The NICU Nurse Who Adopted Her Patient

Because no two paths to parenthood look the same, “How I Got This Baby” is a series that invites parents to share their stories.

When Cady fulfilled her lifelong dream of becoming a NICU nurse in 2016, she believed she had come “full circle.” She’d been a NICU baby herself, and more than two decades after her own precarious birth, she still sometimes imagined herself as a fragile, vulnerable newborn. When it was time to pick a specialty after graduating from nursing school, she felt a tug. “The NICU was always where I wanted to go,” she says. 

The first few years of work were grueling and, at times, heartbreaking. Many of Cady’s patients thrived, growing hardy enough to go home, but others struggled, and some babies died. Life-and-death conversations were a particularly harrowing feature of the job. Sometimes she thought about quitting to preserve her emotional and physical health. But by 2019, when Cady was 25 and in her third year of nursing, she felt settled in her career. The good days at work left her soaring. “Whenever I’m down, a new family comes along and makes me feel super-appreciated and trusted, like I’m giving them peace of mind,” she says. She had also saved up enough money by then to start building a house — another long-held dream. 

That April, to save up even more, Cady picked up a second job, moonlighting at a nearby hospital on her days off from her regular position. She’d had the gig for two weeks when her boss asked her to report to the labor-and-delivery floor to provide extra assistance. A premature baby was about to be delivered, her boss said, and they needed Cady to catch the infant. 

Here, Cady recounts how that routine moment at work put her on a fast track to motherhood.

On assisting with a very high-risk delivery

I was technically still finishing my training at my second job, so they had me attend a lot of high-risk deliveries as part of that. I remember my boss preparing me to assist with that delivery: “The mom is hypertensive and deteriorating,” she said. The pregnancy was 35 weeks along. Doctors had wanted to transfer the patient to a different hospital — the one where she’d planned to deliver — but her labor was moving too fast. In the end, they decided to prep her for an emergency C-section. They needed me to go down there and “catch the baby.”

I rushed down to the delivery room, and it was serious. The mom was actually coding — meaning in cardiac arrest — as her baby boy was born. I can still see the look on his face: He came out stunned with this deer-in-headlights expression. He had these big eyes, and he was so skinny. He looked like a little bird, freshly hatched. I grabbed him and took him to the warmer.

I don’t even know how to explain it, because every time I try, it sounds so crazy. But right when I caught him, I swear there was this sense of familiarity, like I already knew him. I’d never felt anything like it before.

On sitting with her unexpected feelings about the baby

I had helped deliver dozens of babies, but there was something about this one. After we brought him to the NICU, I talked to my manager, whom I knew from years prior. “I really love this baby,” I said. “Like, I’m obsessed. I don’t know what it is.”

The baby was just three pounds, 12 ounces when he was born. His mother had wound up spending some time in the ICU but eventually recovered and was discharged. After she went home, she didn’t come back to visit the baby, so we didn’t meet. In the meantime, I took care of the baby a lot. His birth mom had named him Chris, after his biological dad — but I didn’t find that out for a few days. By then, I’d started calling him J. It just felt like a name that fit.

Whenever I had a shift, I would tell my co-workers, “Hey, I’m going to come in and take care of him today,” even though I was still assigned to labor and delivery on a different floor. He didn’t need much medical intervention; he mostly just needed to beef up his weight. It was a confusing time. I knew I wanted to foster him, but I felt crazy for it. I remember telling a close colleague about it. He understood. He said he’d felt the same way about one of his patients before.

I also told my little sister. We were in my parents’ kitchen one day, and I started talking about J. My mom overheard us and butted in. “You want to adopt a baby?” she said. But she was smiling. She seemed excited. I shushed her and changed the subject. Apart from that, I didn’t tell anyone else because it seemed far-fetched. The timing couldn’t have been worse. I was building what I thought was going to be my bachelorette pad and living at home while the construction took place.

I didn’t feel like it was normal to feel this way about this baby, but I could not stop thinking about him. I decided to put in a call to J’s social worker at the hospital to figure out how I could potentially foster him after he was discharged.

On coming to understand J’s birth mom’s situation

Initially, it seemed like J’s social worker wasn’t taking me seriously — like she was putting me off. I had the sense she was trying really hard to prepare J’s mother to take him home. But I also got the sense that J’s mother wasn’t interested in taking him. Once J started getting closer to going home, for example, I heard through another nurse that his mother said she didn’t have a car seat or a way of getting J home. The social worker had apparently told her that that was okay — that the hospital would provide transportation and donate a car seat to her. But there were other things the mother said that indicated to me that the social worker wasn’t reading the situation right. I heard that she’d told the social worker she had a number of other children and she didn’t have custody of them. Her parents did. She seemed to be saying she didn’t have the means to take on another baby.

