What's a Cuddle Cot? This Middle Tennessee hospital hopes it can help parents, families

Katie Nixon, Nashville Tennessean
·3 min read

Sumner Regional Medical Center can now provide families experiencing pregnancy and infant loss with support after a recent donation from the Helen James Foundation.

A Cuddle Cot and grief library were gifted to the acute care facility in Gallatin, giving families more resources in their time of need.

“Some of the staff reached out to us through our website wanting to have a Cuddle Cot at the hospital, and we were so honored that they connected with us and that we were able to donate the Cuddle Cot,” Helen James Foundation Founder Emily Long said in a press release.

“That is a huge part of our mission, donating Cuddle Cots to hospitals who are open to receiving them.”

Infants who did not survive childbirth may stay with their family for up to 3-5 days in a Cuddle Cot – a cooling bassinet that preserves its appearance and condition.

A Cuddle Cot and grief library were gifted to the acute care facility in Gallatin, allowing families more time with their baby.
A Cuddle Cot and grief library were gifted to the acute care facility in Gallatin, allowing families more time with their baby.

“This Cuddle Cot became a lifeline to our daughter,” reads the Our History section of the Helen James Foundation's website, referencing the story of the organization's founders Emily and Joel Long. The couple created the foundation in memory of their daughter, Helen James, who was born in June 2018.

Believing the Cuddle Cot was a “crucial part of our acceptance, grieving and healing,” the Longs set out to support other families experiencing similar grief by providing them with more time and resources.

“The Cuddle Cot gave our family and friends a way to both rejoice and mourn over our daughter in the same moment, to hold and kiss her and to love her. We are so thankful that Saint Thomas Hospital had a Cuddle Cot, and that we were given this additional time with Helen James. We believe it was a crucial part of our acceptance, grieving and healing, and we cannot imagine our situation without it,” the couple's story reads.

Other Cuddle Cot recipients include hospitals in Florida, Illinois, Texas and other Tennessee hospitals, like Saint Thomas Midtown, Saint Thomas Rutherford County, Saint Thomas McMinnville, Germantown Methodist and Memphis hospitals Baptist Women's Hospital and Regional One Health.

The couple has expressed their sadness concerning how few hospitals currently offer resources like the Cuddle Cot to bereaved families.

“The device is practically unavailable in most hospitals, despite 24,000 babies being stillborn in the U.S. every year, which is 10 times as many deaths as those that result from SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome),” they said.

On the local front, Sumner Regional Medical Center Care Coordinator Hannah Young, a registered nurse, said she hopes the hospital can continue to expand upon the resources they have for those experiencing a loss, "for the moms, and not just the moms, but the families, the siblings.

“From here on, I want to continue to grow what we have to offer the families of Sumner County,” she said.

For more information about the foundation, visit helenjamesfoundation.org. To donate books to the grief library, visit the Amazon Wish List at https://shorturl.at/kmvNX.

Katie Nixon can be reached at knixon@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Gallatin hospital hopes to help parents, families with new Cuddle Cot