What does 声かけをしてくれ mean?

Question

The sentence in question: 看護婦さんたちがたくさん声かけをしてくれ、じゃあ会ってみようと。

For full context: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/web_tokushu/2018_1130.html?utm_int=news_contents_tokushu_002

My attempt at translation: "The nurses give plenty of sayings (help with consolidating words?), let us meet one."

I must admit this translation is almost as good as none. Im really clueless how to deal with this. Before, the article switched between what seems to me like a dialogue between a patient and a nurse and descriptions what happened in between (the roles are highlighted through the coloring of the textbackground, green being the patient and red the nurse). However, what follows in this "nursepart" doesnt fit the pretext. It sounds more like a narrator giving a summary.

However, even so, I cant make much sense of all this. I must also admit that I dont really know what this concluding と in じゃあ会ってみようと does ^^

Answer 1

You can understand it as...

看護婦さんたちがたくさん声かけをしてくれて、『じゃあ、会ってみよう』と（思いました or 決めました etc.）。

The nurses suggested to me many times (that I should meet the baby), and/so I thought / decided, "Then, I'll meet (the baby)."

声かけをする (similar to 声をかける) has a few meanings. I think here it's used to mean "to make a suggestion" or "to encourage".

A verb phrase like 思いました or 決めました is left out at the end. The と is quotative.