BABY ON HER OWN
An infant did not have any hospital visitors for five months. So this nurse adopted her.
Two years ago, Liz Smith, director of nursing at Franciscan Children’s hospital in Brighton, Mass., was headed toward the elevator at work when she saw her: a tiny girl with bright blue eyes and a single soft brown curl swept across her forehead.
“Who’s this beautiful angel?” Smith asked the nurse who was wheeling the infant down the hall. “Her name is Gisele,” the nurse told her. The infant, a ward of the state, had been at the hospital for five months, but Smith had never seen her before.
Smith learned that Gisele, then 8 months old, had been born premature at another hospital in July 2016, weighing just under 2 pounds. She had neonatal abstinence syndrome — a result of her birth mother using heroin, cocaine and methadone during pregnancy.
The state of Massachusetts took custody of Gisele when she was 3 months old and transferred her to Franciscan Children’s because her lungs needed specialized care, and she had a feeding tube. The baby did not have a single visitor in her five months at the hospital.
Social service workers were trying to place her in foster care.
"Gisele,” Smith told herself all the way home that evening. “Gisele.” It was at that moment, said Smith, that she knew: “I'm going to foster this baby. I'm going to be her mother...READ
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