Georgia Teen Sews 'Tiny Hugs' to Comfort NICU Babies

When 18-year-old Bryn Hammock heard that babies staying in the newborn intensive care unit (NICU) near where she lives outside of Atlanta only received two hours a day with their parents during the pandemic, she knew she wanted to provide some extra comfort to the infants.

Her grandmother, a pediatric nurse, told her about hand-shaped gloves filled with beads often placed with NICU babies, so the infants feel like their mothers are holding them. Some hospitals in the Atlanta area had the gloves, but the facilities near Bryn were looking for more.

"I heard they were alone in the hospital, and I was like 'Wow, they really need this,' " the teenager tells PEOPLE.

A Girl Scout since she was in kindergarten, Bryn had been looking for an inspiring project to help her earn the Gold Award, the organization's highest honor, and knew helping NICU babies was the right choice.

"But I didn't know how to sew, and the lockdown had just started," Bryn says of the start of the project.

Again, the teen turned to her grandmother, Deanna Simmons — who also happens to be her granddaughter's troop leader and is pretty good with a sewing machine.

"I was not going out anywhere, so we did FaceTime to learn how to use the sewing machine. It was hard, but it worked. It was all we could do under the circumstances. I had not sewn in years, but it was like riding a bicycle. She didn't get frustrated. It was pretty impressive," Simmons says of her and Hammock's virtual sewing lessons.

Bryn raised funds for all of the sewing supplies and created a pattern for the stuffed gloves — which she calls Tiny Hugs — given to comfort NICU babies before starting to sew.

After the teen crafted several Tiny Hugs herself, she worked with her mom, Kelley Hammock, to create a how-to video so that a team of 18 volunteers could help make even more.

"It was emotional and powerful to see my mom teaching my daughter and knowing it was going to help newborns. I'm just so proud of her and excited that she found a project she is so passionate about," Kelley tells PEOPLE.

The volunteer team planned to make 30 Tiny Hugs but ended up sewing 140. Bryn distributed the gloves to seven Georgia hospitals, including the one where Hammock was born.

"When Bryn was born, she briefly went to the NICU with a slow heartbeat. We were fortunate that it was nothing major, but it still gave us a scare. Time has flown by since then, and we can't believe she's 18 and doing such an awesome thing to help babies. We're so blessed to have a daughter who is so smart and caring," Bryn's father, Will Hammock, shares.

Bryn received several thank you letters from hospitals that received her team's Tiny Hugs, including one from Trisha Whitley, a nurse in the Technical Intensive Care Unit (TICU) at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite.

Whitley wrote, "The Tiny Hugs you sent us have been greatly used and appreciated by our little ones and staff. Your efforts have warmed a lot of hearts around the TICU, and the world is a better place with people like you in it."

Bryn's Tiny Hug project earned her the Girl Scouts' Gold Award.

"It felt really good to earn the award doing this," Bryn says. "I'm the third generation in my family to do it, and I love babies and kids, so this was just a perfect project for me. It felt really good."

The high school senior will head to Auburn University in the fall and plans to do something in the medical field.

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