For the Deseret News, 2003
It was still dark at 6:30 on the morning of Dec 21. I was cold and feeling pretty sorry for myself as I drove to work. Nobody likes to work on Christmas, and most places close down completely. Not hospitals. It doesn't matter if it's a night, a weekend or a holiday, the hospital is always open for business.
The tiny babies I would care for in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit that day didn't know or care that it was the season for celebrating Christ's birth. My children did, however. Even though they understood that nurses have to take turns working holidays, and it was my turn to work both the 24th and the 25th of December, they were still unhappy about it.
My obstetrician husband had arranged for someone else to be on call for him so both of us wouldn't end up in the hospital over Christmas, but I was feeling less than charitable about the whole thing. It wasn't so much that I thought someone else should be there in my place. The system was fair, but it didn't prevent my longing to be participating in family traditions and watching my children joyously open their gifts. Instead, I would be caring for sick babies who belonged to someone else.
When I reached the hospital, I parked, slogged through the snow and made my way to the NICU, which was so busy that someone had put a big sign over the door that said, "No room in the inn." I received a pretty sketchy report from the nurse going off duty, who was anxious to go home to her family. She gave me a report on two critically ill premature babies, and another new little boy recovering from mild respiratory distress who was to be placed for adoption. As she walked out the door, a pretty, blond teenager wearing a raggy bathrobe walked in. She didn't say a word, just showed me the identification band on her wrist and walked over to the bedside of her baby boy. It was the baby I had just been told was being placed for adoption.
She picked up the baby and sat down in the rocking chair. A few minutes later, I heard soft crying and looked over to see her tears dripping onto the baby as she rocked him and kissed the little fuzzy head. I could almost feel her pain as I picked up a box of Kleenex and sat down next to her. "Is there anything I can do to help?" l asked.
She wiped her eyes and sighed. "It's just that this is the only time I will get to hold my baby," she said. "I know I am doing the right thing to give him the gift of a family, but it is hard to give my son to another woman. No one told me how hard this was going to be. Now I know how God must have felt when he sent his only son to Earth for Mary to raise."
She cried on my shoulder for a few minutes, and I could find no appropriate response to ease her anguish. After rocking him for a while, she whispered final words of love into the baby's ear, told him to be a good boy and asked me to please take good care of him. A few minutes later, she put the baby back in his crib and left, sobbing. The baby, swaddled snugly in a receiving blanket, remained quietly unaware of his mother's sadness.
I was very busy that day with the two babies who were really sick and forgot about the incident until Christmas morning. I left all my children sitting around the Christmas tree in their jammies, looking less than merry. My husband was holding our baby, who was clutching the baby Jesus from the Nativity and howling at the top of her lungs. She didn't look Christlike. I didn't feel Christlike. No matter. Hospitals never close.
As I walked into the nursery, all the nurses going off shift were busy finishing up their work. Waiting for one of them to give me a report, I noticed an older woman sitting in the back of the nursery rocking a baby. I walked slowly toward her, realizing she was sitting in the same rocking chair, holding the same little boy whose mother had sobbed on my shoulder the day before. This woman, too, was weeping, dripping tears onto the baby's head as she rocked him. A man stood near her struggling not to cry.
Picking up the same box of Kleenex, I walked over to where she sat hugging that sweet little body to her breast. Once again, I asked if there was anything I could do to help and offered the box of tissues.
"Oh," she said, "This is the first time I have ever held a baby of my own, and I am so happy. This is the most beautiful gift I have ever received. Now I know how Mary must have felt when she held the baby Jesus in her arms for the first time. Her son was a gift from God. Mine is a gift from a woman I'll never know. I wish I could tell her how much I love him."
There is a young man somewhere, now older than 20, who was that beloved Christmas baby. He was the greatest gift ever to be exchanged between two women who both loved him and who never met. Christmas and babies go together. This year, once again, there will be three women remembering that particular Christmas baby — each of us for different reasons: the birth mother, his adoptive mother and me.
How I wish I could tell both of his mothers what a gift of the heart I received on that Christmas so many years ago when I was somewhere I didn't want to be, doing something I didn't want to do. No Christmas has passed since without remembering that one, and I'm glad I didn't miss it.
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