Nurse Adopts Preemie Who Didn't Have a Visitor For 5 Months

Liz Smith - then director of nursing at  Franciscan Children’s hospital in Brighton, Massachusetts - was walking to the elevator at work when she saw the 8-month-old premature baby girl. “Who’s this beautiful angel?” she recalled asking a nurse who was wheeling the girl down the hall, according Boston.com. "Her name is Gisele,” the nurse replied. 

Gisele had come to Franciscan Children's five months before and had remained there. She was a ward of the state who had been born premature at a different hospital in July 2016 at 1 pound and 14 ounces. She was suffering from neonatal abstinence syndrome - a condition in which infants must withdraw from certain drugs that they were exposed to before birth, such as opioids like heroin or other prescription drugs.

The state had removed Gisele from her mother's care when she was 3 months old and moved her to the NICU at Franciscan Children’s hospital because her lungs needed specialized treatment. 

She also had developed an oral aversion, a common occurrence in babies who have never experienced pleasure from eating, that made her reluctant to eat. At Smith's hospital, she was placed on a gastronomy tube to help feed her, and although she was starting to get better, she was falling behind on developmental milestones.

“Franciscan was providing excellent care,” Smith explained, “but she had just never been outside the hospital.”

Gisele was going to need a foster family quickly if she was ever going to get back on track with her development, but in the five months she had been in the hospital, not a single visitor stopped by to see the baby girl. Her social service workers had been trying, without success, to place her in foster care. 

“Gisele,” Smith told herself as she drove home. “I’m going to foster this baby. I’m going to be her mother."