I didn’t have much choice other than to wait and see what happened. The day before he turned one month old, J was discharged to his birth mother. I was at my full-time job doing a night shift and texted my friend at the other hospital to ask how J was doing. When she told me he’d left, I was devastated. I could barely make it through the rest of the shift.

On the phone call that set things in motion

The last time I’d taken care of J, right before the end of my shift, at 5 a.m., I had decided to write down his Texas Child Protective Services caseworker’s info, which was listed in his file. I had this gut feeling that I might not see him again. And I was worried about him.

After J was discharged, I decided to call his CPS caseworker. When we connected, I was very honest. “I fell in love with this kid,” I told her. I said I had been working on figuring out how to foster him or adopt him if he didn’t get released to his birth mom, but since he had, I just wanted to support him and his family however I could, whether financially or otherwise. “I want to help them,” I said. The caseworker listened, took my number, and told me we’d keep in touch.

On her conversation with J’s mom

Two days after that call with the caseworker, I got a call from J’s mom. She’d gotten my number from J’s caseworker. She was blunt. “I have one bottle of formula left from you guys, and my food stamps are done for the month,” she said. “Can you come and get him?” I was floored. I never expected to hear from her that way. I said, “Yes, of course,” but I was totally unprepared.

On getting ready to foster

Everything happened really fast after that. When J’s birth mom called, I was away on vacation with my family and cousins. I wound up spending most of that day on the phone with J’s CPS caseworker. “You need to get a stroller, a car seat, some bottles, a crib, so we can go to your home and make sure it’s set up,” she said.

My family felt thrown. My mom had kind of known I had fallen for a baby in the NICU, but my dad had no idea, and he was really upset. “How are you going to do this? How is this gonna work?” he said. He’s an engineer who is really logical and reasonable. But he also has a strong Christian faith. I tried to explain what I was doing from that angle, like, “This is what the Lord tells us to do. If we have the means, we should be sharing them.” That seemed to shut him down and make him reconsider.

That night, we said good-bye to our extended family in Galveston and drove straight to the nearest Target. I still have videos from the trip — my whole family packing shopping carts with a car seat, crib, the works. Thankfully, I’d moved into my new house a few months before, and it was furnished, so we had a place to go.

The next day I called my managers at both of my jobs. They were supportive and took me off the hospital schedules.

On bringing the baby home

My family and I drove home from Galveston. And the next day, my mom and I drove to J’s birth mom’s house to pick him up. We met the CPS caseworker there. I still get emotional when I think about it.

When they opened the door, J was sleeping on the floor, next to one of his teenage cousins. Members of his family — his parents, his grandparents, siblings — were all around him. My mom and I drove to the CPS office with J’s parents, and they terminated their parental rights. After that, we drove back to their house.

And then that was kind of it. We put J in his car seat and waved good-bye. It still gets me even now, remembering it. The cousin who’d been next to him on the floor — he seemed really attached, and he cried as we were leaving. But I expected everyone to be crying. I expected hugging. So it was startling that there wasn’t much of that. To me, they seemed relieved.

On the haphazard process that followed

CPS kind of dropped the ball after that. There wasn’t a long vetting process for my foster-care license. Maybe, because I’m a NICU nurse, they just trusted me. They did an initial run-through of my house to make sure I had what I needed and then said they’d come back a week or so later, after J and I settled in. But a week or two passed and the caseworker wasn’t taking my calls. I should have received benefits from the state — a stipend, insurance for J. But I wound up paying for everything out of pocket, including his health care. My employer wouldn’t allow me to put him on my insurance until his adoption was finalized. I paid for all of his immunizations out of pocket along with his formula and, later, a surgery he needed because he had undescended testicles. I got donor milk from a co-worker who had just had a baby, which was great for him, nutritionally, and financially helpful to me. But all of the expenses added up well into the thousands.

When I finally did connect with the caseworker, she told me I’d need a lawyer if I wanted to start adoption proceedings but sort of left it there. A friend of a friend of a friend ended up taking my case, but he wasn’t even a family-law attorney. We navigated the situation pretty blindly. I felt like CPS sort of left me high and dry.

