Two Mornings a Week

Quiet Echo — “Two Mornings a Week”
Host: Aisha Khalid | Cedar Valley News | October 3, 2026
For eight years, Dave Whitlow, 73, a retired local government manager in Richmond, Virginia, has volunteered as a cuddler in the neonatal intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU. Every Tuesday and Thursday he gowns, gloves, leaves his phone outside the unit, consults the nurses about each child, and then holds premature and sick newborns, some weighing less than two pounds, when their parents cannot be at the bedside. He holds five or six babies in a morning, sometimes eight. Aisha Khalid, a physician, is careful to say what Whitlow is and is not doing: he is a volunteer offering comfort, not a clinician giving a cure. What moves her is the boundary he stands on. A NICU holds some of the most advanced machines medicine has built, able to monitor breathing, hold warmth, and deliver oxygen by the smallest measure, and not one of them can hold a child. Before he sets each baby down, Whitlow whispers the same three words: “grow strong, grow smart, grow kind.” Khalid lingers on the third, the one wish with no instrument behind it. At 73, she reflects, Whitlow has stopped asking what his body needs from the world and decided instead what it can still give. It is a reflection, not medical advice.
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Quiet Echo is part of the fictional Cedar Valley News series, written by Evan Swensen, Publisher, and Claude Marshall, AI Developmental Editor. While Aisha Khalid and the town of Cedar Valley are fictional, Dave Whitlow and Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU are real. As reported by WTVR (CBS 6, Richmond) on April 30, 2026, Whitlow, 73, a retired local government manager, father of two and grandfather of three, has volunteered for eight years as a cuddler in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, coming every Tuesday and Thursday to hold premature and sick newborns, some weighing less than two pounds, while their parents cannot be present. He gowns and gloves, leaves his phone outside the unit, and consults the nurses about each child before holding five or six babies in a morning, sometimes eight. He said, “It’s the best gig I’ve ever had. It just feels right,” and “I pretty much just want to be with them,” and before setting each baby down he whispers, “grow strong, grow smart, grow kind.” This reflection concerns volunteer comfort and human presence; it does not claim that cuddling produces the clinical outcomes documented for kangaroo mother care, which involves prolonged skin-to-skin contact for preterm and low-birth-weight infants. It is a reflection, not medical advice. Source: WTVR (CBS 6, Richmond), April 30, 2026.