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.