Becoming a mother is one of the greatest journeys we will ever take on in life. It is also something that can take on different forms, depending upon the circumstances.
Nobody is more familiar with how becoming a parent can happen at the strangest times than Liz Smith. As a nurse, she often cared for children but she didn’t have one of her own.
There was a time, however, when Liz, who is from Brighton, Massachusetts, was caring for a young girl named Giselle. She had spent a long time in the hospital without ever receiving a visitor, and it tore Liz’s heart apart.
At the time, Liz was the director of nursing at the Franciscan Children’s Hospital in Brighton. A chance encounter with an eight-month-old girl while she was walking into an elevator changed her life.
She couldn’t get the little girl out of her mind and asked a nurse, “Who’s this beautiful angel?” The nurse let her know that the girl’s name was Gisele.
Gisele had been at the hospital for five months and stayed there. She was made a ward of the state after a premature birth at a different hospital in July 2016.
When she was born, Gisele was only 1 lb. 14 oz. and she suffered from neonatal abstinence syndrome. This occurs when the mother was addicted to drugs during pregnancy and now the infant has to withdraw from the drugs, such as heroin or opiates.
Gisele was also experiencing a problem with oral aversion, which takes place in some children who don’t eat properly at birth. She had a tube inserted to help feed her, but she was falling behind as far as her development was concerned.
Liz said that she was being provided with excellent care but she had never been outside of the hospital. It was obvious that she would need a foster family if she was going to get back on track.
In the five months that Gisele was at the hospital, she had never been visited a single time. Social workers were doing their best but were unsuccessful in finding foster care.
That is when Liz told herself that she was going to foster the baby. It came to her when she was on her drive home one evening, and she said to herself: “I’m going to be her mother.”
Liz was inspired by her own mother and that is what made her take up nursing. She said that her mother was a pediatric nurse who always put others first, so she wanted to do the same.
Unfortunately, she would pass away when Liz was only 18 years old but by the time she entered her 40s, she was wondering when she would start a family.
She said: “My definition of family was always: In my 20s I’ll get married, have kids, and have a big family like the one I grew up with. I think a lot of women can relate to the pressure that we feel that there’s an order to do things.”
Liz Smith, Director of Nursing, knew from a young age that she wanted to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a pediatric nurse. What she didn’t know is that her nursing career would lead her to find her daughter. Read more via @washingtonpost: https://t.co/SbQQGmrsHJ pic.twitter.com/VKrxIcuBzb
— Franciscan Childrens (@FranciscanHFC) April 4, 2019
She did try to get pregnant but struggled and she was disqualified for IVF, so it didn’t work out. She said that she had never thought that it would be such a challenge to become a mother and it was a desire she just couldn’t push away.
When she saw the little girl, however, she knew there was a connection. She said: Since the moment I met her, there was something behind her striking blue eyes capturing my attention. I felt that I needed to love this child and keep her safe.”
Smith put in the request to foster the little girl and was with her every day after work until the paperwork was processed. She wanted to make sure that the little one didn’t feel alone.
Smith said: “She was behind developmentally, and I wanted to get her out of the hospital and get her thriving.” Three weeks later, she received the news that Gisele was hers, even though the state would try to reunite her with her birth parents.
The birth parents were granted weekly supervised visits at first but eventually were determined to be unable to care for the infant. Without another family member available, it seemed as if Gisele was staying.
She said: “The day I got the call that their parental rights were terminated was very sad. My gain was another’s loss. It’s a feeling difficult to describe when you are experiencing this life-changing moment that someone else is as well, in the opposite way. The bottom line is: It’s devastating for another family.”
The little one started to develop and she did well under her mother’s care. It’s a beautiful thing to see, and you can learn more about it in the following video.
