Gisele was a baby that arrived into this world alone. Her mother had exposed her to narcotic drugs during pregnancy, causing her to be born extremely early at 29 weeks. The little premie weighed just under 2 pounds and had no one to look out for her except for the medical workers at Franciscan Children’s Hospital.
Luckily, she managed to find a friend in one of the nurses who worked there.
The kind woman’s name was Elizabeth Smith, a 45-year-old nurse, who had always wanted to be a mom herself but had never had the chance.
Smith elaborated a little bit more about her story in an interview with TODAY
“Becoming a nurse was easy, but becoming a mom was not,” explained Smith.
As she was coming up on her 40th birthday, she found herself single, but still desiring to be a mom one day.
It wasn’t an ideal situation, but she decided to take matters into her own hands. Instead of waiting any longer, she decided to see a fertility specialist. Although, after several failed pregnancy attempts, she pretty much was forced to give up hope.
However, a few years later, she found herself working as the Director of Nursing at Franciscan Children’s Hospital and something happened that would change everything.
Smith met the newly born infant, Gisele.
Desperately in need of a foster parent and someone to care for her, Smith couldn’t help but feel for the poor child. Since birth, no one had even come to visit her.
“I came out of the medical unit one day and in the stroller was this beautiful little girl. I said to the nurse, ‘Who is this beautiful little angel?'”
The nurse replied, “This is Gisele,” and right then and there is when Smith fell in love with the child.
Her mothering instincts instantly kicked in.
With her nursing background, she was the perfect person to take care of the premature baby.
She knew exactly what she had to do.
With no one else stepping up to the plate, Smith volunteered to be the foster mom. At this point, the goal was still to get Gisele back with her original parents if possible.
However, that moment never came. Nine months later, the state permanently took away custody rights from the girl’s birth parents. In that time period, Smith had developed incredible amounts of feelings for the child, so for her, it was an easy decision.
“It hit me, all of a sudden, that my life had changed, my dream was coming true. But that somebody else was losing her and that was really hard because it wasn’t intentional,” said Smith.
While she had previously thought that her dream was long over with, now, she was finally going to become a mom.
It wasn’t how she had ever planned it to happen, however, life works in mysterious ways.
“The day I got the phone call with the adoption date was the day that I was jumping up and down. They said ‘October 18th’ and it’s my grandmother’s birthday and I just started crying,” said Smith.
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The date October 18th already had a lot of meaning to Smith, but now, it was an even more important day.
The day she could officially realize her dream of being a parent.
Gisele had one of the worst starts in life that we can imagine. However, with the kind nurse’s love and support, everything changed. The adoption was a success, and afterward, it all just fell into place.
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Smith explained to TODAY that motherhood, so far, is going just as she imagined it would. Every day, she gets to see how her little girl grows and progresses. It’s absolutely heartwarming.
“The things that make her giggle, the times that she’ll notice I’m sad and come up to give me a hug, or seeing her wake up in the morning. You love them so much that you can’t imagine anything else,” said Smith.
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Her words are words that many parents can identify with. However, Smith is just thankful that she was given the opportunity. She thought that she would never get to be a mom, but when she opened up her heart, the universe responded.
Watch the full video showing more details about the nurse’s story below.
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