BRIGHTON, Mass. — The state of Massachusetts took custody of little Gisele when she was only 3 months old.
She had ended up at Franciscan Children's Hospital in Brighton, Massachusetts, in 2016.
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According to the Washington Post, Gisele, born premature at another hospital, didn't have a single visitor for five months after she was transferred to the Brighton facility.
"Who's this beautiful angel?" nursing director Liz Smith, 45, asked a nurse wheeling the blue-eyed, brown-haired infant down the hospital halls two years ago. "Her name is Gisele," the nurse told her, according to the Post.
Without a single visitor in five months, the little girl was on the verge of entering the foster care system — until Smith stepped in and decided to adopt Gisele herself.
"My mom was a pediatric nurse who always put others first," Smith told the Post. "So I grew up wanting to be a nurse, too."
But while "becoming a nurse was easy... becoming a mom was not," she said in an interview with the "Today" Show.
Smith didn’t marry and have children like the rest of her siblings, and lack of treatment coverage meant in vitro fertilization was out of the question.
It wasn’t until she saw Gisele, the Post reported, that she really considered adoption.
The infant, who weighed less than 2 pounds at birth, was diagnosed with neonatal abstinence syndrome, a result of her birth mother’s heroin, cocaine and methadone use during pregnancy. She had been transferred to Franciscan Children’s for specialized care.
"When you take these drugs during pregnancy, they can pass through the placenta and cause serious problems for your baby, March of Dimes reported on its website. "The placenta grows in your uterus (womb) and supplies your baby with food and oxygen through the umbilical cord."
“Gisele was in withdrawal from heroin and cocaine and was taking in nutrition via a gastrostomy tube 16 hours a day” when Smith brought her home, “Today” reported. But her experience as a nurse made her a unique, trusted caretaker.
Between Gisele’s birth parents losing their parental rights and her continued need for supervised medical care, the process hasn’t been easy for Smith. But she says it has been worth it.
Now, at age 2, Gisele likes to dance and play with Play-Doh. And she loves pizza.
“If you told me a year ago she would be asking for pizza, I would not have believed you,” Smith told “Today.” “It’s just slow progression, but in the right direction.”
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