There is a quiet corner of a hospital in Overland Park, Kansas, where a volunteer named Terry Berggren shows up regularly to do something beautifully simple: hold babies. As a NICU cuddler, Berggren has now held more than 550 premature and medically fragile newborns — offering the kind of human warmth that busy nurses and anxious parents sometimes cannot provide around the clock.
What makes Berggren’s story especially moving is where it began. His family lost a grandchild, and rather than stepping away from the pain, he stepped toward it — choosing to give other tiny, vulnerable babies the comfort and closeness that every newborn deserves. That personal grief became the fuel for an extraordinary act of ongoing community service.
NICU cuddling is a recognized volunteer role in many hospitals. Premature infants benefit enormously from skin-to-skin contact and gentle holding, which can help stabilize heart rate, improve weight gain, and ease stress. For families who cannot always be present at the bedside, volunteers like Berggren fill a gap that is both medical and deeply human.
Over the course of his volunteer work, Berggren has cradled more than 550 of those small lives — each one a family’s whole world, each one receiving a few hours of undivided, loving attention from a man who knows firsthand how precious and fragile life can be.
Stories like Berggren’s are a reminder that some of the most powerful community contributions happen not at ribbon-cuttings or fundraising galas, but in quiet rooms, in the early morning hours, with a tiny baby asleep on a willing chest. Overland Park is fortunate to have him.
Sources: AOL.com
