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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Deanne Francis, Provo, grew up in Salt Lake City. She graduated from East High School and later went to the University of Utah in nursing. She has been married to Howard Francis for 41 years. They have six children and 19 grandchildren. She works at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in the newborn unit. She loves the outdoors, especially skiing and scuba diving. She has taught prenatal classes in Utah County and started the first prenatal classes there. She is on the board of medical advisers for the March of Dimes and has served as a content specialist for childbirth classes produced by Brigham Young University.