By Jessica Howard

Sweet lullabies are being played from a CD in several rooms of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Monroe Carell

Photo by Dana Johnson

Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt. And the angelic voice singing these soothing songs is NICU nurse Amanda Layne.

Layne is a relatively new nurse in the NICU, although she has been involved with the unit since 1999, when she began volunteering as a NICU cuddler. Her volunteer role opened up a passion inside that completely derailed her from her college coursework studying music at Belmont University.

She grew up wanting to volunteer at a hospital and provide comfort to sick infants. Layne began volunteering as a cuddler during her sophomore year at Belmont where she was pursuing a music major in piano.

"Being a cuddler was something I wanted to do for years," Layne says. "I was thrilled to learn there was an opening."

For one day a week for a total of three years, Layne came to the Vanderbilt Children's Hospital NICU and held babies.

"It was really the highlight of my week," she says. "I always heard stories about babies in the hospital whose parents lived far away. The nurses provide great care but can't always sit down and rock them, and touch is so important. I just wanted to fill the gap a bit."

In 2000, Layne took a year off from school to work as a youth ministry intern at a church in Orlando, Fla. As soon as Layne returned to Tennessee to begin her junior year at Belmont, she got right back into cuddling. She also started hearing from the NICU nurses that she ought to seriously consider becoming a nurse.

"Debbie Swint asked me why I wasn't going to be a nurse," she says. "I said, 'Because I'm scared,' and in return, she asked me, 'Is that all?'"

"She was so confident in me. I had built it up to be something impossible for me to do," Layne says. "The next week, I told my mom I wanted to be a nurse."

In 2002, she applied to Belmont's nursing school and officially changed her major.
"I was the hardest thing I've ever done, but I loved every minute of it," she says. "I tried to keep myself open to all types of nursing but my heart stayed solid for the NICU. I never swayed."

She completed nursing school in December 2004, and began the Pediatric Nurse Residency Program at Children's Hospital the next month. In July, she began working full time during the night shift in the NICU.

Layne doesn't regret changing her major from music to nursing. She's actually even starting to use her musical talent of singing and playing piano in her new job. While she was in Florida the year she took off from school, two families who were expecting asked if she would be willing to make them a CD with lullabies. Soon she completed a CD with lullabies featuring her singing and playing piano.

Since then, Layne says she's given hundreds of copies of the CD away, and has started giving them out to families she meets in the NICU.

"I'm still amazed that people love the CD," Layne says. "It's very raw, very basic. If people can be blessed with it, I want them to have it."