin Luther King, where 20% to 25% of the babies in the special-care nursery are addicted to drugs, volunteers soothe the pangs of withdrawal.

“Drug-exposed babies in particular are irritable, usually cannot sleep well and their sucking reflex is gone,” says Bernadette Bowman, director of volunteer services. “We need our people because they give at-risk babies the love and nurturing that’s so important to help them grow.”

Some of the children are born to parents who cannot properly care for them--parents who use drugs themselves or who have simply abandoned their babies. This, combined with nursing shortages, means volunteers are needed.

“The issues relating to bonding or socialization cannot be specifically handled by the nurses. Having people that spend this amount of time with the infants is particularly important,” says Xlina Bean, assistant director of the neonatology division at King.

Most babies need supplemental nurturing because of the medical problems they face. Prematurity and congenital conditions like heart disease and birth defects sometimes mean a child must stay in the hospital for up to five months.

“These are babies that have been in the hospital all this time without ever being home,” says Karyn Spear, a clinical social worker at Childrens Hospital, which cares for about 350 critically ill babies each year. “We are trying to make their lives as normal as possible.”

The atmosphere in the neonatal intensive care unit at Childrens, however, is anything but normal. Most of the 28 infants are premature, their tiny bodies swallowed up by seemingly enormous diapers. Some of them lie in clear bassinets, wailing the high-pitched cries of withdrawal. Others are silent and sleep beneath tendrils of tubes.

The babies are watched over by the Cuddlers, a close-knit group of 14 who volunteer four hours a week to rock, feed and comfort infants who demand more attention than the nurses can give.

The idea for the program was born in 1989 after Victoria Easley, a writer for KFWB-AM, did a story on children of the drug culture. Her investigation found that there were no neonatal intensive care unit volunteers.

With the help of social workers and nurses, Easley and Spear prepared an orientation program, complete with slides and a tour of the nursery, “to prepare volunteers for what they are about to face,” Spear says. The program kicked off last March, with most of the volunteers and donations of baby swings and rocking chairs coming from KFWB.

“I got into the program because I was looking to volunteer with a hospital and work with children,” says cuddler James Sopchak, a commercial programmer at KFWB. “The babies can be screaming or shaking sometimes when you hold them, but they quiet right down because of the comfort you give them.”

Martin Luther King’s Foster Grandparents are veterans of volunteerism. The 24-year-old program--which has been at King for 19 years--is federally funded and staffed by senior citizens who receive small stipends for comforting the babies. The volunteers help with about 12 babies, who are hospitalized an average of five days. Although these babies are not critically ill, they do require the special care of extra rocking or comforting because of their medical conditions.

Last month, the hospital initiated Rock and Hold, a program sponsored by Faithful Central Missionary Baptist Church that enlists young professionals to help the foster grandparents.

Foster grandparent Emma Jones, 93, says she comes in at least four hours each week to “nurture the children.”

She cannot hold the babies because of two recent heart attacks, but she says she goes anyway because it busies her. “I like the babies because they give you something to do. If you just sit there, you’re gonna die.”