On adjusting to life as a 25-year-old single mom

J was such a good baby, but I didn’t get to enjoy his newborn period as much as I would have if I’d been working less. I was able to get some unpaid FMLA leave and used my remaining paid vacation time to be with him. I went back to work after about three and a half weeks, and my schedule was pretty intense. J stayed at my parents’ house a lot during that time — my mom basically handled all of his overnight feedings because I was at work. I’d stop by her house to see him before I went into work and then after my shift, I’d go to sleep at my own house. That was the pattern until my last shift of the week. Then I’d retrieve J from my parents, take him back to my house, and stay up with him till we got to his first nap. I’d try to sleep while he was sleeping, and I’d be just about to hit my REM cycle when he would wake up. My head would be pounding. I was exhausted all the time. Fortunately, my mom fell in love with him right away. I wouldn’t have been able to take in J if not for my parents’ help as well as help from family friends and co-workers who pitched in with babysitting. It really took a village.

It surprised me how underprepared I felt for the newborn phase. I was supercomfortable taking care of NICU babies, but giving a healthy infant a normal bath at home — I didn’t know how to do that. I also feel like, even though I didn’t birth him, I went through a bit of postpartum depression. It was an identity crisis.

He really was a good baby, though. It was almost as if someone had warned him — like, “Dude, your mom is going to be spread way too thin, so be the best baby you can be.” And he was.

When J was about a year old, I enrolled him in a day care near my house to give my parents a break and help socialize him. It was expensive; occasionally, my parents helped with the payments. But as an adult who decided to have a kid, I don’t ask them for money. It was my decision, and he’s my responsibility. Still, I don’t know how people take on single parenthood with minimal support.

On beginning to tell her son about his birth story

J’s adoption was finalized two years after he came home. It took that long because COVID hit less than a year after his birth and slowed everything down. All the lawyer meetings and court dates had to be virtual. We opted for an open adoption so J and his birth family can have a relationship someday.

J is in kindergarten now, and it wasn’t until recently that he and I started talking more about the way he was born. A couple of years ago, I broached the topic with a child psychologist. I basically just wanted to find out how to introduce the idea to J. “You have a lot of time before you need to do that,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

But then, last year, when J was 4 years old, something happened. We were on a plane going to Maryland to visit my sister, and he was looking at his tablet, completely fine. Then, out of nowhere, he started screaming, “Mom, do I have a dad? Do I have a dad?” I was mortified. I didn’t know what to do. I don’t remember how we got off the topic, but somehow I calmed him down.

Then a couple of weeks later, when we were at the playground, he walked up to this little boy and his mom and said, “I don’t have a dad.” He was clearly trying to tell me something. I knew we had to talk about it.

We got in the car, and I was all choked up. And so I told him. “Remember when I told you that when you were born, you were really, really sick?” I said. “Well, your mom and dad were sick too, and they asked me if I could take care of you. So you have a dad — you have two moms and a dad and all of these other people who love you.” And then J started naming them: “Like Papa and Granny and Uncle Jay and Aunt G.? Yeah, they do love me,” he said. And that seemed to help him. He seemed to have some sort of a breakthrough.

I think that, at the end of the day, as long as he feels loved, that’s the best we can do.

On her connection with J’s birth family

The first couple of Christmases after J was born, my parents and I would bring presents to his family: bikes, shoes, grocery cards — things like that. I was hopeful that we could keep the lines of communication open, to the extent that his mom wanted that. J has siblings; someday he may want to get to know them better. I want to be able to be honest with him. I don’t want him to feel a sense of shame.

I also sent his birth mom occasional pictures and cards and updates about how he was doing. Around his birthday, she’d always send me a message — something like “I know his birthday is around the corner. How’s he doing?”

But then, two or three years ago, she stopped reaching out. And I didn’t push it. My big concern is letting J down. That happened to me as a kid with my biological dad. He let me down a lot. There were a lot of broken promises. I don’t want that for J. It’s hard to know exactly what to do, but above all, I want to protect him.

On how her son is doing today

He’s amazing — high energy, rambunctious, curious, and very, very smart and loving. Last year was a hard year; he struggled with regulating his emotions. We took him to a therapist, which helped, and also put him on medication for ADHD and oppositional-defiant disorder. But he goes to school at my alma mater, where he’s got a great teacher this year, someone with a special-education background, and that’s been really helpful.

I feel a lot of guilt sometimes. I’m perpetually exhausted, and I lose my patience. There are times when I wonder, Did I make the right decision? Was I the best person for him? I don’t want to ruin him. I don’t want to mess up. That’s the hardest part of parenting: the anxiety. You take your baby home and realize you’ll never not worry again.

But J gives me so much grace. Sometimes I’ll say to him, “You know what, bud? I lost my temper, and I’m sorry.” And he’ll be like, “Okay, Mommy!” He loves me. He doesn’t even care.

 The names of all subjects have been changed to protect their identities.

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