Cuddle Club : Hospitals: Twenty-one volunteers hug and hold newborns at the County Medical Center to help them get a good start in life.

There’s a technique to successful baby cuddling. First you’ve got to know the dialogue: a few coos mixed in with an occasional ooh and ahh, add a compliment every so often, the usual.

Next, there’s the baby-holding stance: Just lean backward slightly and bounce, just a little. Don’t grip the baby too tightly but keep a firm hold. And beware. Contrary to popular belief, some of the babies are downright ugly, even funny looking.

But even with the hazards of being a professional baby cuddler--dirty diapers, for example--Mary Ann Brown, 62, says she can think of no other job she has enjoyed more.

Once a week, Brown--along with a select group of 20 other volunteers--holds the newborns in the nursery at Ventura County Medical Center. They’re a welcoming squad of sorts, working for no pay but big benefits.

“The babies will never know me,” Brown said, holding a several-hours-old 10-pound boy. “But I’ll know that maybe I was able to give them a good start with a warm hug.”

About five years ago, in the wake of research showing that it is crucial for newborns to be coddled, the staff at the medical center decided to expand its volunteer program to include baby cuddlers in the nurseries.

When mothers are resting during afternoons and evenings, the volunteers work alongside nurses to comfort the babies, feed them and change their diapers.

But it’s not easy to become a baby cuddler at the county hospital.

Sylvia Worrick, director of volunteers, said she screens each applicant carefully, checking and double-checking references.

“I want to make sure they’re local folk,” Worrick said. “And that they love babies.”

The who’s who list of the hospital’s best baby cuddlers includes plenty of grandmothers and great-grandmothers. But over the years, some of the volunteer baby-holders have also held unusual jobs.

Several years ago, Worrick said, a firefighter volunteered to hold babies because it provided a release from his stressful job. Others have been “yuppie types” who found their lives unfulfilled, Worrick said.

Current volunteers are mostly grandmothers, with a few professionals and a couple of students.

“I think it’s therapeutic to hold a baby,” Worrick said. “When you walk into that nursery, you’re walking into another world.”

Sunshine streams in through the window of the newborn nursery on the fourth floor of the county hospital off Loma Vista Road in Ventura.

In the hallway, the obstetrics staff is racing. With more than 400 babies born here some months--more than at any other hospital in the county--there is little time to relax.

But the nursery is calm, except for an occasional chorus of sobs. One baby starts to cry and the rest join in.

On a recent afternoon, cuddler Marian Kaniewski, 70, made her way through a maze of cribs to comfort a little girl.

After a few seconds in Kaniewski’s arms, the baby was sleeping.

“I always tell the babies they are loved and we’re glad they’re here,” Kaniewski said. “I want them to feel welcome.”

Brown and Kaniewski, both great-grandmothers, said they decided to volunteer because they love babies.

However, cuddling babies is not always uplifting.

Volunteer Jan Richman, 54, said she has left the hospital several times in tears because of what she has seen. Some children are born addicted to drugs, others are unwanted.

“There are a lot of sad stories,” Richman said. “There are a lot of young mothers and crack babies. It’s hard to accept that not all mothers love their babies.”

And while Kaniewski, who started at the hospital in September, said she likes taking care of the babies, she avoids having contact with the parents because it hurts her to know that a baby’s home life is sure to be turbulent.

“I’d just as soon not see the mother,” Kaniewski said. “It’s just better that way.”

Richman, a volunteer since August, said: “When I leave, it’s real hard to put the babies out of my mind. While it’s real painful, there’s a part of me that never wants to get hardened to this.”

When she knows a baby is unwanted, she said, she “gives the little guy an extra hug and hopes that it helps send him on his way into this world.”

Richman, who works as an administrative assistant in the Oxnard Elementary School District, said she decided to volunteer at the hospital because she was so impressed with the care her daughter received when she had her baby there. Richman said she wanted to pay back the staff in some way.

But she said she is richer for the time she has spent with the babies.

“When you walk in that nursery, the feeling is so intense,” she said. “There’s nothing but life going on.”